John Raso:
... artist's knowledge has grown, but you still, it doesn't mean they've gotten any more time. So the fact that you know how to go and collect these things, you really should be spending more time promoting your music, writing your music, growing your music, and that's really where we think we enable artists to be artists, and not business people.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. 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 Raso. John is the CEO of Audiam, which is a digital music royalty collection agency. And for about 10 years now, Audiam's been collecting streaming and digital royalties for some of the world's best music publishers, writers, hit makers. John actually spent 12 years with the Harry Fox Agency as the head of client services and managed the team, providing support to thousands of publishers and digital music providers. And before that, he spent over 15 years in record label marketing, publicity, product management roles, Atlantic Records, SST, MCA, Roadrunner, Live Nation artists. He's got a weekly live radio show that he does on Radio Free Brooklyn, so he's a man who's been here in the industry for a long time, it's a ton of experience, a lot of value to share, so grateful and excited to have the opportunity to interview him here on the podcast. So John, thanks so much for taking time to be here.

John Raso:
Oh, thank you, thank you for the invitation, I always love the opportunity to talk about it. As you heard by my long list, I always like to say that I think I've had every job there is to have in the music business, and now unfortunately the music business has changed and created new jobs, so now I'm chasing those, and that's where we are with Audiam.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, it'll be an interesting conversation. I'd love to hear your perspective being here in the industry and watching a lot of these breakthroughs and revolutions and changes, and I'm sure it gives you a lot of perspective on where we've come from, and potentially where we're going as well. So maybe just to start with, could you just share a little bit about your story and how you started Audiam?

John Raso:
Sure. So I wasn't the founder of Audiam, Audiam is the company that was actually acquired by our parent company, SESAC Music Group. SESAC is most famously known as the PRO, that performing rights organization, I should say, that represents big artists like Green Day and Zach Brown and Adele, and also-

Michael Walker:
My band Paradise Fears is represented by SESAC as well, so.

John Raso:
Excellent. So there you go. So as you know, SESAC as a performing rights organization is not like ASCAP and BMI where it's just a walk up and people could sign up, and they have hundreds of thousands of writers. They have about 10% of the market, but as you heard me, a lot of big names, as well as a lot of television and movie music that they collect performance on, performance being the, when a bar has to get licensed for music or a venue has to get licensed for the actual listening of music out loud.
And so they're our parent company. And part of the reason the company was acquired for the simple piece, they also own the Harry Fox Agency where I used to work and had the client services department, and that is a different royalty right, it's the reproduction right. So that's the royalty that a record company would pay for essentially, literally the mechanical reproduction of a song.
So you make a recording of the song that is a mechanical reproduction, you make a digital download, whatever format was, and that's what they call mechanical rights. In our new world, we have a mix of those which frequently fall into a category that's called the synchronization right, which traditionally would be; I want to use your song in my movie, I'm going to go license it from the... I need a sound recording to license, and I also need the composition that is the publishing to license that. So the volume of that used to be, I'm going to go and negotiate for my TV commercial or whatever, and you would negotiate, there's no fixed rate or terms really. But now we live in a world that there is a YouTube and a TikTok and a Peloton, and all of these sort of mix and matchup of these rights into these high volume, user-generated content as they call UGC, that just, it's like such a volume, you could never possibly negotiate them one at a time.
And at the same time, we all, people who own copyrights, would like to benefit from those uses. So instead of saying no, they've come to essentially a volume practice, and that's where Audiam comes in. Audiam becomes the interface and collective of our clients into a single group of copyrights that we then interface with the TikToks and the Spotifys, and all the various... There's lyrics, and so it becomes all of these apps that use these things, rather than having to go and find tens of thousands of individuals, they could go and reach these groups of publishing companies as well as aggregate digital administrators, of which Audiam is a leader of that. And so that's where Audiam essentially was originally driven by the world created by YouTube, has a tool that people might be aware of called the Content Management System, and they don't give those licenses out to access that to just everybody.
There would be concerns if there's, it just becomes a Wikipedia version of copyright claiming. So Audiam was set up initially to represent a group of publishers and sound recording record companies to do that work. And as I was alluding to, as it went from YouTube to TikTok to Peloton to Ultimate Guitar, tableture service, all of that, that just be expanded to all the type of things we now collect over the years.
So long story, lots of information, so I came along with the SESAC acquisition in August of 2021. However, our COO Jamie Purpora has been with the company since 2015, shortly after it was founded in 2014. So he's my thread that runs through it, and he has an extensive amount of experience, having worked for Bug Music Publishing, which was a storied very great music publishing company through the nineties and into the teens that was acquired by BMG Rights. And then he was also, he started TuneCore Publishing at TuneCore before moving over to Audiam. So there you go, there's the history of Audiam right there.

Michael Walker:
Very cool. Yeah, so it sounds like in a nutshell, Audiam helps to collect money that artists are owed through people using their music that they might not even know that they have this money that deserves to be collected.

John Raso:
Exactly. These things will go on without them, right. In many cases, particularly like all the streaming services now... And I guess, before I move to there, just defining artists is, it's become such a catchall. It used to be, oh, I'm a songwriter and therefore I have a publishing company, or I work with a publishing company. I'm a recording artist, and I get a recording deal or I release my own records. I'm a touring artist, I'm a... So this is an all-in-one creative process now.
But while you wear many hats, you actually had different relationships. And now because everyone's sort of this, could be this self-contained publisher, record company, like mega copyright creation machine, there's a lot of knowledge that's needed to go and make sure that you're getting all of the revenue streams that those generate. And that's where Audiam is kind of a catchall for a lot of those services.
We still leave behind for that artist to do the creative process, and as well as negotiate the, "Oh, so and so wants to include my song in a movie." That would be a negotiation, so we wouldn't step in that. We essentially are the crew that goes around and keeps things clean to make sure, hey, when your music's being used, they know who to pay. And that's what we do.
We probably spend most of our time cleaning up conflicts where other people have messed up a database that's being used, or there's more than 100% of a song being claimed, and so we spent a good deal of our time adjusting that. So obviously as the history of... It used to be, "I just wrote a song and then they told me where to show up and play it, and then I recorded it," right? Now you have to have all of this business capability, and as that's evolved, artist's knowledge has grown, but you still doesn't mean they've gotten any more time. So the fact that you know how to go and collect these things, you really would, should be spending more time promoting your music, writing your music, growing your music, and that's really where we think we enable artists to be artists, and not business people.

Michael Walker:
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So maybe you could break down for anyone who's here who's listening, who maybe has a loose understanding of some of the different types of royalties and different types of things that their music, they should be collecting, but it's still a little bit confused by the different types of royalties, maybe you could give a quick breakdown of the landscape of what are the different types of royalties for an artist who is maybe a singer-songwriter, who's producing, who maybe they worked with a producer, but they wrote their own songs and they recorded their own songs, and specifically what are the different royalties involved, and which ones do Audiam does audio specifically focus on collecting for them?

John Raso:
Sure. So let me break that... I'll break that down from the simplest to the most complicated. So you're an artist and you're going to be working with a producer as you mentioned, and you're going to be... When you're working with a producer and you're making a recording and writing a song together, you're actually creating several copyrights. The final product is a song, and a recording of that song. So that recording is owned by whoever owns the recording.
Meaning, that the assumption is you work with a producer, you're making the recording for your own ownership, that you're then going to distribute it through a TuneCore, Distrokid, one of the available options out there of getting your music out there, uploading it to YouTube, SoundCloud, et cetera. So own the assumption would be you own that sound recording 100%; it's yours, you own it, you have the files, great. So that's easy, you own it, you are a record company. But you also wrote the song, and you agree to the publisher that his beats he created and his arrangements, whatever, that you're going to give him 25% of the song. So now you own 75% of the publishing, and the other guy owns 25% of the publishing, and both your names appear as songwriters on the composition. And please let me know when you have any questions in here too.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, maybe I can just summarize or recap what I'm understanding too.

John Raso:
Okay.

Michael Walker:
I mean I ask this question partially for myself. I've had enough conversations with people who are much more experienced than I am in this, that the matrix is starting to become clear, but it's nice to go deeper and understand it. So it sounds like what you're saying is at the base level, there's two different kinds of royalties involved with creating the song. One is the actual physical sound recording, so it's like when you record it, you have the tangible sound, that recording that can get played, but you also have the song itself, which is more of the idea, or it's the actual music or the structure of the lyrics and the melodies as well, and that can be covered, there can be different applications of that, whereas the recording is just one definitive recording. But you could do exactly an acoustic version of that and then that would have its own recording, but the song itself would be the same.

John Raso:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
Got it.

John Raso:
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it's easier to start this example with, you're doing somebody else's song and you only own the recording, but you're doing a Beatles cover, it still is, it's written by Lennon and McCartney, and it's owned by Sony ATV Music Publishing. That's who owns it now, there's two writers that still collect a writer's stream, and so that's, you would only own the recording.
And so now this is you've created, you've written the song, and you've retained, you've agreed to this 75-25 split for ownership of the song. And I alluded to there is within those rights, there's also a writer share that is paid too. You are the writer, you are the publisher, you are also the artist that performed the recording that you own as the record company, so you're four people in this already. And so as a result, you're the record company, you own that recording. You are the artist, and so the record company would owe you a performance fee that was whatever was agreed to. Now it's yourself, so you get all of it. But if you were assigned to a record company and therefore the record company, the independent record company, separate from you owned that recording, there would be some sort of agreement that you worked for them to create this sound recording, and they pay you X because of that.
Now that's a whole nother, you need to talk to other people to get that whole breakdown of that. But now we're assuming you're a creator that owns everything themselves, so you have this sound recording. So then whittling it down now to, I've also written this song that other people can now record too. You own 75% of the song, and you have, it's Creator Music Publishing, and I own 75% of this song and a whole bunch of other songs. And so now you as the record company put that sound recording out into the world.
And so going back to what I was saying, so you go through a distributor and that sound recording ends up on all the music streaming services, the audio-only streaming services. They now then generate multiple royalties from that use. So one, people interactively choose to listen to that song on Spotify, that generates a sound recording royalty that Spotify pays to the distributor. So once again, if your distributor's like a Distrokid, the money would go to Distrokid, DistroKid would in turn pay you, right? And there would be some theme between there that Distrokid has for them distributing the sound recording on your behalf.
I believe they're on a flat fee model where it's X amount, and so 100% of the royalties from that place would float back to you. So yay, as a record company, you got that. The streaming services also have an obligation to pay a performance right and a mechanical right. So the mechanical right is, they created a digital file whenever, anytime someone clicks stream, just to make it, where the root of this goes, is they've created this momentary file that you're listening to, and that also during that playback time, it creates a public performance. And I know you're at home or you're in your earbuds walking down the street, that is still legally a public performance. The public performance piece is paid because you are a member of a performing rights organization, in the United States that is BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, there's another small one called GMR, that you have to be one of the top 100 people, it's like that's where Metallica is, and I'm trying to think who else is there. Pharrell, it's that kind of level, it's similar to SESAC. SESAC is a much bigger roster, so they're a little more focused.
So most people are going to be with ASCAP and BMI. And so all of those PROs negotiate with the streaming service for a lump sum. So it's, we're going to license you for the next two years, and you have to pay us X amount of dollars to use our incredible catalog, which is worth this and with stats and we argue back and forth, and that's a pretty sizable number, so all of that money goes to sit at the PROs, and then as the streaming services tell you, "Hey, we played this song, we played that song, we played this song," the streaming service, the PROs then pay you out through to the publisher and the writer.
Now I jumped ahead a little; that is not something Audiam collects. You need to sign up with a performing rights organization as a songwriter and a music publisher, right? So if there is no... To shortcut it a little, I believe if you are just a writer, it defaults to you also owning the publisher, if there is no publisher of registration.
So there's, just to shortcut this, and I'm not the performance person at all, is they divide the world up into 200%. There is a 100% of the publisher's share and 100% of the writer's share, and so you would get 75% of each, because right, we've determined that this song you only have 75% of; your producer would need in turn to do the same registration because they're a songwriter and a music publisher, to do that as well.
So we've got the recording so far, we got the performance payment, now the mechanical payment. The mechanical payment through a company like Spotify or Apple or Pandora or Title or Amazon Music, they get a blanket license for music now, and this all started in January of 2021. They get a blanket license, and all of those mechanical royalties that they calculate, they hand over to the Mechanical Licensing Collective, which was established by the government through something called the Music Modernization Act that you may have heard of, that was signed in October of I think in 2018 or 2019.
And so they hand all that money, and then you have to sign up for the Mechanical Licensing Collective, or Audiam could also manage that for you as well, and I'll tell you why, the advantage of what it would be to do that. But any person who owns their publishing, controls their publishing, administrative publishing, can go and sign up for the Mechanical Licensing Collective for free, and tell them what songs they are, and then collect their royalties on a monthly basis.
So now that's just the Spotify, Amazon, Tidal world. So that's audio only. Some of those services also have videos, we also know about YouTube videos and TikTok videos and Peloton doing exercise classes that synchronize or use your music with a video of a teacher instructor, there's also guitar tablets... This is where Audiam really digs in, because Audiam has a relationship with 7,500 of these organizations directly, where we negotiate the license. And I should mention quickly, how much you get from mechanicals is dictated through a statutory rate that is established by the US Copyright Office. I know I sound like a lawyer sometimes, I'm not a lawyer, but boy, it is a very well-regulated business that there is all of... A lot of this of how copyright has been long fought, negotiated over the past hundred plus years. So maybe take a breath right now.
Are you following me here? This is, so performance, mechanicals as a publisher, there's also sound recording, which I think that was packed away. There's also SoundExchange for sound recordings too, which is another place which is not an Audiam world, that is related to that sound recording where you go sign up for SoundExchange, and that is really for digital radio. So not terrestrial radio, but digital radio. So lots of places to sign up. This is one of the things you get with Audiam, is you got this brain and Jamie's brain that have gone through this and go through it on an hourly basis. Otherwise it is very, very easy to get confused.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, it's great. I mean a lot of times it's conversations like this that just make you appreciate the amount of work and time and understanding that's gone into services like Audiam, and fully appreciating that. Yeah, I think it's super valuable. Even if you are using a tool like Audiam that's helping you to take care of all this, having a base level understanding of it and kind of a breakdown is very, very enlightening, so I appreciate you sharing this, and yeah, it would be great for me to read to refurbish your... Is refurbish the right word? To go back through and summarize and see if I'm following you.
So we got through the sound recording, which is the actual physical sound recording that happens when you create the recording of the song. And so if you're doing a cover song, then you own the sound recording spot, even though you don't own the actual song, you can actually monetize the recording of it.

John Raso:
Correct.

Michael Walker:
Then we have the actual song, which is split up into two different parts. We have the publishing and the writer's share. And if you don't have a publisher, then you basically own both of those. But the idea is that this is the intellectual, the song itself, and the reason there's the publisher's share is because traditionally there's been a publisher that can aggregate and then shop out the songs, and so that they would get a cut of that essentially song share. And then the performing royalties, let's see if I understand this right. So there's a performance royalty that's collected as well, and this is anytime the song is essentially aired. So anytime like a song, anytime the sound enters the ether of the airwaves, the idea is that there's a performance royalty that gets created. And this part, I'm not sure if I was fully understanding, so this performance royalty is sort of, did you say it's sort of like estimated? Or how, and they paid up front?

John Raso:
So the PRO rate is actually negotiated, right? So I want access to the SESAC catalog, there is a negotiation of what the service's use of that whole catalog for a period of time, usually a year or two, what it pays, it's a big number, it's X. And then based on the usage that comes in, the performing rights organization then parses that out to their writer members.

Michael Walker:
Got it. Interesting. So there's a negotiation that happens between performing rights organizations and these other services that will use it, and we're talking about big catalogs, big collections.

John Raso:
Yes, yes. There's really only four of them.

Michael Walker:
Okay. What are those?

John Raso:
ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and GMR.

Michael Walker:
Right. Gotcha. And I would assume, are they roughly similar, the negotiations that they get for each one? Or is there a-

John Raso:
Well no, you're getting into the details that I really don't know, but there is a negotiation, and so I could tell you how it impacts the mechanical rate... And I feel like we're going on a little tangent here of what really-

Michael Walker:
Yeah, if I'm going down too much, we can pull back from that.

John Raso:
I literally can... This is a course. But ultimately, so sort of pinning it, there's a great book called Everything You Want To Know About the Music Business by Donald Passman whose a lawyer, he's represented some huge artists, and I always recommend that book because it's written in a very understandable way, and he updates it every now and then. I can't remember what version he is up to, but I always recommend that book. That's a great one, and that breaks down all of this stuff to a level that I think is incredibly valuable to an artist.
So the performance, and like I said, performance is also not even limited to recordings. It's like if you go and you play live in a venue, you're performing something, as you say up, it's out into the air, and so the venue or a bar when it plays back something on a jukebox, but the mechanical is directly related to making a recording. Right now that recording... So historically it was record companies pay mechanicals, and mechanicals are only a publishing right.
Only songwriters that own their own publishing actually get paid a mechanical. So your publishing company, if you're self-published you obviously get the royalty, and then if you have a publishing deal, there will be a percentage of your mechanical royalties that come in that therefore would be paid as well, but once again, that's depending on your publishing deal. So just to bring Audiam into this, so Audiam doesn't own your songs, literally it's an agreement for us to be your agent to go represent making sure your songs are registered in all of these places where you have caused them to be distributed to. So you've put your records through Distrokid, or for that matter, you're the person you've worked with or the record company you've worked with has put them out there.
And in addition, we have what is these... Where you could, now you're creating a cover and you upload it to your YouTube channel or you put it on SoundCloud or TikTok or whatever. So someone else is actually putting your music, or you're putting someone else's music out into the world. As a result, those people don't know about it, and so Audiam is there making sure that the databases that are linking sound recordings to compositions are properly set up so when those things happen, the royalties flow back to you. So as you can see, you could peel back this onion as much as you want. So if I'm just going to be, I am just a performing artist and I write songs and I give my stuff to Audiam and I signed up with one of the big pros, I'm kind of good. That will get your stuff.
Or you might be, you know what? I'm more proactive and I have more time for that, or I never tour so I'm really self-contained, I could sign up directly for some of these things and I'll only use Audiam for just a small... Pretty much YouTube is, you have to be with a larger organization, you have to be a very significant traffic on YouTube to have access to the tools that I'm talking about. And as some of you might know, even if you have a channel on YouTube, you need at least 10,000 subscribers a month in order to monetize it. So that's where partnering with an Audiam where you're actually part of a larger catalog, we represent almost 5 million songs, so obviously we have a little clout when we talk to people. It's like I represent all these, I mean we represent the Chuck Berry catalog, so something that is definitely carry some [inaudible 00:31:17] people, but don't have a music service unless they're music is part of, oh that music is part of it. So things like that are another value.
We also were able to negotiate settlements. So a lot of sometimes these companies get started and they're like, "Oh, we owe money?" And then it becomes, so they become settlements, sometimes those that are led by the National Music Publishers Association, or a specific publisher goes out and then, so we're able to participate in these settlements, and frequently those are based on your market share. So Audiam would have a larger market share than just, I wrote a song, and so as a result, there's potential larger claims that could be made that we share with all of our clients. So like I said, we could make this a 12 party, but that's why we exist, honestly. The complexity of this is really the driver of... Until someone is large enough to go and either cut a big publishing deal or someone's going to write a big advance or provide a service that you really need.
If you're a self-contained band and it's not about, oh I need covers or I need to find co-writers, I need someone to pitch my songs to be in movies, hang onto your own publishing and sign up with Audiam. It's your back office. Especially if have a smart manager that is aware of this stuff, it's a pretty simple conversation to keep it going, and just all really the only thing you need to do is make sure, I wrote a new song, let me make sure that Audiam has it so they could make sure that I get paid for it. It's relatively easy. That's my goal, at least.

Michael Walker:
Every time I have a conversation like this and I hear about the landscape of these types of royalties, I'm always struck by how intricate, and how pretty complicated it is on when it actually comes down to the brass tacks of the legality of how all the sub-systems work, and thus drives the benefit and the value of a service like Audiam.
So one question mark that I had come up around... And this is great because every time I have a conversation like this too, it helps me understand a little bit more, so I'm starting to kind of see the matrix, but one thing that I'm curious about; so the mechanical royalties and the performance royalties, the relationship with the writer's share and the publishing share, if I'm understanding right, are those something completely separate from the writer's share and the publisher's share? Or are those subsets of the types of royalties that get split based on the writer and publisher share?

John Raso:
Yeah, so maybe the best way to explain, so you've written a song, and let's say you have a publishing deal. And let's assume, let's say your publishing deal is, you've retained ownership and the publisher is taking, say 25% to provide the service of administration for a certain period of time, and et cetera. And so a song is played on a streaming service, and to make it simple, it earns a dollar. Out of that dollar, generally what happens, so the whole dollar that, let's just say the streaming company makes on it, 70% of that is usually what gets paid out to the copyright owners for those, these are just general numbers. Of that 70 cents now, somewhere about 55 to 58 cents goes to the sound recording, so that goes to the record company, and then the record company, whatever agreement they have with their recording artists is what they then share.
Oh we have a 50-50 deal, or you're recouping an advance, so you don't see any of this, but that's a whole other piece. Now we're talking about, so what's left for the publishing is about 12, 13% of that, so let's call it a dime to make it simple. Within that dime, is now your performance and your mechanical royalties have to be paid out of that. So whittling this down, the mechanical in a streaming service is whatever is left over essentially after the performance piece is negotiated out of it. So that's all previously negotiated, it could be anywhere from, I think I've seen 4, 5, to 8% of that. So take the performance piece out, let's call it 4 cents are left. So let's follow the 6 cents that goes to the performing rights organization. 6 cents goes there, that 6 cents, a piece of whatever your performing rights service takes, that's in the same range, we're talking about 10, 20%.
So your 6 cents is now turning into 5 cents, what is, I'm doing my math, 4.5 cents. So then that 4.5 cents, half of that belongs to the publisher, half of it belongs to the writer. So for the sake of easy conversation, now each party has 2 cents. 2 cents gets paid out to the publisher, 2 cents gets paid out to the writer. Now you might be both, and then you get 4 cents. If you're not both, it gets paid out that way. The mechanical side then, we now have 2 cents left over for the mechanical. All 2 cents goes to the publisher, and there is not a writer share of that. But once again, if you are a self-published writer, you would get all of it, or if you are a writer, it would go back to the original deal where I said, you have a publisher and you have a 25-75% split, they would then give you 75% of that money, because you've set up a publishing deal with it.
If you had sold the publishing to them, then you would only get whatever your percentage of that negotiated is. So you heard the word negotiate quite a lot in there, but that's why there's a long history of, don't give away your publishing. A lot of times is there is publishing deals that early, I'm a writer, I want to co-write and they could help me out, and they're going to write me a check, and I have to write X amount of songs for X amount of period of time.
Once again, we're sort of whittling way down that role. To make it, once again bring it all the way back to Audiam, Audiam's job is to make sure that 2 cents is paid, is collected, and essentially 2 cents out of that whole dollar that was generated by your song. And so once again, if you own your own publishing, control your publishing, and we work on behalf of publishing groups too that therefore represent songwriters, and we go out and collect all that. So I'm going to stop there because I could always keep going on a tangent here. So that's how that is broken down, in a very general way, but that's how it is broken down. I don't know if that answers your question, because sometimes I am the publisher, sometimes I am just the writer. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Man, that was probably one of the best breakdowns that I've heard that helped me personally at least understand in a very definitive way, having that dollar broken down. It's interesting too, so it sounds like if you are covering another person's song, you can get a fair amount of the revenue or the royalties from that cover-

John Raso:
Absolutely.

Michael Walker:
... from that recording.

John Raso:
The record companies are the people that make the big money. I not to editorialize to us, but a lot of times they talk about how poor the publishing rates are for these, or how much money an artist can earn from a streaming service. But a lot of that, as you see the 55, 58 cents I was talking about, that mother load goes to the sound recording. So a lot of it depends on the relationship the artist has to the sound recording, where a good chunk of that money is.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, super interesting. I guess-

John Raso:
But at the same time, I should mention that's where publishers then get upset, or songwriters in particular saying, I used to be able to make a lot of money, but that's more of the, you would release an album, it had 12 tracks, and if someone bought it because of one song on it, all other 11 songs on it benefit from the sale. Now it's, I'm just going to listen to the one song over, so it really shrunk down who gets the money, and then they shrunk the amount of money too.

Michael Walker:
Interesting. It makes sense, so from a standpoint of being able to multiply yourself, having the song royalties, aren't the recording royalties, because I mean that song could be covered thousands or hundreds of thousands of times, if it's like Let It Be by the Beatles. And so I guess it also makes sense from a multiplication kind of standpoint that even though that's much less, that could be much, much more profitable. Although I mean if it's getting replicated that many times and you'd have to assume that the original recording is also getting streamed or being purchased a lot.

John Raso:
Absolutely. I mean that's the thing sometimes, most people probably know, and I'm going to date myself here. The song Take Me To the River, they think of it as the Talking Heads performance, but it was originally done by Al Green, and they do a cover. And you could think of other covers that are possibly more like, I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston, really a Dolly Parton song. I mean hugely successful to her, but massively successful for Whitney Houston. And that story happens all the time where the cover version is bigger, and so the songwriter that is benefiting from that, not the artist that recorded the original version.

Michael Walker:
It's super interesting. Man, this is awesome. And again, it's those things that makes you really appreciate the under the hood, really what's happening when you use a service like Audiam. So maybe we could wrap up, I'd love to hear if you could cast a vision for anyone that's listening this to right now who's like, "Okay cool, I could really geek out and I could learn this stuff for 20 years, or I could be a partner, I could find services like Audiam to work with." What does that look like from a standpoint of, let's say that they do want to go sign up with Audiam right now, what does that process look like, and how can they, any tips or tricks to make sure that they do it in the most effective way? I know sometimes there's a thing around making sure that the song data is clean and delivering it the right way.

John Raso:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
So what would that process look like for someone who's listening this right now?

John Raso:
Sure. So Audiam, I should start with Audiam doesn't have just an open door process, through our website there's an application you fill out, because to a certain extent if your songs aren't, if they're not being used, it's kind of like going through this whole exercise that I'm about to describe of getting your songs put out there is really, it doesn't justify the effort quite yet. So what you would do is, so you're approved to sign up to join Audiam, and the first of all the basics, we set up an account for you to have access to Audiam's portal, and that's where you would see your payments, and all the details of the payments and access to the videos that use your songs that we've linked, and all of that. But to get there first is you need to provide us with your basic songwriting composition information, that metadata, and that is primarily song title, all the writers' names, not just yours, and what percentage of the song you control.
So you and one other person, you split it 50-50, you tell me it's my hit song written by me and co-writer, and I own 50% for Me Songs, my publishing company. That is then listed, you also give us wherever possible, who is the artist that recorded that song? It is your song, but it's written under my band name, is the primary thing. And I know someone else did a cover of it, that's always helpful too. And then there's something that is called an ISRC code, which is the Universal Identifier for Sound Recordings. And if you don't have one as your own, if you're an established enough record company where you got your own is ISRC codes, you would get that from your distributor. And so we'd share that too because that is a primary identification code out there.
And so that would then get added to the Audiam database, and really that's kind of it. We would at times go, we would then take that information and we put it in our proprietary database which goes out and then scrapes the internet to find, let me find that song title associated with that artist. And then we go, oh, these all could be, and then we go and we listen and we click and we link the songs so that we then know every database that we deal with, whether it's the Google database, or the Apple database, or the Harry Fox's database and the MLC, or Music Reports, or there's just right a ton of places out there. In this is, right now I'm sticking even just committing to just the US. We actually have a partnership with a company where they go and they do these deals outside the United States and we make sure it's correct in their database as well.
And then as a result, then what's kind of good is then the systems kind of start working themselves. They know sound recording X, Y, Z was played, that is ISRC code 123, ISRC code 123 is connected to composition 456. 50% of that song gets paid to Audiam, and then Audiam then accounts to you on a monthly basis. So that's really the whole process. So it's a matter of keeping that data to us authoritative and correct, we in turn make sure that no one else has gone and collected, and sometimes we even run into you out there; you've gone and put your data out there, and we get that corrected so there isn't confusion in the marketplace of how it should flow.
So I hope that helps the process. But the end of the day is, we have staff members that will help you through that process, and we'll bother you on a regular basis. Go, we haven't heard from you in a while. Have you written any more songs? Has anybody covered your songs? Have you recorded your songs? Because a lot of times that gets forgotten.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yeah, that totally makes sense. It sounds like the process is really streamlined, so it's just sort of like, do you have one step at a time, go sign up. And one final question that came out of that was, you mentioned that there's an application process, and that really there's a certain point that that artists will probably need to be at where it makes the most sense to sign up. What does that point roughly look like where you'd recommend someone considers going and applying?

John Raso:
Kind of tough to say because it depends what type of music it is, or... But generally, your song is on a streaming service or on YouTube, and it has a significant amount of views. And when I say significant on YouTube, it's probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. But once again, that could also be an aggregate. So I have 100 songs and they each have 10,000 views. That's something that individually they're not a lot, but collectively it's that. Or I have north of similar amount on the streaming services, and then there's four or five really big streaming services.
But at the same time, it also a lot of times, it's as simple as, I just got sampled by Drake, and that becomes like, "Well, you better make sure we get that claimed out there. It could be a runaway train where it's... My dad co-wrote a song when he was in this obscure funk band that now is a famous break beat that is on every hip hop record. I run into stuff all the time, all the time. And those are a lot of times it's just not someone who really knows what to do, but knows they're, I'm supposed to be doing something. And so we could help straighten those kind of scenarios out too. So that's always generally an interesting story. There's a lot of music out there that I think is just not being appropriately administered, and some of it is very famous.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Well hey man, this has been a lot of fun. It's rare that I get to have a conversation like this with someone who has a really deep understanding of being able to communicate that, so really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and share some of the wisdom and the lessons that you've learned. For anyone that's listening to this right now, if you'd like to go check out Audiam and apply for the service, then we'll have the link in the show notes for easy access. And yeah, thank you again for taking the time. This has been a lot of fun.

John Raso:
Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity, and I hope I hear from a lot of your audience.

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.
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