Jon Skinner:
It comes back to the song. If you're not a strong lyricist, if you are not great at production or your melodies, you're not very good at writing hooks, then you can obviously learn that yourselves and evolve your skills. But actually, probably the easiest way, it's to go and work with a lyricist, surround yourself with people that compliment your own skills.

Michael Walker:
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If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music. We're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.
All right. I'm excited to be here today with John Skinner. John is the CEO/founder of Music Gateway. Been involved in the music business for nearly 30 years now, just which is, I'm 30 years old right now. Basically the day I was born, John has been here, he's been in the music industry and Music Gateway offers a vast range of services and networking, including A&R, music promotion from Spotify, TikTok promotion, music PR, as well as artist development, management, distribution, publishing.
Basically, when you look at music business, Music Gateway helps cover that. Specifically, today, as you've been in the music industry for nearly 30 years. And you have so much experience and really, multiple different areas and facets of what it takes to have a successful music career. I'm both interested in your perspective, seeing over the past 30 years how things have evolved and how much it's changed.
And also, I'd love to connect and just hear your perspective on the future of the music business and the trends that you see happening right now and how anyone who's listening to us right now, with primarily independent artists, can be able to like a surfer in the ocean, look at the waves that are coming up right now and start to swim along with them so you can catch that wave and get that momentum. John, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Jon Skinner:
No, thank you, Michael for inviting us on. And yeah, it's going to be young, looking forward to sharing some insights and happy to answer any questions. Yeah, what it's about? I mean, obviously I think, whilst the industry's changed and evolved over the years, and I'm sure it's changed a lot since I started to get involved. I think the core principles of how you are successful within the industry hasn't really changed that much. And I'll explain.
How you earn money and be a business and have it as a living, if you like, a full-time job then which is obviously a dream for a lot of people. It's their passion. And only a small percentage of people and artists get there because it's tough. It's such a competitive landscape. And whilst there's so much music available to us now in so many different formats, music is everywhere.
I think that's one of the key differences between now and when we were restricted more with products, whether that was vinyl CDs. Before that, it was cassettes. And because we have so much instant access, it's a lot harder. It's potentially a lot harder to get your head above the parapet to get noticed, to grow a fan base alongside. There's so much music out there, how would you get heard?
But the coming back to the core principles of actually what makes someone successful as an independent artist really always comes back to the songs and song. If you get the song right, actually you're 90% of the way there. And when I say getting it right, everything's relative to what's your barometer of success.
Not everyone wants to be a commercial success or a mainstream success. Someone might just want to be recognized in their niche. And actually that niche is actually quite a small subset of people in a particular genre. Everyone's, your success is possibly totally different to my success, totally different to someone else. But let's just for the purpose of this, if we're talking about mainstream success, I think traditionally, you're looking at the strep, the song, the melody, the book in the melody, the lyrics, the chord structures, the story. Does it naturally resonate with people? And where their ears prick up and they just love it.
Everything else that is around that is, you might resonate with someone because of the way you look, the way you conduct yourself, what you believe in as an artist. But then you get into the nuances of is it well produced? Is it distributed well? Is it promoted well? Do you know what I mean? There's all these side factors, but the principle is if the song's really good, then you've got a really good chance to get some traction. That really, really starts with a song for me.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. As you're talking about that, what comes to mind is, there's an analogy that we use all the time when it comes to this principle of building a fan base or having a successful music career, and that is like building a fire.
And in this fire analogy, the logs are like your songs. And so it sounds like what you're saying is that, look, if you don't have the fuel, if you don't have the logs right, it's like wet grass. It doesn't matter how much wet grass you throw on there or how much promotion you have. In that analogy, the promotion is like flames. It's like having a flame tour.
And you need both. If you have the logs but you don't have any way to generate any traffic or any flames, then the logs just sit there. But it sounds like what you're saying that one of the most important pieces is really having good initial foundation to the fire and maybe dousing it in lighter fluid. Because if you can do that, then it's a heck a lot easier to build that.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah. And look, you mentioned the word foundation. I think one of the key principles really of why I came up with Music Gateway as a concept was because I've always been a big collaborator. I used to produce and write music myself. I haven't done that for a long time, but when I started out, I was doing a lot of dance music, but it was all song based. And I used to work with singer songwriters. Because I'm not a lyricist. That's I'm not my forte and I'm certainly not a singer either.
I was more technically minded, producing tracks, et cetera. And writing music from a musical perspective and production perspective. Anyway, I always used to lean on sing songwriters to work with to perform on the song. And I used to just love working with soulful, and I ended up working with a lot of American singers. And that really was later on, gave me the concept for Music Gateway because at some point I was flying people over from the states. We were doing studio sessions, they'd go back. It was expensive.
And this is pre-internet and even when the internet evolved in the 2000s, you couldn't do any real time recording. It was all very loads of latency. It just wasn't really, we didn't have the tech back then. But I did want to build a platform which initially enabled people to streamline the way they made connections. And rather than working locally, make connections internationally.
That was my real main mission to build Music Gateway, hence the name as well, a gateway to make more connections. And it was also about professional companies, record labels, publishers, being able to find talent through a not base as a pool, a pool of talent online. That was the principles really. But coming back to the fire analogy and the logs that you mentioned, it comes back to the song. If you're not a strong lyricist, if you are not great at production or your melodies, you're not very good at writing hooks, then you can obviously learn that yourselves and evolve your skills.
But actually, probably the easiest way, it's to go and work with a lyricist, surround yourself with people that compliment your own skills. And to be a bit boring about it in business land, you'd talk about a SWOT analysis, i.e. what are your strengths, what your weaknesses? And then actually, play to your strengths and bring in people and collaborate with people that really elevate you and elevate that song to another level.
It's much better to share some publishing and some writing splits with someone if the song is going to end up being amazing because they just are bringing all of their skills. And which is obviously the principle really of what a band is about. But you can do that as an artist.
And as we know, in mainstream music, some of the greatest artists that walks this planet don't write their own songs. And the record labels and the publishers practice that go between to connect really good songwriters with the artists and the artists are the one's obviously that perform and sell the records.
Yeah. That's the biggest tip I can give anyone as an artist is work with really good people, skillful people that elevate you from a song perspective. And by the way, that obviously could be a really good producer that can obviously elevate, be the key difference. Because from an artist, if you're a singer songwriter, you might already be killing it as far as choruses, hooks, lyrics and melodies. And actually, it's the production that's letting you down.

Michael Walker:
So true. Yeah, there's so much good stuff in there. And oh, what comes to mind as you talk about how important the production quality is as well is my band, when we first started out about 10 years ago, we recorded our first album. And we did it locally with a producer, who was a friend but didn't really have a lot of experience working with bigger artists.
And at the time we were like, "This is amazing, this is so good." Because it was the best thing. We had had done it on garage band beforehand. But in retrospect, the quality is so much worse that we ended up taking it offline. And this next album that we recorded, it was a few months later and the difference was night and day.
And I'll never forget overhearing my parents listening to that album for the first time, the new one. And they didn't realize I was listening, but I heard my dad whisper to my mom and he's like, "This actually sounds good." And it wasn't that we got so much more talented, it was just we worked with the right team, right producer.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah. I mean I released a lot of music in the '90s. And some of the very original first tracks I released when I listen back, I mean, which I don't do very often, it's shocking, it's shockingly bad. And to the point where I was like, "Did I really think that I was okay to put out as a record?"
I guess it was a little bit of its day, obviously. But no, you are absolutely right. And I guess most people are good at self-critiquing and a lot of us are perfectionists when it comes to music. But no, you're right. When you are young, especially when you are young, there's a naivety about it, you are so excited, you think it's the best thing since sliced bread. And the reality obviously is normally further from that truth. Yeah. It's an interesting journey when you look back and then you go, you really. Yeah, no, absolutely resonate with that.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, another thing that you mentioned that I think is so smart is around building a network or building a team where you don't have to be the best at everything, but if you can surround yourself with people who compliment you and compliment your weak points. And you can provide the strengths, then I've been thinking about this analogy a lot of a brain and neurons. And how these neurons work and they interconnect with other neurons.
And if you think about how powerful is a neuron by itself? Well, it's not that powerful. It just, it can't really do a lot. But when you combine that neuron, you interconnect it with a bunch of other ones, now you create this network and you can create this impulse. And seems like there's what you're speaking about finding and surrounding yourself with the right people, it's like creating a brain, like a music brain,
Which is also ties in with what you're doing with Music Gateway, it sounds like, because it's really this music brain of all these neurons that are interconnected. And there's so much power in being able to connect with people that compliment things that might not be your strong points. Maybe you could just talk really briefly, for anyone who maybe they haven't ever heard of Music Gateway before or it's new to them, maybe you could share, just in a nutshell, exactly what it is and how it works.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, sure. As I said, we started out as a platform really to help people make connections internationally and grow their career. That was the original concept. We are a sync licensing agency, which means that we represent artist's music and we have a team that pitch music to people working in media, so music supervisors. But we work directly with filmmakers, we work with Netflix, Sony Pictures, Universal, et cetera, the BBC in the UK.
We are trying to secure placements within media as an agency. And we built tools within the platform for our artists to be able to upload their music, add all the data that we need. And then, we do the rest. We try and secure music. And we built up over the last eight years a wealth of contacts and relationships within that area and actually quite heavily in America. Even though we're based in the UK, obviously Hollywood being the main life and the main soul and the heart of the film industry.
That progressed into, we now work directly with Spotify, so you can distribute your songs through us. We're a distributor.o very similar to exactly what TuneCore, CD Baby, DistroKid can do, you can do that through us. And we don't charge a fixed fee for that like some of those services. We have a slightly different model.o we do have a free account that people can sign up to. And then, based on the volume of what you're doing, we have a premium pro account. Then a unlimited account, which is obviously more suited towards a record label, et cetera, someone with with larger volumes.
Yeah, so you mentioned about music promotion. We have a roster of people that we work with. And essentially, we do campaigns on people's releases. And everyone's campaign is tailored to what they want to achieve, but predominantly, it's across radio promotion, streaming promotion, Spotify promotion. We have a network creators that we work with. That's all about getting organic playlists, play listings and views and streams.
We do digital marketing, which is all about social media, TikTok, Instagram. And then finally, we have press and PR. that's mainly online, getting reviews and blogs, magazines, et cetera. But again, it's all tailored to... We act as a... We advise people. We have that experience. There's a lot of artists that come to us that have never promoted a song before, and the last thing we want them to do is waste their money.
We wouldn't suggest, for example, that if a song wasn't right to radio and they weren't going to get a lot of traction, then we just wouldn't recommend that they promote it there if it was too much in a niche or whatever it might be. It's all driven by what the music is, what's the genre, where's the artist? And are they fresh start in their career or are they established? Have they got a track record, have they got already got some traction in the market?
As I said, very, very tailored and stuff. And then we've got suite tools, like you mentioned, we've got free mastering, AI master tools. We've got artist landing pages. Imagine a little bit like ReverbNation. Artists can build their own landing pages and stuff and connecting all of their social media and all their content.
Yes. And we also do publishing collection as well. We basically do legwork and heavy lifting to claim people's royalties for their broadcast. Overall, the overall riding principle is that we help people further their career. We try and collect or we collect money on their behalf. And try and generate revenue through things like sing licensing and obviously the sales on the distribution side.

Michael Walker:
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Very cool. Oh, man, as you were describing that, just I was thinking, we should definitely connect on ways that we can collaborate and sync up our StreetTeam software with what you're doing. In particular, with the licensing and with the distribution.
StreetTeam is funnel builder and a CRM. Basically, they can send out s m s campaigns, email campaigns, automated sequences and keep track of their contacts that's broken down by lifetime value so they can see who are their top fans. And they can create look-like audiences that are based on their top fans.
And one thing that I would love to be able to connect on is potentially building an integration on the distribution side and also on the licensing side. Which I personally have very little experience with music licensing, but I know of how big of an opportunity it is for artists. Sounds like there's a really cool potential sync there.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Something I was just going to mention. A bit of advice I'd give any artists really, and the major record labels do this a lot. Is that doing a cover version of an existing song can be a really great way to one, find a gem that hasn't been covered recently.
I'm not talking about a modern, really something really obvious. Actually trying to find something that's maybe not been covered before or hasn't been covered for a very long time. Or it might be something that was not maybe a huge hit. Something through the '50s, something from the '60s. You obviously don't need to get permission to do a cover version. You just have to make sure that you've got an appropriate license, which is easy to get and stuff for the States, but you're covered by... In the UK in Europe you've got blanket licenses and then you can get a separate license which costs 15, 20 bucks to do a cover version and then it's a mechanical license.
But for example, Valerie by Amy Winehouse. Now, if you asked a lot of people, especially of a younger age, they would just assume that she wrote that song. If you asked 100 people about Whitney Houston's biggest hit, they probably wouldn't know that I Will Always Love You was written by Dolly Parton. They wouldn't know that because why would they know? Sometimes it's not necessarily common knowledge.
It's a great... Especially if you're writing an album and you want to throw in there a couple of great songs from some artists back in the day, put your own take on it, put modern production around it, whatever you want to do. But it's just a good tactic, if you like, to get a really good soul.
But it sometimes, as long as you don't murder it, there might be some really good appreciation for people who do recognize it and go, "Oh, that's quite cool." Again, sorry, I thought I'd mentioned that as a tip, I would definitely give any eyes. There's nothing wrong with doing a cover version.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think cover versions can be really powerful both in terms of, I love that idea of choosing a song that's maybe more obscure or one that is ready for a renaissance to make it your own. And I've also seen some... I mean we did this for ourselves or we did cover songs of songs as they were trending.
And of course, it's a competitive landscape nowadays. You need to be able to do something cuts through. But one of our artists, he does these really cool carnatic remixes of pop songs, where he'll sing the pop song and then he will go into this carnatic style, Indian style, improv on top of it. And there's something about that, the trending movement of everyone can recognize it. And then, you catch them and it's like a hook or it goes that twist. It's an interesting thing too. But 100% agree. I think the cover songs.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, I mean if you think about hip hop and why hip hop has always been popular since it evolved in the early '80s was because they were sampling song and soul records. And really cool drum breaks from James Brown and the Amen Brothers and et cetera.
There was an instant likability to hip hop because a lot of people liked old school. And it was pulling out all of these rare groove samples and just great tracks that no one had, or very rarely heard of them. But they were looping these tracks then putting these drum breaks on them and then obviously, spinning their lyrics and stuff. But only musically, there was something quite easy to resonate with straight away. Do you know what I mean?
If you think about a principle that's, at the end of the day, you're not covering a song but you're taking a hook or you're taking a... And you're looping it. And that's where I think hip hop has obviously done so well.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, it's so interesting. As you described that one thing that pops up is around meme culture and what makes DNA itself replicate. Memes, when most people think of memes, think of the GIFs for the picture that gets fed around. And that is the comment, what we think about as memes.
But the idea of meme came from, what was the book called, A Selfish Gene. I haven't read the whole thing because it's really thick. But it was really all genes and about genetics. And how, as humans, biologically we're programmed and how we replicate. And a lot of the things we do subconsciously that don't make sense logically, we actually do it because our genes are trying to survive.
And he created the idea of meme as a cultural phenomena, through which a transmitted icon or something can be replicated. And usually, there's some form of using the initial DNA. But then adding a mutation to it so it mutates in a way that allows it to spread. And it's similar a bit how when you're talking about doing a cover song or taking bits and pieces.
It's almost like two people coming together and having a baby. The baby is something new, but it has the genes, it has the DNA of these other things. And that's what it's similar with music. I was like, you have the genes, you have this DNA that can be put into it and that can be part of what makes it resonate with a wider audience

Jon Skinner:
Yeah. And nostalgia sells. There's a reason why, apart from the fact that they're extremely good, but I'm just going to use an example, Fleetwood Mac could sell out the biggest stadium in the world in 10 seconds because of what they've done in the past. But actually, and the reason why that is is because like photos, music takes someone back to a particular moment in time, whether it's the first time someone heard someone or a club they used to go to or whatever they... It could be a girlfriend, a boyfriend, it could be a situation. Somewhere they lived. Friends they used to know, friends they still know.
There's psychologically we're attached to our memories whether we like it or not. And things that we like will always resurface. Which is why those legacy bands and those legacy acts will always do well because the music had so much impact culturally back in the day.
And I guess that's maybe one of the hardest things I would say for an artist now is that it's probably harder now to create that kind of impact because culturally, we went through these phases musically. We've got less of those changes happening now. Do you know what I mean? Whether it's disco, the punk era, the new romantics from the '80s, the rock movement and the Bob Dylans of the world. They're all their time and it's been done. It's very hard to redo that.
And obviously, you can't redo. It'll have to be something new. And I guess we've had that to a degree. We had the whole emo thing and there was certain things that we've had. And it's a little bit like social media and the way that's evolving and TikTok exploding over the last few years. And it's a little bit like that.
It'd be interesting to see whether there's these new cultural shifts in music. Or it might be that we've just done it all and they're just minor... It's bands or artists that's just sticking their head. They're just doing something unique that everyone goes, "Oh, they're just super talented," and that's enough to... Obviously, there's always going to be really cool, talented people, but is there going to be that momentive, really... Do you know what I mean? Cultural, oh right, okay. Someone's created a new culture.
It's a little bit like in film. Tarantino made his own genre and so did Guy Richie with Lock Stock and that cool gangster style British thing. And Tarantino got his thing. Look, I'm sure there's going to be someone else in the future that someone might say, "He's gone one step further than what... His touch is a bit Tarantino there, but his touch is there in something else. Or Scorsese and I know I'm going into Filmland, but you get the point I'm making. It's harder now because a lot of stuff has obviously already been done. Does that make sense?

Michael Walker:
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely an interesting question because when you look at the grand scope of things, the amount of time that we've even had television as a human species has been relatively so small. When you think about it, you're right, it's been a very short time. And we've told a lot of stories and we've created a lot of things.
I have to imagine that creativity isn't limited in a sense where we're ever going to, "All right, well, we got everything." But it is a relatively short amount of time that we've had this type of media and there's we're certainly telling a lot of the stories. And it is what comes to mind is writing a song. It's like, well, everything is like a love song. It's like, how many times can you sing a love song? And then people still seem to find some way to turn it around.
But one thing I would love to get your take on is, as you started talking about the future, is there another cultural movement or something? Or what does that look like moving forward for music and how it could evolve? Something that's top of mind for me right now is at the time of recording this, there was a new release from Open AI. And it's called ChatGPT, just a few days ago.
And this AI tool, it's a little bit scary how good it is. And you can have a full conversation and it can write code very, very well. And it's basically in the past week, it's all the developer community is talking about is this chat.openai.com.
And I've personally been using it to write marketing copy and it's basically spit out very articulate, amazing copy. In terms of a first draft, it's like I'm not going to do anything now except go to this for my first draft to write everything. And also, I'm sure it sounds like musical applications for writing lyrics probably. And I wonder if, how is the oncoming tidal wave of AI going to affect our role as music creators? Yeah.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, I mean know that I think there's Japanese, or it's either Japanese, Chinese or it's Korean, that there's an Asian AI artist that sold or support some sort of traction and stuff. I guess if you asked a 10-year-old their opinion on it, this consuming music on Twitch or YouTube or whatever, they just wouldn't care at that age. They are literally on a level of, "Yeah, I like it," or, "Yeah, I don't like it." They don't care about the morals of it. Now obviously, as you get older, mentally we evolve as humans.

Michael Walker:
Hopefully.

Jon Skinner:
And we start making much more...

Michael Walker:
It seems like not always.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, well, no, absolutely, not always. And you start to, you obviously... And a lot of people are passionate about specific things and that's why more and more people, for example, becoming vegan because we are more conscious of the environment, then potential damage and all that sort of stuff. I'm not going to get too... But you know what I'm saying. And people make more informed decisions or you'd like to think they do. And we're being more conscious of being good people, whatever that looks like.
I guess people that traditionally support the art of being a musician and the creative process, then I think that then musicians and artists will have support and songwriters in a traditional form. Is there a place for an AI artist that's some sort of in the future? Probably, yes. And I think that it then probably surge. And there's bound to be some breakout artist, AI created artists that. Just like the Cabbage Patch dolls were a massive hit in the '80s and people were fighting in the stores to get a Cabbage Patch at Christmas for their kid. It was a fad at the time.
I'm not sure whether... There's bound to be something that's going to happen, that's globally going to blow up and be a big story. Do I see as a threat to the wider ground scheme? I don't, to be honest with you because I think the wider audience will not accept that because... And the industry really, what is the point?
It's like if you could get AI to draw a beautiful painting, would then all the painters go, "Do you know what? Let's just give up. Let's put down our brushes, let's throw in the towel. No one can do it. It's perfect." No, perfect is not art, is it? Let's be honest. Actually being too good and too clinical is not cool.
Some of the best songwriters that perform and sing definitely aren't the best singers from a technical perspective. Because it's all about vibe and it's about style. And it's about culturally being cool and connecting with people. I don't see that as a thing really. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. I love this topic. I think it's fascinating. One thing that's funny is there actually is an AI called Dolly, that you should go check out this Dolly. And it's mind blowing, it's remarkable. But basically, you type in a prompt and it generates a painting or art or a picture or a visual based on the prompt that you enter. And it does it in striking ability, it's a little bit freaky.
And it's interesting because there is that element of, well, it's not human or is it's never going to be able to fully encapsulate our human soul or our essence or our creative impulse. And if you look at the past 100 years or the past few million years of human evolution and the past 100 years of computer evolution, it just feels like not for musicians, but just as a human species, that very soon we're going to have to come to term or figure out what we're going to do about AI. Or it's just going to be so much more advanced and able to articulate itself.
It's pretty interesting. And as it relates to musicians and creators, I think you're right that, especially in the short term, I don't think this tool is going to replace everyone and everything. Where it's like, "Okay, well, the AI can make music, so let's just go sit on a corner somewhere. The AI will beg for us and play music on the street."
But it seems like, what I think is going to happen is there's going to be an element, part of the process. We're going to integrate with AI to create the first draft, maybe. Maybe we might have an idea for a song and it might be like, "I want to write a song in the style of Ed Sheeran that also references this and this. And it's about this topic that I personally resonate with because I just went through this experience. And the hook is something about this. Generate."
And then it's going to generate a full track of music that is pretty good. That's like, this is actually a really good start. And then from there, really talented producers and songwriters will come together to mold that into something that is unique.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, I mean think if it's coming from a perspective of assisting someone's learning and how something is structured, then obviously. I mean, look in production music in sense of the software with Logic and VST instruments, et cetera, they're obviously all digital.
There's a huge amount of software that aids people and aids producers, and you can create so much within a computer already. And there's software that helps people with cord structures and various other things. There's a lot of things that assist people already. I think, yeah, we are probably not far away or it's probably already there where you, like you say, you set your parameters, "I want something to sound like this," blah, blah, blah. Then bosh, there it goes.
And then it refines from there. But I guess, yeah, we'll have to wait and see how it all evolves. And then, it comes down to a judgment call of whether someone wants to be assisted in that way, or actually, they want to learn the whole structural or things, so and so. Wait and see.

Michael Walker:
Totally. Yeah. And one analogy that came to mind as you were describing that too, is almost like you're viewing AI as a tool, as a tool to help your thoughts turn into music. And so, it's just a tool. Another quick shoutout to Mirror Link. If for anyone who's listening to this right now or if you haven't checked out Mirror Link yet. It's a brain interface that Elon Musk is designing right now that basically, in the short term, is going to help people who are paraplegic be able to control limbs and be able to walk again and be able to control a computer device with their thoughts, which is amazing.
But then the longer term, we could be walking around. And be like Harry Potter world where any device that we have connected to Alexa, instead of saying, "Alexa, turn the lights on." We could just think, "Lights on, lights off," and we'd be able to perform magic just with our thoughts. And that would be interesting how that could integrate with someone's... I want to imagine how I want this song to sound. And then it's just like this symphony happens based on thoughts would be pretty interesting.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah. By the way, just quickly, I want to touch. I've seen some great interactions with some singers that are just, that they're there, Jamiroquai is quite like this. Where he'd be working with a guy on the keys or he's got someone. But he's like, "But you know, then there'll be dah, dah, dah, dah."
And then they're like, they're listening and then they're, "Yeah, yeah, no, up there." And James Brown was a classic for doing this with his guys, with his musicians. He'd be like, "No, no, no, on the up beat, on this and that." Almost like it's like that director, the conductor.
A lot of talented people that can't play, it's all in here. And actually, they can verbalize the little rifts that they might be feeling. And then it's translated out to the magicians and then they're like, they're obviously playing it. That would obviously be on another level if you could just think it and it could come out. And all of a sudden, "Yeah, I'm hearing these strings and you're thinking," and then there's this big orchestra playing.

Michael Walker:
That's such a good example, the conductor. And how, I really think pretty much anything that's manmade ar around us. It started out as an idea, it started as a thought. And then there was a period of time and energy and effort that took it from point A to point B.
And the purpose of technology is basically to shorten the gap. What used to be the idea, "I want to go around the entire world," would take an entire lifetime. And now we have technology and airplanes that shorten the gap, where you can go around the entire world in a matter of hours. But it seems like there's that shrinking. Technology and entrepreneurship is about closing the gap between frustration or problem or challenge or need and solution and this point B.
And certainly, fascinating to think about what would happen if we closed the gap completely so there is no gap between think... I'm imagining a song, and it just happens in real time as you're doing it. A lot of musicians can relate with this idea of when they're creating music, they're not thinking about, "Which way are my fingers going to move on the piano?"
Or they've gone through that practice phase where they can just channel this force going through them. That's just a creative energy that they're tapped into, that they're plugged into, but they don't have to think about. It just happens through them. And yeah, it'd be interesting if we actually have this brain interface that can channel that in real time.

Jon Skinner:
Well, it would certainly help me with my ideas because I would love to be able to play an instrument properly. I started out and violin and then gave up really. I was like, "That's hard." And then I can do a bit of keys, but I'd love to be able to play a guitar, love to be able to play a piano correctly. And then obviously there's still time, maybe. But no, if it was out there, I'd definitely use it. I mean, that'd be it.

Michael Walker:
Super cool. Yeah. And potentially, with the neural interface, we could be able to communicate with each other more directly and be able to... With language, it's basically like we've created an ability to translate our thoughts to another human, but it's also pretty inefficient sometimes.
I think language is amazing. It's probably what makes humans humans and our being the dominant species on earth. But it's also really easy to misinterpret what people are saying and not understand it. We also can think much faster than we can speak or verbalize what we're saying. Or we don't necessarily communicate or articulate ourselves as well as we'd like to.
It does seem like there's a opportunity to directly interface and be able to communicate on a more direct level, which I know is really freaky to... When I talk about this idea sometimes, we're like, "I don't want anyone to read my thoughts and I don't want to put something like this in my brain," but pretty crazy.

Jon Skinner:
Absolutely. Cool.

Michael Walker:
Well, anyways, John, apologize for just, I went down a rabbit hole.

Jon Skinner:
No, no, it's all good. 

Michael Walker:
I geek out about this stuff.

Jon Skinner:
Hopefully, people listen to this all and find it interesting. Who knows.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, hopefully. I mean this all is connected to music and it's something I really think in the next five to 10 years, a lot of the things that we're talking about right now, the crazy stuff. Things are evolving so quickly.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Walker:
That I think that this is a serious conversation. But John, thank you so much for taking the time to come on here and share some of your insights and lessons from nearly 30 years of experience.

Jon Skinner:
Yeah, yeah. And obviously... yet. And obviously for obviously just a quick plug. Obviously, if anyone is interested in what we do, they can go to musicgateway.com. Just Google us and then obviously, if you do want to... We're human, we'd like to speak to people. You can get in contact with us or you can book a book call with us. You can obviously sign up to the platform. Yeah, we've got a great team. And yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yeah, then like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access. And yeah, John, it's been great. Great connecting with you. And talking about some things that are down to earth and also geeking out about big picture stuff.
And so looking forward to staying connected and figuring out how we can collaborate and basically plug into your tools that you've built to help connect artists with publishing companies/supervisors. I think there's huge opportunity there.

Jon Skinner:
Sure.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, you guys, if you're listening to this right now, then maybe you can look forward to something like that coming as an integration to StreetTeam at some point.

Jon Skinner:
Wicked. Great.

Michael Walker:
Cool.

Jon Skinner:
Thanks for having us, Michael. Cheers.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guests today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow.
First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musicians now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.