Trading Secrets - 500M+ streams on Stargazing with Kygo! Justin Jesso: From Radio Disney to hit singer-songwriter reveals BTS of collaborating with major stars, navigating the music industry and the $$$ behind it

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

This week Jason is joined by hit singer-songwriter, Justin Jesso who has over 8 billion streams on his collaborations with artists such as Ricky Martin, The Backstreet Boys, and Kyga!       Justin has since made his mark as a solo artist within the music industry starting by coming up within the music theater space in Chicago at a young age. After releasing his debut album at just 18, he eventually found himself touring with Disney artists such as Jesse McCartney, Jordin Spark, and Raven Simone all over the country. His song “Stargazing” has over 500 million streams on Spotify.    Justin gives insight to the importance of a song having his name and voice associated with it, how attending a camp sparked his interest in songwriting, how he got noticed by Radio Disney, breaking down what goes into a song, and how the payment is distributed for a song.  Justin also reveals how he ended up on tour with Jesse McCartney, Jordan Sparks, Raven Simone, and Mitchel Musso,  the different ways to monetize off a song, how much can be made on a general deal as a songwriter, the complexities of copyright in music, what inspired the screenplay he has written, and breaking down the role publishing and masters play with the Taylor Swift/Scooter Braun example. When did he get discovered? Does streaming or radio pay more for the publisher? What is his biggest issue with the music industry?  How long does it take for publishing money to come in? How did he get this stage name?   Justin reveals all that and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss!    Be sure to follow the Trading Secrets Podcast on Instagram & join the Facebook   Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.   Sponsors: It’s golf. It’s not golf. It’s Topgolf. Pro-tip, download the app & book ahead of time to Come Play Around on Half-Price Tuesday, or any other day. Visit cort.com/podcast to learn more and find the furniture package that fits your life   Host: Jason Tartick Voice of Viewer: David Arduin Executive Producer: Evan Sahr   Produced by Dear Media.

The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we are joined by hit singer-songwriter Justin Jesso with over a billion. You heard that's with a B billion streams for his collaborations with international pop stars, such as Ricky Martin, ever heard of him, the Backstreet Boys, Kygo. Justin has since made his mark and celebrated as a solo artist within the music industry. Coming up within the music theater space in Chicago at a young age, after releasing his debut album at Just 18,

he eventually found himself touring with Disney artists, such as Jesse McCartney, Jordan Sparks, Raven Simone, people that you have heard about all over the country. We've never had a song write around. We've never had a singer, especially of Justin. Justin Calibers on. So Justin, we are so excited to have you. Thank you for having me. I feel like you just gave my whole life story. I can leave now. You did the whole thing. We're done. Now, even with that background, if there are people that are out there that may not have heard of Justin, I don't know how

you have it. I'm going to quickly tell you you have because this song, Stargazing, may have heard of it over 500 million streams on Spotify. Justin, this is so exciting to have you. When I's 500 million streams. I mean, that is so wildly impressive. And then I looked, I've been trying to Google it, it looks like there's like less than a thousand songs that have that many streams. It's pretty wild. So much of that is owed to my collaborator on it, Kygo, who's obviously this international superstar of a DJ. But just to have my name associated and have that many people listen to my words and my voice, I hit 500 million first, funnily enough, with the Ricky Martin featuring Maluma song. Okay. And it was such a big accomplishment.

and such a wonderful feeling, but that feeling was tenfold when it was my song with Kygo because it's my voice and it's my words. They translated my Ricky Martin song into Spanish. I love that. So it's a totally different feeling, and I'm just so grateful that it connects with people, and I get these crazy messages from people all over the world about how that song and other songs have changed their lives or makes them just happy or gets them through depression or keeps them on track to not go back to drinking.

And that's really one of the craziest and most exciting things about why I do. What I do is to get messages like that from people saying, oh, my God, this song impacted me in this way or that way. That's beautiful. And that's life-changing for so many people that get to hear your music and then are inspired by it. But I actually want to transition that impact you're making to everyone else when it actually happened for you.

Because you had your first album debut at 18. And you guys have heard some of the artists he's work with. How did you get discovered? What propelled you to get to the level that you are at today? Okay. So that most people don't go that far back. I started when I was about, when I was six years old, I went to camp. Come on, six years old.

I was six years old. But how do you? Maybe I was seven. Maybe I was seven. Hang out. I'm sorry to interrupt the story, but I'm thinking so many people have come on there like, oh, I didn't figure it out tell us 31 or 44. No, no, I always knew.

How did you know at six? I was at six. I went to, I guess I didn't know at six. But at six, I went to camp, and there was this major called Rock Band. So I went there, and this guy was like, hey, we can write a song today. What do you want to write about? So there was this girl named Leah, who I liked. He's like, let's write a song for Leah.

So the first song I ever wrote was, Leah, would you meet me by the pier? You bring the lettuce, and I'll bring the beer. I love this. There may be a deer, but don't you fear, because I'll hold you near. We'll drink some lettuce, eat some beer, look at your rear. I was a horny six-old out. I was just saying, drinking beer and beer. I was going through a face.

So that kind of sparked my love of songwriting. And then through fast forward when I was 15, I met a guy named Ira who had a studio in Chicago at a place called Leo Burnett, which was an advertising agency. And what he was doing was writing jingles, which is technically called sync music, which, of course, I didn't know at the time.

And so between 15 and 18, three days a week after high school, I would drive down to the city of Chicago where I'm from. I lived about 40 minutes outside of Chicago and I'd drive down and I'd get in the studio and I'd work till 9, 10 at night and then I'd drive back.

It was my mom driving me for the first year and then 16, 17, I could drive myself. And the album came out at 18 under my real name, which is Justin Stein. If you scour the internet, you can find some of these songs, but it was, oh no, he's going, he's going! He says, scour the internet, go.

I'm writing down, Remember to ask about real name. Really name. Basically, that ended up getting the attention of Radio Disney. And I ended up going... That album debut. That album debut. Yeah.

So I ended up going on tour with Jesse McCartney and Jordan Sparks and Raven Simone and Mitchell Musso from Hannah Montana. And I did a whole summer of touring around the country doing state fairs on this circuit with these people. And it was really fun. It was an amazing learning experience. And then as all things do, it fell up. part. So I was waiting on this contract from Hollywood Records and I had this manager who may or may not

have been so honest and I was testing for like television shows. But at the end of the day, I had just been accepted to NYU. And my parents really wanted me to go to college. So I ended up going to college. I did two years of acting training because I was accepted to the Meisner acting department and learned a lot about who I was and not so much about acting. Which I'm not trying to knock the program, a lot of people learned a lot about acting. I just realized that I had a lot of walls up and I had this idea of who I was. That wasn't truly the core of who I was. So because the acting training was designed to strip away all of the artifice that you've built up, all of those walls that you've built up to get to what you're feeling and who you truly are, it was really helpful for me

as an artist to go through that process and get to a place where I could access my emotions. Because At that point, it had been difficult for me, and I went through this depression. Anyway, I missed music so much that I ended up transferring into the Clive Davis Department of Recording Music. And when I tried to transfer originally, they actually didn't let me in. And I said, screw you guys, this is the program I want to be in. And I went to all the teachers and petitioned them to let me in the class. And they did. And then six months later, or halfway through three months, through the semester, the head of the program turned to me and said, okay, we made a mistake.

what do you want? And I said, let me in the program. One of the reasons that he didn't let me in was because he asked me the question. And at the time, he was correct. In the final interview, he said, you've had experience in the music industry doing this. This program is for people who haven't. Sure. Why do you want to be a part of our program? Because all of the experience that you can get in here, you can get actually doing it out there and you have access to that. So it seems like you just want to be in this program because your parents said you have to go to college. Wow. What was your response?

I said, oh, no, I really want to be in a scholastic learning environment. I think that's how I'll grow and it's not that I, you know, it was bullshitting. Yeah. Because he was correct. Yeah. That I really, I wish that my career had gone in the way that I wanted it to.

I wish that I got that pilot on Disney and I was off to the races and that there were more shows and that there was more interest and there wasn't. and I felt like a failure. And that's why I went into depression in college. But he came back around three months later and said, okay, why you have to answer this question?

Why do you want to be a part of this program? And at that point I knew, I said, it's the camaraderie. It's being around people who love this as much as I do, who are as dedicated to this as I am, and being able to collaborate and interface with those people is going to help me grow and make me better. And so that eventually was the answer, that said okay fine you're in so then i oh my god we're so far back so then i did that uh i got an

internship this is where my career really started okay i got an internship at eMI music publishing i worked at a booking agency which was fun because it taught me about all the different little bars around new york and then i started playing around new york in that scene okay that's where i got my sea legs and then i started getting little cuts and then i moved to los angeles and i did a little trial period where I went to Los Angeles to see like once a month if I could build a career there. And I started in New York getting little cuts. And then when I went to L.A., I got these little cuts. What does that mean? Little cuts. So that means my songs were wanted by artists on labels. The songs that you wrote? The songs that I wrote. So they'd want one of my songs. And the reason

that I say little cuts is because it wasn't like I was getting cuts on pink. Okay. So you start writing in a way, you're writing the songs. When you're writing the songs, are you hired, who is your boss? Who's your employer? Is it Warner Brothers hiring you as a writer? Are you independent? So at this point, I'm independent. Okay. The publishing side of it. So yeah, let's take Taylor Swift. So Taylor Swift makes money as an artist off of her, and you've seen these, you know a little bit about this because it's been

in the media. Of course. Off of master royalty rights. That is the actual sound recording. Okay. The master royalty. And then there's publishing, which is the other side, which is not the sound recording, but the actual IP, so to speak. It's the actual song. It's the lyrics and the melody. I don't understand. For someone who knows nothing about this, tell me the difference. So the master is like, so let's take stargazing, for example. Stargazing. If you take Stargazing, I can play you the original demo of

stargazing without Kygo. And that is just the melody, the lyrics, and a piano. You added Kai go in and you basically that then when he produces it and we master that recording and we give it to the label the recording itself is the master got right got of the master and label deals are traditionally very backwards so of the master the label owns Kaigo's deal might be a little bit sweeter but traditionally it's like the artist gets like 23 points out of 100 like 23 25 27 18 if you're a new artist. Okay. And the label owns the rest.

So let's just make it really simple. Let's call it 80-20. Got it. So the label owns 80% of the monies that are made off of the master royalty of that song. The artist gets 20. Okay. Then, out of the artist's piece, they have to pay the producer. The producer usually gets four points and the mixer usually gets one point.

The songwriters get zero points. Which is a big fucking issue. that needs to change in the music industry. Two quick questions before we go to the writer. The producer, what are they technically doing to get their four points? So the original production of Stargazing was done by Stuart Crichton and Jamie Hartman. So they participated in those back-end points as producers. Typically, a producer is someone who does the track.

So if you take the melody and lyrics away and you're left with the beat, that's technically the production. That's what the producer does. Right. So they get paid a fee plus points. The four percent. And I'll tell you how that all kind of pans out down the road. So on the publishing side of it, so like, for example, with Stargazing, I wrote it with Jamie Hartman and Stuart Crichton, we split it equally. When Kaigu jumped on, he came in and then split it equally with us.

So we each have 25% of the publishing, which is essentially, I guess, a way to think about is like the DNA of the song. Okay. So whatever money that song makes anywhere, you have 25% of the publishing. And as a featured artist, I do have a couple of points on the master, which is customary for a feature artist. But you have zero points as a songwriter. As a songwriter, I have zero points on the master. That's crazy. But I have 25% of the publishing.

So the publishing is valuable. The master is at this time more valuable. Correct. So let's just take streaming, for example. and I might not have my numbers totally correct. Approximately. Approximately a million streams on Spotify to the master rights holders

is like three to four grand. A million streams to the publishing rights holders is like 250 bucks. Wow. Yeah. But on radio, the publishing is very valuable. So publishing gets paid out more heavily if the song goes to radio.

Then streaming. Then streaming, yes. Okay. Why? Why is that? Do you know? I don't know. And how much more? That I don't know either. Let's say all in, the team's making $4,000 for a million streams on Spotify. Sure.

If you had to just take a shot in the dark, if it hits the radio, what do you approximate the multiple of that $3, $4,000 going to the team? It's good. It's not crazy, but it's good. But you have to remember that $3 to $4,000 going to the team on the master side, 80% of that's going to the label. So then the trickle down is, if it's 20% that the artist gets, and four of it goes to the producer, and let's just say for the sake of argument, there's a feature on it and four points go to that feature,

then the artist on the record is looking at 12 points. The one thing I'm thinking about, though, is when I did research, I saw this around 400 songs that have a billion plus streams, less than 1,000 that have 500 million streams. And you think about the millions and millions of songs that are out there. your standard, middle-of-the-road artist, can they support themselves if they're self-publishing independently run just going on Spotify?

Like, it sounds like they can't. Okay, if you're a, so if you're a middle-of-the-road artist that's signed to a label, the label is probably given you in advance. Okay, so you're getting some type of guarantee. You're getting some type of money. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small,

and you're probably gigging. So I fully support myself, right? and my income streams are varied. Kind of reminds me of the, we've talked a lot about the book writing business. You get either yourself publish and you're going to get a much higher yield when you sell the book.

And a lot of artists are doing that now. Or you get your advance and your upside's very limited if it takes off. But a song like Stargazing, 500 million plus streams, if I'm doing the math quickly in my head based on the 3,4K number you throw out there, all in that team makes about 1.5 million

just off streaming. If I'm just doing that right, you could fact check me. but also there's so many more ways to monetize that. You're monetizing that on the radio stream. You're monetizing that live performance stream. You're monetizing that in all different categories. So one song might bring in many sources of revenue.

And I, Kygo, obviously, gets massive amounts of money for playing a gig. I also get paid to go and do those gigs, and I get paid to do my own gigs. So it's almost like advertising for me as an artist anyway. So it's all, you know, it all, has. helps, it all adds up. Okay. But what really pisses me off about the industry is the way that songwriters are treated. Because to me, that's the biggest issue.

They're literally writing the freaking words. How do they get paid then? They get paid. So you can do a deal with a publisher and they can give you an advance. And then you have to recoup that advance and pay the publisher. What is an average advance for a pretty good song? So it's less likely that you'll do an advance based on a song. It's likely that they'll do an advance based on a song.

you. So like you as a songwriter will say, hey, I've written these songs and I have this one placement. This is coming out here and this is coming out there. Give me a deal. And they will go and look, okay, well, that song will probably make X and that song will probably make Y. So we'll offer you this much. Okay. I think standard starting deals. And this is, this varies across the board. And there are very different types of deals. Generally, like $30,000 to $50,000, but then they lock you up for a long time. Okay. And if you're a big songwriter, it can be millions of dollars, right? It's a big range and it's all based on leverage. But if you're a starting song, right, like, you know, I live in Nashville.

So you're in Nashville. You're just starting. You're getting going. It's probably like a couple hundred bucks. Nashville's different because Nashville has a bunch of different setups and how they do publishing. This business is crazy. It's really the wild west. There's a million different models.

There's models that lock you on recoupment bases. There's this thing called an MDRC, which means that you have to hit certain amounts of percentages of records on major labels. That was something that when I was coming up was a big. deal that you want it to X out of your contract because if you get caught in that and you have a song that's making hundreds of thousands of dollars but you're not out of your MDRC you're screwed essentially because that company can hold you into a deal until you can go in and have enough leverage to renegotiates and the other thing is publishing money unless it's sync which comes in quicker which we can talk about too publishing money usually

doesn't come in for like two years and if it's overseas royalties on radio play it takes even longer. So as a songwriter, you're really waiting a long time to see any of that money and it takes a while to build up. And within that, you're not getting in advance and you're not participating in the master royalty. These songwriters are getting screwed. This is bullshit. Let me ask you about this one, right? This is a predicament I've always wondered about. There's a song I'm blanking on what it is. You might know it. But it was written for or by Taylor Swift. Sure. And then apparently Rihanna took the song and then Taylor Swift ended up getting credit. for the song in the writing.

Sure. How does that all work? What's that? Well, that, I don't know that specific example. Okay. But there are, right now, everybody's talking about flowers, Miley Cyrus, right?

Yeah, yeah. Where it's clearly, it's the Bruno song, but it's reinterpreted, but does Bruno have a claim to the copyright because they took the idea of his song? We don't know. Because it's usually the lyrics and the melody that get

copy written, right? That's what, you own as a as the publisher right so it's this idea that if i were to copy do do do do do do do do and i'd say god that was good i can kill all the flowers write your name in the sand they'd say that's copyright infringement even if i went somewhere else after that because it's five notes that are the same with the same lyric like it's very clear that's copyright infringement okay if i went i can buy myself roses and do everything that I can that might have enough differentiation that I'm actually not going to get hit on a copyright infringement even though it's close so it's a weird like there are these people called musicologists who go in and study these things and go

oh mathematically this actually qualifies for copyright infringement and this actually doesn't and then of course that all got upended with blurred lines which is aptly titled for this type of thing because blurred lines was you can't copyright a groove because that's all they did they just took the groove of the song and yet somehow they got sued and had to pay the Marvin Gay estate because I guess you can copyright a groove so it really is just the wild west and it's like up to a lot of it's like up to interpretation almost like how you're perceiving so with flowers by Miley Cyrus when there's this potential copyright issue from Bruno how are these things usually settled is usually a payment or is it usually like we'll give

you credit or do they usually go to court? Some version of both. It's usually a settlement, though, of some sort. People don't love to litigate, or maybe people do, this is America. But funnily enough, one of the ways that I'm starting to differentiate myself in the music industry is during the pandemic, I started writing scripts and screenplays. And the first idea that my buddy brought to me, he said, what if your ex sued you for writing stargazing about her? I said, okay, that would never happen because there's no claim on copyright. However, if she wrote me a breakup note and I took the lyrics of that

breakup note for Baitam and wrote a song and that song blew up she would technically have a claim to the copyright. Because she wrote the lyrics. Because she wrote the lyrics. So my screenplay is about a young female songwriter who gets broken up within a note

and she takes that note and writes a breakup song and that breakup song blows up similar to a stargazing and she becomes a big artist and the ex-boyfriend sues her. And so All of this, it's funny that we're talking about this because all of this, plus my own experiences, have inspired me to start telling more long-form stories. And is this your new single that's finding the opposite of loneliness that you're referring to? No, no, this is some screenplay that I have yet to make.

But my finding the opposite of loneliness was the last EP that I put out. Got it. Okay, so that's what it was. Yes, and that's about my journey really through depression and anxiety and trying to figure out, it's a two-party piece. So the first half is songs where I'm trying to, where I'm depressed and I'm trying to either figure out why or just talking about it or trying to find my way out. The first song's Lifeline, it's about just can somebody throw me a lifeline?

And then the last part of that is a song called I Don't Want to Drink Alone, which is about trying to go out and force myself to be happy and realizing that doesn't work. And then there's a song in the middle of it called Bigger Than. And Bigger Than is where it turns. Bigger than is about being bigger than your fears. and living a life that's good and doing the right thing. And it's a song where I start about all the things that I don't want.

I don't want to end up in a hospital room holding nobody's hand. I don't want to end up drunk alone on a roof wanting what I don't have. I don't want to end up looking back on my birthdays, like they're random Thursdays. I want a life that's bigger than all of the houses I want to buy for my friends, all of the stuff, a life that's bigger than every person who ever told me I can't. I want to look back and be happy not for what I did, not what I have. a life that's bigger than all the fears that I have. Yeah.

And that's maybe not being, not finding the opposite of loneliness, but going and identifying the path of how I'm going to move forward and find my version of the opposite of loneliness. I will be listening to finding the opposite of loneliness, the EP on the way home. I think it sounds very impactful and like super inspirational. I want to ask you something about you. You talked about the lyrics with the copyright.

I hear living in Nashville and it's a smaller community, so you start to get connected with some of the artists and some of the people at the top, and then you start to hear the little bar stories in the secret rooms. And what they're saying is like, you know that artist that used that breakup and has positioned it this way, that is not the truth. And that person's husband or ex-husband is getting done dirty for the success of their lyrics and their song.

And they're positioning something in context that is it not at all the reality. Sure. Is there such thing, especially with your songwriting experience, is like a defamation of character lawsuit where you're putting out words and layers about something that is just not true about that individual? I don't know.

I would think the greatest example of something like this and I don't know if she sued was the Taylor or Kanye stuff. I guess you could. I could see where that would happen. Yeah. I don't know specifically if that happened.

All right. But yeah, I mean, that would be a very interesting precedent to set. One more snare, and I've got to get a couple more things from your experience is like when you hear about this whole Scooter Braun Taylor Swift thing. Yeah.

I've had a lot of people reach out like, hey, you gotta like talk about this sometime at Trading Secrets because I don't really get it. Like her leaving and all that

and then like her recording her own album on the same. What is that? What's the business behind that? Okay, so this ties very directly into publishing versus master. Okay.

So on one hand, those songs, what happened was, I believe, and I might be misquoting this, but I believe Scooter brought the master recordings from Big Machine Music,

which was her label. Okay. Right. They own the master recordings. She owns her and publishing, just to make it more complicated, split into two ways. You can sell your publishing, but you also have your writer's share. And the writer's share is collected by performance rights societies like BMI and ASCAP and CSEC. Totally different thing. However, for now, let's just keep it simple and go. Publishing and master royalties. With you. So, Scooter bought the master royalty rights, essentially, from Big Machine, which means, as we've discussed earlier, when something gets played, like, streamed, that Master's making a lot of money. And when you're someone like Taylor Swift, you're talking about, like, billions of dollars being made off the Master, I think you paid like $300, $350 million for these or something, right? But these songs are going to continue to generate and generate because the master is very valuable. With her songs, the publishing is also very valuable. But what she did was she basically said, fuck you guys, even though you bought the master recording,

I own my publishing and I own my intellectual property. I own the copyright. So I'm essentially going to create new masters by re-recording all of these songs and creating new recording. recordings with the same DNA, with the intellectual property of the song that I own, and ask my fans to stream that and ask the people who are licensing for sync to license that so that this vehicle is the thing that makes the money,

and this vehicle over here will probably still get some money, but it's not really the money that this vehicle is seen. So that's what she did, and it was brilliant. What's your take on it? Do you think that was the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do? I don't know. I'm not in Taylor Swift's camp.

I've met Scooter a couple of times. He's always been very nice to me. I don't know. That's like above my pay grade. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I like to lead with integrity. I like to be honest. You know, there's definitely some dishonesty here.

Yeah. I'm not sure where. Yeah. Within those gaps, it exists somewhere. Yeah. I mean, I think, look, I think that I don't blame Scooter for buying a property that was available to him. Sure.

Do you don't blame Taylor for pulling a boss move? Complete boss move. You know, like you got to do your thing. All right. I appreciate you sharing your opinion. And also explaining it because that makes so much more sense to me than it did before. Let's get into. It's all about money, right?

That's what your podcast is about. You love it. You listen to it. You watch it. You review it. Guess what? It all comes back to the dollars and cents. So let's start talking about it.

All right, let me ask you about this. You got me there. So Justin Jesso, your original name you said is Justin Stein. Stein. Okay, I always thought about this. A nice Jewish. I got, I'm half Jewish. My mother's Jewish.

So, yeah. Yeah, in Israel. I'm technically Jewish. Okay. I've always wondered about this, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, all these names. Well, how does one actually figure out what their fake or stage name will be? Like, how'd you come up with Jesso? So, Jesso is my great grandfather's nickname.

He was a band leader in the 20s who used to play piano for Al Capone in Chicago. Damn. So that was, that's how I found it. is I was like, right before stargazing, I changed my name. But what are they looking for? What are, like, what is the stage name? Do you have alliteration with two, like,

J&J? Is it something that's catchy, it's sexy? Like, how do you determine what your star name should be other than like, obviously, the storyline there? I thought it was, I wanted something with meaning. Okay. I almost went with Jesso.

But then I was like, it was too much for me. I was like, I am not Madonna. I am not a, like, I can't get away with the one name thing. And now when I look back, I think, I should have done it. That was where it started. I was searching for something. And I wanted to, it felt like a new chapter for me.

And I was a songwriter up until that point. And I was an artist with the Disney stuff up until that point. And I just felt like I needed something new. But I didn't want to, I don't know. Like, I am me. And I didn't want to give all of me away. I didn't want to pick something completely random and new. So I went, okay, like, what is family to me?

What is in my wheelhouse? The storyline, the meaning, like the pride of it. Yeah. And so I found, when I found this, I was like, oh, okay. And some of it was pressure. Some of it was just like, the song was coming out. So like, how would you like to be credited, sir? Okay, got it.

Justin Jesso. Let's do this. That's cool. I've always wanted to ask someone, I never have asked that. What about the, what song has made you the most money? Strictly the most song. Like without it, by a long shot. By a long shot, yeah.

Stargazing has made me the most money. Got it. Which one, would you say stargazing too, has had the most impact? on your career success? Yes. Okay. Other than like songwriting or streaming, what has been like the most lucrative play you've made in the music space?

Is it touring? Is it doing live shows? Other than songwriting or streaming, the most lucrative play has been probably live in general? Live show. Yeah, live, yeah. Not necessarily mine, but the combination of my own club show. plus privates, plus

Kaigo shows, plus all of that wrapped up, plus the occasional wedding plus, yeah. Yeah, like that's... Talk to me about how that works. I know wedding is fee-based, but like when you do a live show, is it ticket-based? And then if you're doing like a Kaigo performance sold out at MSG, which I know a lot of my buddies have come to see you,

is that just a fee-based? Like how does that work in your business? It's all of her negotiation. Like everything's different. Yeah, everything's different. You usually get a guarantee. If I'm doing like my own club show, I usually will get a guarantee. It's usually small

and then it's based off of percentage of the door. Okay. And it's all leverage based. There are people that do, if you're Madonna, you'll do a deal with Live Nation or a big ticketing touring agency

and they'll give you like $120 million and then you'll just get, you'll just recoup it as you go. Yeah. Similar to the way they do a publishing dealer or a record deal. I've heard of those deals as well. I had an interesting chat.

When you talk about money, I had an interesting chat the other day with Ryan Tetter. Okay. who is absolutely prolific, makes a crap ton of money in the music industry and is an amazing artist and performer and one of the biggest songwriters in the world. And, you know, we were sitting down and he said, the thing about music is two plus two equals question mark. And he goes, I've made more money outside in things like commercial real estate than I have in music because it's two plus two equals four or six or eight or it's easy to calculate, more easy to calculate with the music industry, it's not. And there's something beautiful about that

and something aspirational about that and also something devastating about that. Yeah. Interesting. That's so fat. I love that 2 plus 2 equals 4, but 2 plus 2 equals question mark. You don't know. That's a great thing about the industry. I think that's really cool.

And it leaves for like massive upside and also probably crush dreams all in the same sort. I got a question like you though. You have so much that you've already accomplished. You've partnered with some of the biggest touring artists in the world. You're sitting here.

You have a current cold. you're not warmed up, then instantly you just sing, and it's like the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my life. So what does Justin Jesso do? With all this momentum, all this pure talent, what is next? And then I'm more interested, like, I could give so many people career advice on how to do this and how to angle this and how to do this. What is like the actual strategy you will use for what is next within your career to get there?

I'll continue to tour with Kygo because I love it. It's really fun, and they're my buddies, and it's great. great. He's awesome. And I'll continue to tour myself. I'm working on an album that will likely will start releasing singles from the album likely this summer. And continuing to define my sound and who I am and what I stand for and what I do in the space. I've talked a lot about depression and anxiety. I write a lot about depression and anxiety. I write a lot about meaningful feelings that I have. I'm going to continue to do that. And sonically, I need to make a move now to

really put a mark and a differentiation point on what I'm doing. That's how I feel. So that's what's going through my head. And I have this, I'm calling it Soul Stadium Pop because I sing like a soul singer.

I love Stevie Martin and Stevie Martin. Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson and I do love Steve Martin. I don't know why that popped in, but it's not really a musical reference. And Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding and Bill Withers.

And then I also love these big stadiums sounds like Queen and Elton John and I've had the privilege of performing in these stadiums and feeling that energy and I love that energy and then I'm a trained pop songwriter so I wrote songs for Ricky Martin and Maluma and the Backstreet Boys and Armand Van Buren and Deges like Kygo and blending that all up into a blender and spitting out songs that that have that sound and that evoke that it's an 80s live music era is where I'm headed in the direction I'm going and I think it's going to be wholly unique and interesting, and I'm excited for hopefully people to respond to that as they've responded

to my music in the past. So unique, so interesting. Also a wonderful, like, thought process and foundation for how all those pieces that have, from your history, have brought you to where you are today and how you're going to use and leverage all those. Sky is truly the limit. And Justin, we'll see. We'll see. Fingers crossed. Everyone, go check out, Justin. You've got to go stream everything he has. Justin, I can talk to you forever. We might have to do a part to at some point, but we've got to wrap up and get a trading secret from you. So it's a trading secret someone couldn't get from a professor, college classroom, anything. At some form of trading secret could be financial advice, career management advice, branding advice. It could just be life

advice, something they've experienced or sung about. What is one trading secret that we can, I think we already got a good one. I love the, in the music industry, two plus two equals question mark. But what is one trading secret you can leave us with? I guess this applies to any industry, but it's, for me, applied specifically to the music industry. There's so much much looking up, right? Oh my God, Ryan Tedder. It would be amazing to write with Ryan. Oh, my God. There's this woman named Lindy Robbins who wrote Want to Want Me for Jason Derulo at the time that I knew that I was like, oh my God, if only she'd write with me. And work with the people that are at your level, that are around you, that you know, that are as excited as you are.

It goes back to me in college, meeting these people and going, oh, my God, this is my peer group. These are the people that I'm going to succeed with. These are the people that need to be rolling with. So I think that in the music industry specifically, but in any industry, we're always looking like up the ladder to be like, how can we get up there to what they have? Can they pull us up? And the truth is no one's really excited to do that. No, it's true. Like, they're excited to work with you when they're excited to work with you because you have something that they want. Yeah. Or they see you on their level for the first time or whatever it is. But what's, I think, the way to win is by working with

the people around you and getting the best from the people around you and giving your best to the people around you. I like that. And moving through the world with that team. That to me has brought me more happiness and success than trying to get that crazy session with that big writer or that big producer, which I've gotten along the way and it's been great. But it's always so much sweeter when it's with your friends. with your peers and with your people.

The second piece of advice I always give everybody is get an internship in the music industry, be of service, go in and learn. Because that's how, and be the best you could possibly be in that scenario because that's how they're going to remember you and that's how those people who are able to be gatekeepers and open doors, few are going to say,

okay, we should open a door for this kid. So it's those two things together that allowed me to break through. Two brilliant piece of advice that I do totally agree. Don't look too far up. Stay with what's in front of you. Don't expect someone to pull you up.

Pull yourself up yourself. Do it as a team. Do it with the people that are most creative that will bring you up, not bring you down. It's unbelievable stuff. Justin, you are a great storyteller. You're a great educator with just explaining all this. And holy shit, do you have a voice?

So everyone listening right now, where can they go find your songs and your Instagram, your social media? Where can they find everything, Justin Jessa? Go at Justin Jesso on Instagram. I'm on the TikToks. I'm on Spotify. I'm on Apple Music.

Just search Justin Jesso, J-E-S-S-O, and it'll pop up somewhere. And can you leave us, before we go off, can you give us like one little sound, one little bite, sing something for us? You want a little stargazing? I don't know, what do you think? Little stargazing. Let's get it. I haven't. I haven't rehearsed. I haven't heard of. I got a cold. And he's got a cold. Just something little. And I'll still be here. Stargazing. I still look up, look up. I feel like I'm at the show.

That is Justin Jesso, everybody. Thank you for tuning to this episode of Trading Secrets. Thanks for having me. Ding, ding, ding. We are ringing in the closing bell to the Justin Jesso episode. That was unbelievable. We got him singing. We got to learn about an industry that we don't know much about and still have a lot

to learn. But my God, just based on the things that I heard from Justin's career and how they're paid, It seems pretty damn antiquated and it seems like an industry like no other. We have the Curious Canadian on here. Before I get to the Curious Canadian, don't forget, please give us five star in the reviews. Let us know what type of guests you want. Last week we had Brian Page. This week, Justin Jesso, obviously a lot different.

Do you prefer financial only, business only, or do you like the mix-up? Let us know in the comments. Give us five stars. Follow us on our trading secrets page. And don't forget, this recap in every episode is now on YouTube. So just go to Trading Secrets podcast on YouTube. Hit the subscribe button. Make sure to hit and like our videos,

and we greatly appreciate it. I got the one and only, the curious Canadian with me. And the best part about it is today is May 2nd. He has roughly, we're recording this May 2nd, he has roughly one hour before his baby is on the way. Baby boy Ardarent will be here in a few hours. And one of the last things he's doing before it is,

as he's recording this recap, David, before we get in that episode, how we feel it? We're feeling, I don't know. I truly don't know what to feel because this never happened before. This is a full circle moment with Justin Jassau, too, with the baby because we went to Ash and I went to a Kygo concert in October and saw him perform stargazing in person, and we brought our ultrasound pictures to the concert and surprised all of our friends at the concert that we were having a baby at the concert with Kygo in the background.

Stop it. Do you have a picture of that? I have a picture of it. I'll set, yeah, I can... We'll put the picture up. David's going to look for the picture. He's going to put it up. If you want to see this picture, that's why we got YouTube.

Always keep listening to us on the podcast, but you can go to YouTube and you can actually see this picture of David at Kaigo, where Justin Jessa was performing, where he announced that his baby was coming to all of his best buddies, and that baby is due in just a few hours. So this is like the last three hours David will ever have of not being a father. for the rest of his life, and Justin Jesso, full circle, was actually part of it. That you can't make up. David, do you have the photo? Look at that!

There's a photo, and that's at Justin Jesso's concert. That's at Kigo's concert with Justin Jesso was at. Justin Jesso was performing Stargazing. Unbelievable. You can't make it up. Go check that picture out on YouTube, guys. David, what are you thinking about this episode? It was really interesting.

It's music season right now. We got stage coach going on. We got Coachella that's going on. I'm a big American Idol guy. That's going on. So it's music season right now in the spring. And I don't know, Jay, do you, you'd think music, we've been listening to our whole lives. We've heard the stars.

We've seen the celebrities. Like, is there an industry that you know less about that has been more a part of your life than the music industry? Because it was, it was like a Rubik's Cube. I just couldn't really figure it out. It is like a Rubik's Cube. I'm still slowly understanding how it's done. What I know is that the NFT space has like kind of changed it. I know that going independent in streaming and like TikTok has changed it significantly.

But it sounds like like the old dated music industry. Like we're talking like Beatles and the queen era. Those are the most fucked up contracts in the world. Right. And like you look where it is now and it still seems pretty fucked up. So I don't know much about it. as you could probably tell just in this interview, but there's just a lot.

There's a lot of moving parts. And if you think about it, like back in the day when like name and likeness wasn't a thing, there were business people just buying name, image, and likeness of the greats and they were okay with it. Like, think about that. Like, isn't that just nuts? Like Michael Jackson owning the whole Beatles collection,

like in his estate, he owns the Beatles. It still doesn't even make sense. You know what I mean? Like, what does that mean in comparison to some of the thing? It's hard to even comprehend. I like to think about it as how much it's evolved from like CDs. Like they only used to make money off CDs.

You have an actual sale of a CD and there's obviously percentages who go to what in a CD. But now it's based off streams. We'll go back before that. Records. Records, right? That was before the CDs. But those are both still like tangible items you can buy. Now we're talking about streams, which are we've talked about all the time.

What is a stream? Is it, do you play the song fully? Do you download the song? Do you just listen to it for three seconds? And here's something that's really interesting. Can you fake buy a CD at a store? No. Can you fake stream a song?

When you say fake, like you're saying, just listen to it over and over? Correct. Yeah, you could, but like the value. Let me stop you there. Do you know that there's underground streaming rings? No. For art? Yes.

There's underground streaming rings. streaming rings. I waited to bring this up because I thought it would blow your mind. Okay. There's underground streaming rings of people who offer to stream new artist songs. And it's literally they're in a warehouse with tens of thousands of phones attached to it where they're all just streaming songs on repeat. It's just nuts, man. We talk about the book industry. We're talking about music industry, like all these things. Like, I don't know, David. The more we interview individuals and learn more about the business, the more I learn, like, if there's not

an angle or you don't know about the angle, it's because you're getting angled or something. Like, I don't know, like, how is like, so you can hire people underground to be streaming your service so that it gets to the top. It's like, quote unquote, illegal. And I'm sure there's ways that they can show. Oh, it is illegal. Okay. Well, I'm sure there's ways to streaming service. Like, you can't be a billionaire and buy a billion books and get on New York Times. They avoid that. So they find ways to like not allow those. I am sure. I'm sure there's something of like, you know, the VPN is coming from this place and there were 10 million streams from this place in within a 12 hour period.

This is not right. I'm sure there's something about that, but then the phones are all attached to different VPNs. Anyways, just like you're saying, though, like if you don't have the angle, you're getting angled, do you know of an industry where the artist, the talent is getting 20% of an 80, 20 split? And then they have to pay the 20 of the 20, the four points to the producers, the two points. there's the two points to the mixer, the zero points for songwater. Like, there's some seriously screwage going on here. I mean, I think it's just like the state of like, it's just wild.

It's just like how any business operates though, right? Like, if you look at like, okay, so we look at what athletes are paid. It's crazy how much they're paid. But then if you start backing into it and you start seeing how much money is made from the management or from the owners, right? That's true. The NFL league is making. You could do the same thing with like NCAA.

A. Oh, now they have their name image like this, but you look at like what NCAA is making. You look at like, you know, what you're paid for a couple of the Starbucks I have here. It's four bucks, right? They're probably making $3.90 off the top. It's like, that's just the cycle of how everything works. And then I think it's, you know, I think the music industry or the artists have like, you're seeing how they are maneuvering the system to then make it more beneficial to them, which is great, which is, that's the circle of life within this, this realm. that Starbucks is definitely worth the $4. But I am,

here's things I'm surprised by it. Like, especially when you hear like, you know, these big athletes signed like 400 million dollar deal, 200 million dollar deal, like five year contract, $200 million dollar deal.

I, like when I heard, I remember, so Bieber was 28 and they sold the rights to all of his music that he released. And it was like right before 2022, and it was reported that it was sold for $200 million, right? And then we know the whole Scooter Braun-Taylor-Swift scandal where Scooter Bob,

Scooter Braun sold all of Taylor Swift's rights for $300 million. So sold her six albums for $300 million. To me, like when I think about like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, I hear 200 million for all of his songs. I hear 300 million for Taylor's six albums. I don't know why. To me, that seems like like, doesn't that seem like for those? No, for those two, like 300 million.

I'm like, wouldn't it be like a billion? Like, why does that seem like a small amount? out for those two artists who are one of the most influential artists in the entire living planet. When you're telling me, Kirk Cousins has a five-year NFL quarterback deal for the same amount as Justin Bieber's entire music library. How? How is that? I'm taking Beaver's music library. Obviously, we still have work to do a trading secrets because we got to keep digging, baby. Yeah, but no, you're right. I mean, it is crazy. One thing that he kept talking about was royalties. And obviously, royalties is a huge

part of one of his income streams and a lot of ways that artists make money. Here's what I want to know, Jay. Who's the person? How do you get the job to make sure that they're just in the background, in the weeds, calculating all the royalties that need to get paid? Who's the guy that's like, oh, Friends played on TBS for the 7,400,000th time on Thursday, November 29th, got to get David Schwimmer his royalty? Well, David, that's a great question you brought up. And I think anyone out there, if you are starting to ask yourself that question David just brought up, or you ask yourself the question of any industry, not just music, what's wild is the new answer, without a doubt, is going to be chat GPT. AI are going, and I'm sure they actually

have an algorithm in place that already, that measures that. But right now, chat GPT is taking over. I don't want to, we're going to do a whole episode on chat GPT, but right now I read an article this morning. Chat GPT can now predict the stock market moves and decode Fed statements. So you think about all the, you're like, who's doing all the analysis work? All these Harvard MBAs. Now they have computers and robots that can do them better and hedge funds are on top of it. And hedge funds are already looking to buy into them to replace the financial analysts that they are hiring outside of Harvard. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. But the answer to your question, and almost any question out there is how if someone's doing that, especially if it's like super technical and would take a million hours,

it's going to be robots and it already is robots and just buckle up people because it's about to get crazy out here. Poor Sally just working in the music department and royalties just listening to Abba on some random radio station chalking down with pen and paper that they get a royalty is just going to go extinct. It's wild from Sally that you put out to now like you know you just think about like janitors like they're now robots that do all the cleaning and all the way to your Harvard MBA, who graduates making half million dollars a year, all these people are going to replace. That's a whole, we could talk hours for this. So let's get back to music. Yeah, one thing that he brought up to, too, that I wanted to bring, that he brought up to another thing that's

happening in the news right now is he mentioned really quickly about how blurred lines in terms of the copyright infringement, how that's, you know, there's a, speaking of careers, trading secrets that we don't know about, musicologists, who their job is to research for copyrights infringement. He said that blurred lines from Pharrell and Robin Williams were getting sued by copyright infringement on Marvin Gay's song. They ended up paying $5 million. And I was like, Marvin Gay, why is that in the news? Ed Sheeran is in a pretty high profile legal battle right now about copyright infringement. On a song he did 10 years ago, a little ballad called Thinking Out Loud, one of his most biggest songs of all time, 10 years ago is being compared to Marvin Gay's Let's Get It On.

And on record, Ed Sheeran says, if he is found guilty of copyright, he will quit the music business forever. That's apparently how insane or ass nine, or maybe it's five guitar notes, or maybe it's, you know, the melody or maybe it's three words back to back. I'm not sure the exact details of what's being accused in each, but this music industry, Jay, I'm scared. I'm scared of AI. I'm scared of... We'll also, also tell, because you and I talked about this before, I mean, that's crazy. He also explained the Bruno Mars and Miley Cyrus deal that you told me about. Yeah, I mean, just, I don't know exactly know if there's any legal battles with that,

but you have one song where Bruno Mars is, you know, talking, Miley's basically making a response track to Bruno Mars track. Now, they're not related to each other, but, you know, Bruno Mars is, I should have bought you flowers. I should have held your hand. And Miley Cyrus comes out with a song almost a decade later saying, I don't need your flowers, like I can hold my own hand. it's not saying the exact lyrics

in the exact way, but it is like one's wishing he should have done something before she broke up with them and then hers is like a breakup anthem being like, I don't need you. But they're two totally related, not in a relationship, not in anything, but it's like really interesting. So is that copyright? Or are we just taking away to create of freedoms

of people? And then, well, here's another one where this all becomes distorted. Have you ever heard of this song? Yes, of course. We've all heard of them. Yeah. Let's hear the course. Here we go. Here we go.

And everybody's watching her, but she's looking at you. Okay, so that song, Calvin Harris and Rihanna, huge song. There was a longstanding rumor that Taylor Swift was behind writing that for Rihanna and Calvin, and then, like, no one knew what happened. She finally confirmed it saying that she wrote the song under a fake name, which she chose because of how common those names were in Sweden, the name that she wrote it under. And so she confirmed that. And then I guess she almost took that song with Calvin, but wrote it for Rihanna. And you just think about like this industry, it's crazy. And it also, it also brings me

back to this whole theory that behind everybody you idolize or anyone that you think is a genius or anyone that you put on a podium is just an army of geniuses behind them. Like there is not one single person in the world that you idolize or respect that does not have an army of geniuses that are smarter than them that are helping them do this stuff it's just it's just how it goes man a hundred percent you can talk about ghostwriting with drake got accused of ghostwriting too and all those things it's all crazy one thing that is crazy the music industry not only is it scary pace business wise it just seems like a scary place because how much power these labels have for you in this world of streaming and uh views to be an up-and-coming artist and actually be seen and be seen and

push to the top what does it take what do you have to do there's so many talented people out there just watch american idol just watch american idol just go on broadway and pop into bars you see people that should be stars that aren't discovered it is so crazy it's a whole another another rabbit hole why the people that are the people are selected to be the people look at justin i'm not i'm not kidding you when i tell you david he was i think so i got evan and i got super sick after la that's when we recorded this. I think we might have got it from Justin. No big deal, Justin.

But I want to just say he was like so sick. I couldn't believe that he was able to even talk. Then when he's hitting those notes, which literally having to blow his nose and take breaks up like that, like it's unbelievable. That guy is just pure talent. And when he talked about like with Disney and stuff as a kid, like him trying to get picked up,

it's so crazy like the smallest things of power of like why maybe he didn't get picked up and someone did, but clearly it had nothing to do with. talent. It's just, I mean, man, trading secrets music edition could be literally a whole season breaking this stuff down. Well, I'm going to have a trading secrets, what it's like to be in the delivery room soon. So that might need to be just with some earmuffs on and maybe a blindfold because you get, before we wrap here, do you get nervous? Like, you go to a hospital? Like, you ever get nervous? Like, I walk into a hospital immediately my hands get clamped. Yeah, Ashley's been sending me

videos of guys fainting in the delivery room and things like that. So that's top of mind right now. I've had a lot of advice and a lot of really close people in my life. Everyone's saying just don't, no eyes, shoulders down. Just show us,

just eye contact. Eye contact, Ashley. There's a lot of like, controversial, or not controversial, opposite opinions of that that would tell you,

you have, like, this is something that happens once in your entire life, maybe twice, maybe three times. People are like, it's like a,

it's a miracle. You'll never be able to relive and you should go for it and look at it all. I mean, baby, baby two, maybe. Baby one.

eye contact. Don't try and be a hero. You try and go in there and be a hero and get the A plus grade, you risk getting an F grade as the supporter. I'm trying to get a solid B. Give me a solid B background supporter, massage.

Yeah, give me that guy. Solid B, B plus. Kind of how we lived in high school. The other thing I'll tell you is that as a guy who passes out when he goes to doctors, a few things. One, always have some type of sugar on you at all. Like any type of Gatorade,

orange juice, just have it on you. Our snack bag, as you could imagine, is off the charts. snack bag unbelievable. Yeah, it's off the charts. That's good. They'll keep your sugar level high. The second thing is if you do feel fainty, the first thing you want to do instinctively is you want to run. You want to get up. You want to run. You want to panic. You want to run down the hall. The only thing that's going to happen is you're going to fall harder and hit your head harder. If you feel fainty or any type of panic, just sit. Sit. Put your head between your knees and as much as you want to go, just sit. Because if you do go and you're sitting, you're in a much better position, right? Okay. And, and And, yeah, other than that, deep breaths. And if you do feel in panic, let it sit. Just don't fight it. It's going to be there and your body will work through it.

David, it's going to be amazing. I would love if people want to guess the name of my baby boy. Send it in the reviews. Yes, go follow David Ardwin on Instagram. If we can get him over 4,000 followers, we are going to have him change his Instagram name to Curious Canadian. That's part of the deal. The other thing is send names.

maybe we'll do a name game we'll put a post on our Instagram. I'm going to go with like, I think it's going to be something like Italian. I think it's going to be like Angelo or Donnie. I don't know. I think it's going to be so. Ashley's, David has

Italian in him. He also has Ukraine and a lot of other things. But Ashley has, what percentage Italian is she? I'm more Italian. My dad was born in Italy. Wait, really? Yeah, my dad was born in Italy. Mom was born, first generation Canadian, born other siblings born in ukraine so i'm actually more italian but actually acts her family is the american at yeah i'm guessing like an anthony it's gonna i don't know okay it's gonna it's gonna be something

italian that's my guess i love it david anything else on just and jesso no great episode wild industry was great having mom full circle moment for me yes we have a lot of great guests coming up barbara corkron i'll be interviewing this week chris voss the best negotiator of all time he is on master class he took people out of hostage situation There were prisoner wars internationally and like massive, massive hostage situations like bank robberies and stuff when they had to bring in the top dog for the entire United States on negotiation. He will be live with us telling you how you can negotiate in all areas of your life better. That one I can't wait for. We have so many more.

If you have ever read the book, I will teach you to be rich. It is a bestseller. And he is on Netflix. We have that author coming on. It is going to be such a good week. Thank you for turning into another episode of Trading Secrets, One, you can't afford to miss. products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.