Reagan Ramm: Yeah. That's the solution is to provide more value because I'll see artists complain about streaming platforms, and they'll fight back against that by not making their music available or trying to charge more, making people feel bad for not paying more for their music. And you feel bad because there's something to that. You do put all this hard work into your music and it does feel like it's been commoditized and it's been devalued, but the answer isn't to then not participate and to withhold and be restrictive. I think it's to: how can I give more value?

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.

Alright, I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Reagan Ramm. So, Reagan has been writing, recording, and mixing music since 2011. He received a degree in Audio Engineering, 2019, from Unity Gain Recording Institute. And that's when he started the Orpheus Audio Academy where he helps indie music producers create proquality music from home using budgeted equipment. And it's his mission to help creatives make a living doing the work that they love so they can make more time for those who matter most, and be able to focus on their music and doing it in a way that is sustainable and allows them to make a bigger impact. So I'm really excited to connect with them today and talk through a little bit of one: right now it's such an amazing time to be a creator because of the ability that we have to create high quality music at home and the tools that we have access to. But it's also really important to figure out how to cut through the noise and how to reach people and how to have the right mindset to be able to stick with it. When times are tough or when things are challenging. And so I think it's kind of a valuable perspective to share. So Reagan, thank-you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, it's great being here, Michael. It's a big honor being on the podcast. So this is great and I’m really excited to be on here.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. So to kick things off, I'd love to hear a little bit about your story and just how you got started with Orpheus Academy and learning what you share now. 

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, I'd probably say I'm one of the least likely people to be doing music right now. So growing up, I didn't have really any experience with music. The only experiences I did have were really negative, right? Public school, music class, being embarrassed, even some bullying associated with that. So I was like: I don't want anything to do with music. But then I did play a computer game when I was a kid called SimTunes. I'm like: Hey, this is kind of fun. Like these little musical instruments move around the screen and you put down these colored dots, which were notes, which I didn't know at the time, and you can make songs, which…I only made noise, but every once in a while, a couple of notes would sound good together. And I'm like: Hey, I'm making music. And that kind of blew my mind that I could make music on a computer. Fast forward… I saw my dad making music for the first time. And he was using what I know now is a digital audio workstation (DAW). And I’m like: hey, it's kind of like SimTunes, like he has a MIDI keyboard. And if I could just hit some notes on a keyboard, maybe I can make something that sounds good. And so that's how I got started. Really. I didn't know any of the notes were, I didn't know any of the keys were, I didn't know when a was or a C or a D or whatever, and I just started playing notes and like: Hey! I discovered these keys kind of sound good together, and these keys sound good together. And I didn't even know how to quantize. So all my music was out of sync and not in time and is impossible to listen to. But for some reason I liked it just because I felt like I was the last person in the world that should be making music. And I was actually making stuff that I kind of enjoyed. And so that's kind of how I got started. I went later… Some friends of mine were recording an album. They were a group of sisters in a singing group. And so I offered to record and mix and master their song for them. So that's kind of how I got my first gig. I ended up marrying one of the sisters, so that worked out pretty well as well. And that's kind of when I realized I really want to do this. I want to get good at this. So I ended up going to school, as you mentioned, and got a degree in audio engineering. And then I decided: Hey, I want to help others do the same thing. So I started Orpheus Audio Academy and that's where we are now. 

Michael Walker: Very cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And it kind of reminds me of my own journey. I think a lot of us can relate with that experience of kind of stumbling along and you're creating music that you're looking back now, we can be like, that just is noise. Like that didn't even sound good at all. That's so bad. But at the time there, there's something really magic about it, about the creative process, about discovering it, kind of getting your footing. And yeah, I think it's awesome that you go through this yourself and then you'll be able to share some of the lessons that you learned from schooling, from education with people who may not have time or desire to fully go to college or school to learn music engineering, but still have a huge opportunity to be able to leverage some of those learning lessons that you discovered. Next question would be now you're having gone through this yourself and you're learning how to produce and engineer and also working with others and seeing the challenges that they come up to, as it relates to both creating music and also just music success in general, what do you say are some of the biggest challenges or roadblocks that you see people coming up against most often now?

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, that's a great question. And honestly, it probably is something that's maybe not as obvious, but I think it comes down to mindset and some false beliefs that people have around music that blocks them from progress. Number 1 just when it comes to maybe like music production, thinking that you need a lot of expensive equipment or you need a lot of expensive acoustic treatment and a nice studio to be able to make anything that sounds good. Thinking that you do have to have an expensive education to be good. You have to be able to go to college or something, or that you need to have some kind of special musical gifting or something. I think those are all false beliefs. When it comes to equipment, the equipment today is so good. The budget equipment is so good. It's better than what the Beatles had back in the day. Now, I mean, today they're making plugins, right? There are software versions of the Beatles equipment cause we do like that kind of vintage lo fi sound, but if you just look at it objectively, the equipment we have today in your laptop is better than what they had in the full recording studio several decades ago. And then as far as education, there's so much great education out there online. You don't need to go to college. I did go to college, but my college experience was unique in that I learned at an actual commercial recording studio and my instructor was the actual owner of the studio. I recorded real bands as part of my education. So college is great. But this is also maybe a little controversial, but I think increasingly for a lot of people, college is a scam. I very much value education. It’s huge, but schooling, a lot of the time, is not the best way to get it. I would say more so mentorship is vital, maybe over schooling. Not to worry, every school is different. So there are options there. But that's why I think my education was so valuable because it was an accredited college. I did get my degree and so you kind of have that piece of paper to say that you know something, but really the real value came from the mentorship I got from being able to ask questions in a small class; being able to actually learn in a console and record actual artists. So, if you can get some kind of mentorship, I would say that would be more valuable. And it's also going to be probably way less expensive, ironically. And then like having talent, again, like me, I didn't have a lot of talent or skill. I got into the game later. It wasnt until I was 18 when I really started making music. We don't say this when it comes to a doctor. I don't know if I have the talent to be a doctor right? You know, if you get good grades in school and you get into a decent university and you spend four years and then you do residency, right, you'll be a doctor. I think the same thing is with music. If you put in the time and the investment that you would put into say, being a doctor, you can be a successful musician. And that is the biggest one, I think. The biggest obstacle is people think you just can't have success today as a musician.

Just the other day, actually just yesterday, I was watching, I don't know if you've seen it, that hilarious interview that Stephen Colbert did with Eminem like 10 years ago, and he was pretending not to know who he was and he was like what's your fallback what are you gonna do? You know, music doesn't pay the rent. [both chuckling] You know, what are you gonna do when the dream dies? Gotta have that retirement account is pretty hilarious. But that's kind of the idea we have that either you're going to be a starving artist, or you have to be someone like Taylor Swift or Eminem or some huge artist to have success. Otherwise, you're just going to be a starving artist and you can't be successful. And so if you can't be successful, why put in the time? Why buy all that expensive equipment, right? It's just becomes an expensive hobby and it's hard to justify putting in the time. What they don't realize is there actually is anemerging what I call “music middle class” now where you actually can have success. Maybe you're not going to be huge and famous that everyone knows, but you can make a decent income and have a dedicated following in that “musician middle class”. So I think those are some of the biggest roadblocks and it really all comes down to mindset and these false beliefs that really block people from making progress. 

Michael Walker: So good. Yeah. There's a couple of really good points in there. To go deeper on the one that you just shared: That's so true. Like there's sort of an old model of the music industry, which, I mean, to be fair, it was kind of the way that it used to be with record labels and either like you were a big established artist or there wasn't really that middle class as much as there is now, like you were describing. And so, yeah, I feel like how this comes across for a lot of people is it's like: they think that either you're a household name, you're like Taylor Swift, you're Ed Sheeran or you're not a successful musician, which obviously couldn't be further from the truth. It's not like you recognize every lawyer, you recognize the name of every basketball player, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not successful. They're not making a six figure or even seven figure income. So that is a really valuable mindset shift is recognizing that you don't necessarily have to be Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran, and if you have big goals, if you want to be number one in the world, that's ambitious, and it can be inspiring, it can be a good thing to aim for if that's who you want to be, but you don't have to reach that bar in order just to be a success, right? So the other point that you brought up, I think is worth discussing a little bit more is around college and  the role of education and the landscape as we're having this conversation now is even this platform that we're on right now and the academy that you've created and online education and YouTube it's such a game changer in terms of how we learn and how we evolve. AI nowadays as well as an amazing tool that's starting to take off. So I totally agree that right now we're in a unique place where it seems like there's a huge opportunity for disruption in the education system, specifically post high school, college education, where you have to go into debt $40,000 to learn theories and ideas. There's something about valuable about the experience like being out on your own, learning, and socializing. But I totally agree. I think that mentorship and getting some real world rounds with people who are doing the thing that you want to be doing and learning from them is so, so much more valuable than reading a book and getting graded and tested on your ability to recall a fact from a date and then you forget it like a week or two.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah. I went to Ohio State University for a whole year. So two semesters. So I did get the traditional college experience. It's one of the biggest public universities in the world. I got into the honors program at the business school. So like, this is it, right? This is one of the top 15 business colleges. And I'm like: wasn't that impressed? Really? I'm like, I could be learning. I could learn this stuff somewhere else. For example, I was taking a calculus class and I was having a hard time understanding it. And I was finding I was getting more help when I went online or went to Khan Academy or these other resources that are online. And I mean, that's kind of the nice thing about the online world is it does follow the positive aspects of capitalism and that the cream rises to the top, whereas in a public school system, a lot of it, you have tenure or you have these unions work that keep a lot of… We’ve all had experience with teachers that maybe you weren't the best that maybe shouldn't have been teaching, but also some great teachers as well. And maybe they should have been making even more money. Maybe if they had an online course, they could have been making more money, but I don't want to get off in the weeds there, but I think there's so many great resources online now.

Michael Walker: That's a great point. Yeah. I think that the role of teacher is super undervalued in our public education system and a lot of colleges. And that makes a lot of sense. I hadn't really thought about that, but that probably is one of the reasons that online education and business-focused education has a tendency to be able to rise to the top because of the principles of capitalism. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on… We just touched on AI and at the time of recording this AI is sort of having its heyday and it's OpenAI, ChatGPT and AI tools all across the board are starting to come up and completely changing the game and changing the scope of what's possible for us to do as musicians. And just as humans. So I'd be curious to hear, obviously this is a little bit like reading the crystal ball or the tea leaves, but as it relates to music production specifically, or just music in general, what's your perspective on the current landscape of AI and where things are headed and if someone's listening to this right now and they're looking at: how do I stay on top of this in a way that I don't get overwhelmed, but allows me to really leverage the benefits of AI what would your advice be for them? 

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, that's great. That's a great question for sure. I've been trying to learn more about this myself, and I've come across is, I can't remember the exact terminology, but whenever there's like a new groundbreaking technology, you have a lot of hype in the beginning, but the hype doesn't match the functionality. It doesn't live up to the hype, in other words. And so then usually you have a dip where a lot of people start to abandon this. You can think about how when the internet first came about and people were talking about it, it's going to change everything. I'm thinking of Stranger Things season four when they're first getting onto the internet and the kids are like, what's that? Like this is the internet's only gonna change the world. But right when the first internet came around it couldn't do very much, right? You're like, what's the point of this right? A lot of people are like is a fad. This isn't gonna go anywhere and you see some people saying that about AI, but you have that dip, but then as that functionality catches up, then it just takes off and it becomes just commonplace. So I think that's what's going to happen with AI. I think right now we're in that beginning hype and AI does still have a lot of functionality right now, though, but I think you are going to see that dip, but then eventually it's going to come roaring back. But on a practical level, when it comes to AI, there's still a lot of ways you can use it today to help you. Even ChatGPT for helping you come up with song ideas. You can type: give me a concept album idea for your genre or whatever, and it can give you a bunch of ideas. So it can be a shortcut definitely for coming up with ideas. Coming up with lyrics as well. So if you want to have a song that's on a certain theme, you can say: Hey, give me different words. So you just kind of can be a helper and like jogging your memory and give you ideas as well. So there's a lot of ways to use it in that front. Also marketing and promotion. There's a lot of AI tools that can help you create social media content. So there's tons of ways to use it. Also music production itself. There's all kinds of AI tools coming out now. One of the best companies out there is iZotope. They have a bunch of AI built into their tools. Now, my mentor who I mentioned earlier who owns his own studio and he's been producing since the late seventies and in the music industry since the late seventies, he's very wary of these tools because it does kind of block you from really learning what's going on if you're just clicking a button. At this point in time, not as good as if you're actually knowing what you're doing and actually getting back to the fundamentals of mixing and so on. But they can definitely be a time saver. So I would say definitely use it and see it as your friend, but don't become completely reliant on it. At least not right now.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Great advice. Really interesting too, to sort of just map out this as a technological revolution and looking at previous ones and how did we respond to it? How did it result? Like the internet, like you mentioned, is a good example. But as it relates to music production, a really good reference is DAWs and the digital audio workstation. There was a lot of skepticism and reluctance and hesitance to go from an analog workstation to creating an “in the box” production environment. And there were a lot of things, and still depending on the setup, you might find people who are kind of purists or really want to keep everything analog, and in some things it is good to have outbound equipment, but it does seem like “in the box” and digital stuff is just totally the way to go these days and you get so many benefits and you know, if you're able to adapt to it and like you're mentioning, it does seem like AI and AI related tools are probably going to follow a similar path where people are going to be kind of scared or reluctant, especially if they're ingrained in a certain habits or a way of doing things. But it's like an equalizer where it can take people who are earlier on, and you can really shortcut and get a lot of extra momentum and time versus someone who maybe has been doing it their whole life, if you're able to adapt quickly.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, that's a good point. I don't think AI is going to be replacing humans, but if you're not using it as part of your workflow, you're going to be left behind, I think. So, you got to kind of learn how to see it as a tool that you can use.

Michael Walker:Totally. You mentioned a few ideas for using it for brainstorming ideas; like brainstorming song ideas or album ideas or emails that you might send out for marketing, or social media content calendar campaign, and I just want to +1 to that. I've been using ChatGPT for 8 hours a day, probably. I mean, it's always on one of my monitors. I have it literally up on one of my monitors right now. And it is insanely useful. For anyone that's watching this or listening to this right now who's a member of our artist development suite and has a StreetTeam, we also have a free version of what we call artist AI that essentially is like chat GPT, but it's custom trained for musicians. So you can use that and it's free, included in StreetTeam on the tab, if you want to play around with it without paying for the 20 a month. It's cool. Yeah it's very cool, but I mean, it's basically like ChatGPT it's just a little bit more… It's tuned for musicians and you're built into StreetTeam and it doesn't cost $20 a month. It's just included in StreetTeam. But gosh I've been using it so much and I would say no exaggeration. It's increased my productivity output by a factor of a 100x.

Reagan Ramm: Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Walker: I've heard it described this way that it can get you from 0 to 80 really quickly. Like it can do it in like a few seconds and going from 0 to 80 in a lot of cases can take a long time. If you're writing a song that's about 80% of the work is like going from zero to 80, but then it does seem like, at least right now, we still kind of need that last 20% for a human to come in who's really good at what they're doing and kind of fine tune it.

Reagan Ramm: And yeah, you can even have ChatGPT say: Hey, write me lyrics for my song. And it will give you a verse. It’ll give you a chorus. It’ll give you a second verse. Another chorus. It’ll give you a bridge. Perfect song structure. Even some of the lyrics in there are pretty good, but as a whole, there's going to be something that doesn't quite make sense, or it doesn't quite have the rhyming pattern, or just too many words in there, or just some of the lyrics are kind of cheesy and corny. So, but it can get you, like you said, kind of like 80% of the way there. And then you can kind of tweak things, move things around that and give you some new ideas. Like: Hey, I like that concept, but here's how I can make it better. So it can definitely just… It just speeds up your workflow so much using it. 

Michael Walker: Absolutely. As you were saying that, I actually just asked it to write a song about how awesome ChatGPT is.

Reagan Ramm: Right. You can do it in the style of Bob Dylan or in the style of whoever your favorite artist is.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Should we do it in the style of someone in particular so we can play on with that or maybe we just do it… I'm not that good at doing impressions. I probably wouldn't be able to get one on the spot, but I could do it.

[singing] In a world so vast and wide, with data deep and wide, there's a digital mind, with answers we find. ChatGPT.

Okay, I was thinking about: I was like, am I really going to go through this entire song right now and play the whole thing? And I'm not. 

Reagan Ramm: That's not bad. That’s pretty good!

Michael Walker: But looking through it right now, I mean, like you mentioned it's like 0 to 80, 0 to 80 immediately, but definitely some stuff in here that's a little cheesy or that I would tweak or play around with. So, we're not out of the game yet, humans, we're still here. It'll be interesting to watch how things develop over the next 5 to 10 years. It does seem like there's probably going to be some pretty big disruptions or revolutions, or at least, there's going to be a lot more like a vacuum; a vacuum where we used to spend our time and energy doing certain things that can be completely replaced by AI. And it's not like that means that now we're going to be replaced by AI, it just means that now we don't have to do those things. And so there's some space there where we used to do that thing and now we can use that space to do it.

Reagan Ramm: It'd be like, if you remember a job you have: going into the library to do your research instead of using the internet. You're not going to succeed. You need to use the internet to research. So it's kind of that way with AI. And talking about revolutions, I think another one that's within music is that: as AI vocalists get better. I don't know if you've seen the tool LaLaLs and there's other ones out there where you can sing something and you can change your vocals to be some famous singer or rapper like Drake or Eminem or even passed singers like Michael Jackson or Freddie Mercury and it's pretty good. There's some artifacts in there but it definitely sounds like them. So where's that gonna be in five years?

Michael Walker: Yeah, it's just wild. Yeah, I mean obviously there's some valid concerns around Mis-information, sort of like political uses of technology; deepfakes but in a non-violent or non-deceptive way, it's really interesting to think about where that technology could be used for, I don't know, if I could co-write a song and perform with John Lennon just because I'm a John Lennon fan and I want to do a duet with him and it's in the style of John Lennon… That would be really cool and yeah, and as long as it's not, it's done in the correct way. It's like why not? Why not do that? You know, you need to have the rights probably from the initial holders of the “character of John Lennon.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know, can you copyright a voice? The sound of a voice?

Michael Walker: I think that's the question that we're asking right now.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, we'll have to start asking that, yeah.

Michael Walker: Yeah, and it seems like this is an evolving situation right now as we're recording it, but I know that this is a big question that they've been asking is: can we copyright someone's likeness? And I know that the strike, the Hollywood writer's strike and the actor's strike, was at least one of the main components is now based around using someone's likeness and how we how do we compensate for that? And how do we protect against people being replaced entirely? And it's a hard one. I also know it's one thing if you create an AI version of Drake, but this AI version of Drake sounds like him. Can write music that is at the similar level as Drake, but it doesn't require him to spend time and energy doing it, and it never gets tired, it just like, goes 24/7, and it can brainstorm a hundred different ideas in the time that it took to do one ide, then, it is kind of an interesting question of what happens in that scenario? What is Drake's role if there's a data set that was trained up on Drake… I think it kind of comes back to the root of what we were talking about earlier of the 0 to 80 kind of thing and kind of that last, and maybe that 20% becomes more like 10% or 5% or 1% or half a percent.

But maybe we all have to become curators of our digital persona, our digital avatar, and it brainstorms a thousand different ideas, like: “Michael, based on your life's data and based on your personality and based on your feelings and your values and your situation, we've generated 100 song ideas for you that we think you'd resonate with. Here's some key ideas for you. And we've written 10 different versions of the songs. Let us know which one of these do you like better?”. And if it knows you well enough, then I don't know, maybe it could create a personalized path for you. And then you could just kind of choose which one's your favorite, which would also trait to get better at knowing who you are. So maybe it would just be a leverage tool. It would help you to make quicker, better decisions, but literally, you just have to use your thoughts and use your brain to guide it in the right direction.

Reagan Ramm: Right. Cause yeah, it seems like right now and for the foreseeable future, AI can only replicate what's already been created. We're still, you still need humans to create new things, at least for now. We'll see what happens.

Michael Walker: Yeah it's super interesting. I know that's one of the limitations right now is around its ability to create new science because it's fed on our existing data sets. At the same time, I wonder exactly what that limitation really is, just because it seems like... It's certainly creating new content. It's creating new original content, at least from a creative output, right? It creates songs that don't exist before, even though it's trained on existing data. But I don't know if there's a fundamental difference between it being able to create new songs based on that training data, versus having original thoughts. Like… How do we define original thoughts? How do we find original thoughts of our own? You know, like, do we have truly original thoughts or are we a factor that was created by our upbringing and our influences and our idols? It's interesting. 

Reagan Ramm: Even back when… think of when the book of Ecclesiastes was written, in the Bible it said: there's nothing new under the sun. So that was a long time ago. Michael Walker: Yeah, I think there is a lot of truth to that sentiment that we're sort of like the baby of all of our influences. I like to think about it in terms of like a mindmap or a tree with roots and it's sort of like we have all these branches; All these branches that are connected to different influences that we have, and that's why we have to be so important about who we spend our time with and who we just surround ourself with, because those are all branches that kind of absorb up into you; Into who you are.

I don't know if there's something separate from everyone and everything else. We're getting super metaphysical here.

Reagan Ramm: It seems like the originality comes from the unique combination of elements that have already existed. I used to teach creative writing and that was a big concern was: how do I write an original story? Because every time someone would come up with something: Oh, that's like this or it's like that. Same thing with music, right? The song is in someone's gonna you'd think “this is so unique”, but someone can come around say: “oh no, that sounds like this artist and that artist” and you're like, “oh!” Well, I don't think that's really what you should be striving for to create something that's super unique. You're not really going to do that. It's going to be similar to something else. Where the uniqueness comes is I think your unique spin on it. What different elements do you combine? Combining genres is really popular, right? Your own unique voice because everyone's voice sounds different. At least until AI copies you. [both chuckling] But I think that is where you create. The uniqueness comes in is how you approach the given ingredients that you have.

Michael Walker: That's a great way to look at it. Yeah. So it's really, you have these different branches, but it's how those come together to form this new expression that is actually the unique thing. Knowing that you have four kids you know, this analogy, I think is a good one that: kids very obviously have their DNA from two sets of parents and from their whole family line. And there's a lot of things that are passed down generationally. But, each kid is their own unique expression and they all turn out totally different even though they came from the same two parents. And so, it's a good reference or an analogy to this idea that it's okay to have parents, and it’s okay to have DNA-like influences. And people who look at you might even be like, “Oh, I can see your father in this” or, “Oh, this sort of reminds me of this influence”, but it is about you combining all those different things into something that is new and it's about you and expressing what that is. 

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree.

Micheal Walker: Cool. So, I love conversations like this and we're kind of taking to the 20,000 foot level right now. And maybe we can kind of come back down to earth a little bit and talk about some practical tools and things that someone that's listening to this right now can apply today to leverage these new developments and these new opportunities as it relates to music. So maybe specifically you mentioned one music production tool that's an AI-based tool. It's for creating vocals. What was that called again? And how do you spell that?

Reagan Ramm: Yes. It's called lalals.com. So it's spelled LaLaLs.com. So yeah, so you go to LaLa's and you can see all the different artists that are there. So they've got Drake, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, tons of other ones on there. There's even spoken word so if you wanted to, I don't kno, have some spoken word, you could have Spongebob say it or something. All kinds of people. So, it's really cool; all the different voices that are in there. I have a video coming out soon that's a review that breaks down how to use it. You can hear that it's not perfect. There's some artifacts in there. Different voices handle your input better than other ones, so, depending on how you sing; your range, some artists will handle it better than other ones, but overall, it's really impressive and it sounds really cool. So you can try it out. You can just upload audio or you can record directly into the web app.

Michael Walker: That is awesome. I'm looking at them right now.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah. There's some free ones. There's some free voices in there, and then there's like a paid tier where if you want access to more of the artists.

Michael Walker: Super cool. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder what they're built on; what AI platform that they're plugging into, or if it's a totally proprietary one. 

Reagan Ramm: I'm not sure.

Michael Walker: Looks great. Yeah, I definitely would recommend checking this out. I'm gonna check this out. So this looks like a great resource as a way to explore creating different voices and, again, this is definitely not legal counsel, so, check the current legal status of commercializing especially. You're working at these different models but man, it would be a really cool idea to… I think that one principle of promotion or one marketing channel that has always been a valuable marketing channel is “influencer marketing”. You could call it “partner marketing”, but this is like if you got an opportunity to open on tour for Ed Sheeran, then that's a huge marketing opportunity because all of Ed Sheeran's fans can get presented to you and you can start to build a relationship with them. Not everyone's going to have an opportunity to go on tour with Ed Sheeran. So, another way of doing this is through doing cover of an Ed Sheeran song. You know, so if you cover one of Ed Sheeran's songs, then you'll be able to tap into an audience of people that are fans of Ed Sheeran, and some of those people might like your version of his song. It's another way to promote and get in front of an audience of fans. And so when I see something like this, one place that my mind goes to is: man, what if there was a channel or a way for you to just create and release a bunch of songs or cover songs or original songs where you're just doing features with the most well-known artists in the world and you release those songs featuring that the AI version of that artist. It'd be another way to accomplish kind of the same thing of rubbing shoulders with that artist and people who are fans of the artist and it’d probably be pretty fun, but again, legally, I think there's some implications here

Reagan Ramm: At that point, you’ll probably have to acknowledge somewhere in the credits or something that's AI and it's not actually them.

Michael Walker: Oh, yeah, that's super important, right? I think transparency and not being deceptive is really important for using AI and tools like this.

Reagan Ramm: We talked about defects… I watch this one YouTube channel, I think it's hilarious, but he'll take famous people and deepfake them but he'll make it clear that it's AI, so he had like, Jordan Peterson on a podcast with Joe Rogan talking about the merits of Mario Brothers and stuff. So it's like a completely fake conversation, but it sounds exactly like them… it’s like the same phrasing, the same cadence. You can tell it's AI slightly, but it's hard to tell sometimes, but he makes it clear that it's AI.

Michael Walker: I feel like I'm running on a limited clock here, and we're probably, we've got some pretty good training data for Michael Walker on the Modern Musician Podcast. Yes, it would be not that hard in 5-10 years to just create something that sounds like me that can have conversations. But yeah I promise I'm not an AI. I'm a human right now. I think? [both laughing]  Unless it's like one of those things that you're like: “Oh, I was the AI the whole time!”. But anyway, yeah, really interesting as an idea and it's something I would explore if anyone's listening to this right now, I think this is a huge opportunity and I haven't heard of someone doing this yet. It wouldn't surprise me if someone's played around with this idea, but I do think that there's gonna be someone who takes this idea and just like knocks it out of the park just doing a bunch of collaborations with well-known artists that you've always wanted to collaborate with, but just like using that platform to be able to collaborate with them and do a song with them. And again, this is definitely not legal counsel, especially with this, you'd want to be careful with it. I know with cover songs, generally, people are a little over-concerned with covering an Ed Sheeran song or something and posting it on YouTube. For the most part if you're not directly selling it or monetizing it and you're just putting it on YouTube to provide value and use it as a promotional tool, then in general, you're not going to get in trouble for that. And a lot of these platforms have blanket licenses where it's okay to do cover songs. 

Reagan Ramm: The way it seems to work is they'll just automatically recognize: Hey, this is an Ed Sheeran song and they'll take the revenue and just give it to Ed Sheeran. Michael Walker: Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely some like revenue-sharing capabilities now with it. I think that technically the owner of the song has the right to say, you know what? I don't want this cover song to be up, take this down. And that's totally within their rights. But most people don't run into that because it's basically free promotion for them. So it's not a bad thing. I would expect that this can go into a similar category where if you did a really awesome “collaboration” with Ed Sheeran, that people loved and it was getting millions of views, then Ed Sheeran would probably be like: huh! As long as you weren't doing it in a way that was, I don't know, clearly monetizing it or selling like the song itself or doing something else that didn't reflect well on his image or his brand, then I think it would probably be above the belt if you're transparent about it. 

Reagan Ramm: Worth exploring.

Michael Walker: We have a member on our team now who's a really deep background in legal counsel. And recently he was like, yeah if anyone ever talks about something like this, it's just important to give back some context that we aren't giving legal counsel. So I'm probably overdoing it here but it is true. The landscape is changing so quickly.  Even what we're talking about right now, things might have evolved since now recording this and you listening to it. So it's good to see kind of what the current state is. Zooming back out: This tool is awesome. I think this is a great resource for people to tap into. Any other ideas or things that you've seen recently as it relates to practical tools and technologies for people to be able to leverage some of these new developments in AI? 

Reagan Ramm: Yeah! When it comes to leading away is iZotope and they've been using it for quite a while, actually, before kind of before ChatGpT arose and everything. So they’ve got really good tools. For example, I haven't tried this out myself yet, but they just came out with a new version of their Nectar vocal plugin. And what that can do is add automatic, backing vocals to you, or make automatic doubles of your voice and harmonies. So that's another thing that can really speed up time. If you've ever tried to record lots of layers, that can take a long time. They've got AI-built into their mastering plugin that can listen to your song and, depending on what type of style you're going for, it can kind of give you some EQ and some compression and set your limiter to the correct standards. So if you don't really know anything about mastering, that's kind of a quick way of getting at least up to commercial standards. And so yeah, they have a lot of good tools for AI. They also have a neutron tool which is kind of for everything, whether it's like drums or guitars, whatever instruments that can have different AI settings where it listens to it and kind of can put on different effects. So that can be, again, just like with ChatGPT, I wouldn't use the AI and just leave it. I would kind of use that as inspiration and as creativity to get you going in the right direction. And then you tweak it from there. Use your ears. Always use your ears. And then just use it as a shortcut, as a shorthand, as an assistant, basically as a mixing assistant, it's kind of a good way to use AI. 

Michael Walker: Super cool. Yeah. So it sounds like iZotope has a sort of a suite of some great products that are already using AI and a really interesting vocal plug-in, it sounds like, that can create the harmonies and the doubles and save a lot of time there. Another one that comes to mind that I'd love to hear if you have any experience with this or any other tools that are like this, but it seems like there's been a lot of tools lately around creating automatic stems from songs. You upload a file and then it can break it down into the different stems. I think BandLabs has a tool that lets you basically do that. It could be really helpful for learning and learning how to arrange songs and learning how to produce and mix better is just like breaking down well-known songs into the stems. And then you can also play around with them. I can imagine it could be really helpful for remixing if you're doing remixing of songs.

Reagan Ramm: For sure. Yeah. I hadn't heard about any of those tools before, but that makes sense that those would exist.

Michael Walker: Yeah, I think bandlabs was one that I saw most recently that they had like a free tool and we could just pull in any audio sample and it would break it down into the stems automatically. And it was like pretty astounding how good of a job it did too. Apple has a karaoke thing that they released where on any Apple music song now you can change the vocal stem and like bring it down to 0 so you can sing along with it if you want and mix in the original sound. That one's interesting

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, I know iZotopes, our X tool, is good at that. You can separate and take the vocal out or isolate it from the instrumentation. So they have a tool built into that. So that's another one that's good for that element.

Michael Walker: I know Splice has explored some ideas around AI and mixing AI with their workflow. I think the way that they do it is: you can click a few buttons and they collect the different loops and they can give you a headstart doing the loops. Have you used that tool yet? Or do you have any thoughts about?

Reagan Ramm: No, I haven't seen that. I have seen some other AI tools out there, I don't remember the name of it, but you can choose your genre and what instruments you want, and then it will write the whole song for you. So it has everything. So I'm like: I don't know about that. Cause it's like, well then where's the artistry of AI's writing the whole song for you? I think people are mostly using that like YouTubers and influencers to get original music that they don't have to license to use in their videos. But that's something to be aware of.

Michael Walker: Yeah, I don't know for sure what's going to happen, but I would be pretty concerned. If I was a musician, that was my primary focus was the sync licensing of the songs for libraries. I do feel like that's one of the prime-use cases where people quickly, without any sort of licensing; copyright issues can generate something for their specific use case. I feel like that's going to take a big chunk out of the market.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, I think the response to that would just be to embrace artistry, building a brand around your music.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think that the ability to create communities… I think communities are something that can't be generated by AI. It's like one of the last things that we'll probably have is live shows and community coming together as humans, as people, because that's like such a core human need. It's like one of the core values of music. It wouldn't have the same effect if you went into a room with 100 AI people and you were trying to enjoy this music together.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah. I also think whenever you have a swing in technology like that, you always have a pushback eventually, cause people want what they can't have. This was big when I was learning at that commercial recording studio is we'd have people come in and they say: Oh, I'm gonna record to tape, like, not use a tape plugin, but actually record to tape because they it looked cool and wanted to be different and David Sachs, he wrote a book called Revenge of Analog talked about this and how you had the rise of vinyl, with the younger generation, right? Not older people feeling nostalgia, but the younger generation that was buying the vinyl. And even like, in the genre of music that I'm in synth wave, you have cassette tapes coming back. Cause that's based on the eighties and stuff. So you do see people do eventually return to wanting some physical things with everything going digital.

Michael Walker: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. I think that one thing, as it relates to the rise of the reactivation of vinyl and cassettes, is it seems like what's driving that isn't necessarily the technology of vinyl or the technology of cassettes. It's not like: cool, like, I'm gonna listen to these now, or this is the best way to listen to it. It does seem like what's driving that is mostly around the collectability of them; being a collector of them and having something tangible that you can hold on to, you can look at, you can look at the collection, and you can see it. I mean, one of our biggest goals with ModernMusician is to create what we're calling the “Music Relic Marketplace”, which is a music NFT marketplace where people can collect digital versions of the songs, that there is a limited amount of them, and you can basically have a showcase where you can see which music relics do you own from different artists? So for example, I don't know, maybe you own one of 10 of the additions for “Let it Be” by the Beatles. That'd probably be really cool if you had one of those and it would probably be worth more now than it was back before the Beatles were the Beatles, but it does seem like a collectible.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, creating digital scarcity because right before NFTs, anything digital could be copied endlessly. So yeah, that's where you can create that exclusivity and that collectability.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Yeah. I think the exclusivity and the scarcity of it is one of the most important parts of it, and the reason that the Mona Lisa is worth $800 million isn't because it's an 800 million experience to see the artwork on your wall. Because nowadays you can print out a copy of the Mona Lisa and hang it on your wall, and most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the original one versus the new one. So it's not just the experience of enjoying the artwork. But it's really about the ownership of that scarce, limited asset that makes it worth $800 million.

Reagan Ramm: Exactly.

Michael Walker: You know, people would pay $800 million for the Mona Lisa, but you've never been able to pay more than a dollar to “Let It Be” by the Beatles. And it's like, why is that? Well, because like you mentioned, because it's infinite, it's a digital asset, and there hasn't been a way to create true ownership or true scarcity until now with blockchain.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah. That's the solution is to provide more value because: I'll see artists complain about streaming platforms, and they'll fight back against that by not making their music available, or trying to charge more, making people feel bad for not paying more for their music. And you feel bad because there's something to that. You do put all this hard work into your music and it does feel like it's been commoditized and it's been devalued, but the answer isn't to then not participate and to withhold and be restrictive. I think it's to: how can I give more value? Right. I think like Taylor Swift for one of her albums, she released a whole book around it or something. I'm not a Taylor Swift fan, so I don't know exactly, but I remember seeing it at Target. So I think the answer is to go, how can I give more value? So like, yeah, having the NFT attached to it or what other physical things can you attach to the musical experience or even digital experiences?

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Awesome. And speaking of the Gartner-hype cycle, which you brought up earlier…

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, I probably learned that from you guys. Maybe I don't remember where I learned that. [chuckles]

MichAel Walker: Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it's something that I learned about really at the pop of the NFT bubble because the NFT bubble clearly followed this sort of Gartner-hype cycle. Similar to the internet where there's a lot of hype; it's an amazing new technology; some geeks who understand it. But it's a very technical thing and most people don't really understand the guts of how it works. But there's some people who get it and who are like, oh my gosh, this is gonna change everything. And then for the people who don't really understand it, there's a tendency to overhype it and be like: Oh yeah, like “this is a game changer and this is going to change all the things. And this gif of a hamster is worth $1 million. And then there's like a pop, it's like: okay maybe the gif of the hamster is not worth a million dollars. But then eventually there's the “slope of enlightenment”, they call it. And that's sort of when it becomes more understandable from the scope of it actually being used on a day-to-day basis. The internet: once it wasn't just a terminal where you like type code in order to access it and do crazy, weird, like geeky stuff, but it was actually used to buy things online and to access resources online. Now it's actually understandable, even if we don't get the guts of the technology and how it works, like “post” and “get requests” and like the actual protocol of the internet. It doesn't mean that we don't understand the value of it because of the other benefits that it brings to us. So I really do think that the NFTs are a great example of that in terms of: there's that hype, there's the bubble pop. And now I think we're about to start experiencing a little bit more of a slope upward and understanding that there are for some industries and some things, there is a valid use case for it.

Reagan Ramm: For sure. Definitely.

Michael Walker: Cool. Well, hey man, this has been a fun conversation. We've geeked out. You've gotten 10,000 feet up in the air. We've come back down. I've talked about some of the tools people can use today to be able to grow their music career and improve their music mixes and productions. So thank-you for taking the time to be here.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah. I had a ton of fun.

Michael Walker: Heck yeah. And for anyone that's listening to this right now who's interested in learning more or diving deeper into what you offer, could you share a little bit more about where they can go to dive deeper? 

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, you can go check out my website, orpheusaudioacademy.com. Right now most of the content I'm putting out is on my YouTube channel. So you can just look up OrpheusAudioAcademy on YouTube. And yeah, I got tons of training materials on how to produce pro-quality music from home using budget equipment. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. So like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access. And yeah, thanks again for taking the time to be here today.

Reagan Ramm: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

Michael Walker: 

Yeeaahh! 

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 guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

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