Michael Walker: If you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician is a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where Modern Musician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been a result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, without really a fanbase or a business. And you’ll take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions of fans with your music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who have shared their knowledge and success with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now. 

Chris SD: The truth is any song, pretty much, almost any song can get licensed and the reason is is because there are so many opportunities. There's just so much stuff, right? You're thinking about cable, all the streaming, you've got ads, you've got shows, you've got movies, you've got independent movies, you've got YouTube productions. There is so much stuff going on that they need so much content that almost anything can get into TV and film because they're doing everything.

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 with my good friend, Chris SD. Chris is an award winning music producer. He's worked on 5 albums that have won Juno awards along with 7 nominations, which is kinda like the Grammys for Canada if you guys aren't familiar with the Juno awards, but it's kinda big deal. He's also helped countless indie songwriters get their music placed in top shows on networks like Netflix, Hulu, ABC, Fox, NBC, HBO, CBS, basically all the big networks that you're probably familiar with. He runs a company called Sync Songwriter, and they have a program called the art of the song pitch which basically he helps the artists to be able to connect with the right people in music licensing. If you've been a part of Modern Musician for a while, then you're probably not a stranger to Chris SD. We've had him in the podcast a couple of times before, and it's always a great conversation. I remember when we were first getting started together, Chris, and starting to coach and mentor other artists, and that's pretty amazing now to see the impact that each of us is making on the music industry, and you in particular on the world of sync licensing. So I'm really excited to talk more today and thank-you for taking time to be on the podcast. 

Chris SD: Oh, yeah. Thanks so much, Mike. Really appreciate you having me back. It's always a pleasure.

Michael: Absolutely. To start with maybe really briefly since some folks here are probably going to be familiar with you already, but I would love to hear a little bit about your story of sync songwriter and your kind of the purpose behind it and how you started it.

Chris: Yeah, sure. No problem. So to dovetail a little bit into what you said, which is really interesting, so to start halfway through the story: when I met you, we were both 2 people trying to get our message out. We had no idea on how to do that, and we actually met at a conference trying to figure out: how do we reach people; get our message out instead of putting posters on poles and stuff? You and I started from kind of ground 0 with that. And yeah, it's been amazing to see this great progress in terms of having grown our communities and helped so many more musicians do what we did, and so it's really, really cool. But anyway, the start of Sync Songwriter was basically me sitting in a studio, working on records with artists and bands and putting a lot of effort into the indie records. So I used to work with big artists and I used to work with indie artists. The indie artists, I used to put my blood, sweat, and tears into the record and really push for it and then hope for the best and it will go off into the ether, and most times it would just disappear; there would be crickets. Nothing would happen. There were no agents or managers or labels propelling them along. So ultimately what it came down to was trying to figure out: how do we get the music out there in a much bigger way? How do we get not only a fan base, but can they make money from their music? Do they have to go on tour in a van and put posters on poles, as I was just talking about? Do they have to be trying to get a label deal? Do they have to get a manager and an agent? A lot of those things are tough, at the beginning. Was there an easier way? This is right around the time that people started licensing their music to TV and film. If you remember the way it was before that was, there were probably, I don't know, if you got onto cable and stuff, that's all there was: cable. I guess you could get satellite, but mainly cable and you have 20-50 channels or something and it was all pre-programmed stuff and, you know, it wasn't that cool to be on most of those shows because the shows were pretty mainstream produced. That's what the studios were doing at the time, and then what started to happen is as the prices went down for production and so on, there became more and more new directors and new producers pitching new ideas; pitching new shows looking to create their own art, but at the same time, knowing they've got to sell, advertising in their case and so on. So they would start putting these shows out, and then all of a sudden there's like a bunch of interesting shows started to pop up. Then it became really interesting to be like: Hey, I could get my music into a cool show that I like that I think is really great, and I know that the people watching that show who listened to the kind of music that's on the show just like mine are perfect fans for me. And so people started to get their music licensed. Then it became like, looking around oh, they did it. Maybe we should do it and stuff. It seems like some great reach. And then they started to hear about the money and the money, of course, can be huge, right? You were talking if you're getting into a big ad, like a big one, like Apple ads, you're talking 6 figures just for one placement. I personally work with artists who've gotten into season finals of shows or talking to $30,000; $20,000; $10,000 for one placement. So it's very lucrative as well if you can get a good spot. Now, one of the things that's really cool is you also get backend royalties that come in on the backend. So every time something airs, you also get royalties. So sitting in the studio working with these indie artists, I was like, man, this is the way to go. We should be trying to get this music into TV and film. So I wasn't doing it for my own music. I wasn't writing music at that point. I was trying to help other artists to get their music in, a little bit selfishly, too, because I was working on the record and I want it to do well. And so as a team, we would get together and try to like, okay, let's do this. So I was at first thinking like: okay, this can't be that hard. I'd already got a name for myself in the music industry, and I thought TV and music can't be that different and I should be able to call up someone who puts music into TV and film and look it up. Music supervisors. Okay. So I thought: I can just waltz in there and make some friends or talk to them or just get them to place this great music because I think it's great and the band thinks it’s great. So I started that way and failed completely. Basically cold calls and things like that just don't work. You've got to be a publisher. If you're a label, sure. If you're a library, okay. An agency. Yeah. If they've got a previous relationship with you. Interesting. They would say: Oh, there's an award winning producer who wants to talk to me. I talked to a couple of supervisors, maybe 3 of them or something earlier on, but it was always a very distant, cold relationship, and that's the way it goes. But gradually, I started to build these relationships with them and started to figure out how to get music into TV and film. The way I figured it out wasn't me coming up with the “formula” or some like I've got a good idea. I literally just asked the supervisors. I was like: Hey, we're becoming friends. What's the best way that I can get you something without being a hassle and a pest to you, which feels natural that I'm helping you do your job? Oh, okay! And then they told me all the stuff: you gotta do this and do this. And that still didn't really quite get me in the door because they've got their go to people, right? So I'd show up with a record twice a year or something. So not great. So gradually as it started to snowball, I moved to LA around the same time and got more and more connections down in Los Angeles and realized that I have way more bandwidth to help artists connect with these supervisors that I've now gotten to know that trust me. I should be reaching out to a larger audience. That's when I formed Sync Songwriter. And the whole idea was to take indie songwriters and connect them with the people at the top, avoiding a lot of the middle people, which we can talk about a bit, but really to cut to the chase and make your own future. There's a great saying I heard recently, which I like a lot, is that if you don't own your future somebody else will. And that means that unless you're doing something to control what happens and you're under your own will to direct your life or things that you're doing, it'd be like going to get a job. If you wait until you're hungry and you got to pay your rent and you just got to get a job, yuou're going to be working for somebody, and that may not be the future you want. So you want to plan your future. And it's the same thing with licensing music: You don't want to just be at the behest of a third party, necessarily, because you're just depending on them. You're just waiting for it to happen. So that's the nutshell with how that all got started.

Michael: That's awesome. Yeah. Thank-you for sharing that. What it reminds me of was yesterday we were talking on the podcast about the locus of control and this idea of… there's a psychology term locus of control that they found that people who take responsibility for themselves and take ownership, that that's one of the traits with high achievement and success that they found over and over again as people with a locus of control that's internal versus “victim mindset” of claiming external circumstances or not taking responsibility or making excuses. So it sounds that's one of the benefits of learning how to license your music and learning how to think in this way to regain control of your life and to be able to actually be responsible, rather than looking externally.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: A little bit of a rabbit hole there.

Chris: No, I think that's really cool, and I would say that there's certainly a middle ground too, not just those two extremes. I think a lot of us, me included, we'll drift sometimes. We'll just let the wind push us somewhere and so on, and we end up in situations once in a while where we just like.... We do it because everybody else is doing it. I don't mean imitating. I'm not talking about everybody's doing this particular thing. I'm going to do that. I'm not talking about fads and stuff like that. I’m talking about expectation. So when we look around us at our life and we say: well this is what my parents did. This is what my friends do. This is what my neighbors do, and people around me do, then I think that's, yeah, that's probably what I should do. Maybe it's not. maybe you should be looking and everybody else should be thinking a little bit bigger than that. Maybe you should say, actually, am I settling here? Is there something more interesting that I can do that's going to take a little bit of work? Do I have a good idea that this could happen and then going for that kind of stuff. So I think that's really important to think about for sure.

Michael: That’s really powerful.

Chris: Oh, I'll tell you a quick story actually to that I think was relevant to the audience, like people watching right now, is that thing about free will and so on really came about in my life and how things were happening, based on going to a conference when I was first starting out in a band. I went down to this conference and one of the speakers was Malcolm McLaren. He was the manager of the Sex Pistols and obviously that was long before that, but he was guest speaking and doing some stuff. Anyway, my brother and I were in my band and were late. We showed up and we missed his thing, but he was coming out of the lecture hall with his little entourage walking down the hall, and I placed myself in the middle of the hall to get in his way a little bit. And he walked up and I said: excuse me, Malcolm. I really apologize. I missed your talk and I just wanted to know if you have one piece of advice you could give me right now for a band just starting out. And he looked at my brother and I think it was my brother, you went over to him and he took the conference tag, took it off his neck on the lanyard, threw it on the ground and he said: [in a bad British accent] You don't come to these conferences. You don't come to them. You go home and write great songs and make them come to you. I did a horrible Malcolm McLaren there, [both laughing] but that was such an eye opener, and a lot of people think that everything's a pie in the sky: the labels, they're doing you a favor to sign you, whatever. It doesn't matter. Agents, managers, music supervisors, they're all these sort of unattainable people, and if they'll just look at you, then you're like, amazing! You have to remember that your songs are worth cars if they're good. You can get that kind of money out of a song if you do it the right way, you follow the right steps. So always think about that and think about your ownership, what you have. Value yourself, and I'm not talking about being pretentious or fully yourself. Nobody likes that. But knowing in your heart that they need what you have, and if they don't need what you have, then you've got to either: write better songs, which is totally doable, practice makes perfect, or you've got to get your production level up. If you've got those 2 things in there, and I'm not talking about you have to sound like the latest Billie Eilish record, you just have to sound good for TV and film. You're under your own agency, and that's important to remember is value what you do.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. Some, there's probably 4 or 5 different stories and analogies that my mind's going to, but I feel like you just summarized it really there. The next question that I would love to hear your perspective on is for people who are here right now who are listening to this, I would guess that a lot of them, especially if they've been in our our community for a little while, have, at the very, least heard about sync licensing, have thought about licensing their music and maybe haven't fully taken the plunge in and actually started to attempt to actually make it happen. One of the questions that they might have is: is this right for me and for the kind of music that I make? So I'm curious from your perspective, having so much experience working with artists and seeing what's working right now and what's not working right now, is there a particular type of artist or type of music or how do you recommend looking at this in terms of people who's the best suited to make the most out of the opportunity of sync licensing?

Chris: Yeah, that's a great question. This is particularly good timing, coincidentally. I decided a few days ago to do this mini series leading up to, basically, we're having this music supervisor panel that's free and everyone can come out to and that's happening in early January. Between now and then for the sync songwriter community, this isn't open to the public, but for the sync songwriter community, I decided to do a mini series on each step you need to do to get your music into TV and film. The right way to do it successfully, not just stuff you read online, but literally how I've shown people how to do that. I am releasing my first one today. So if anybody's out there at the end of this interview, I'll have a freebie for you: a thing that can help you with your metadata and talk about some of those steps that you need to do. If you grab that, you'll be signed up to the Sync Songwriter list and you can get into the mini series if you want it. It's totally free and stuff like that. If you don't want to be on the Sync Songwriter list, just unsubscribe. I'm certainly not one of those people who's trying to just sell you stuff all the time. Okay? I just want to help you. Okay? So to answer your question in a nutshell, outside of what that mini series is… the truth is any song, pretty much, almost any song can get licensed and the reason is, is because there are so many opportunities. There's just so much stuff, right? You're thinking about cable, all the streaming, you've got ads, you've got shows, you've got movies, you've got independent movies, you've got YouTube productions. There is so much stuff going on that they need so much content that almost anything can get into TV and film because they're doing everything. So there's so many of these opportunities available. You can be doing anything. You can have almost any kind of music and you can get into TV and film. The trick is finding the opportunities. That's really what it all comes down to. That's called targeting. That's something I teach in that free miniseries. But it's like, how to find those opportunities where your music fits. So you're not just using a shotgun approach. You're not just saying if there's so many opportunities, I guess it's a numbers game that I just got to do as much as possible and put my music out there and write as many songs as possible. That's not the answer. That's a little bit like buying 500 tickets. So you have 500 songs, right? And you're like: I got 500 songs. Most people I talk to have 20-30, so I'm going to rock it. You think about the millions of songs out there in libraries, for example, buying 500 tickets for a billion dollar lottery ticket is not really going to increase your odds much more than the one. So that's important to think about. But the cool thing about if you write more esoteric music, like meditation music or show tunes or anything like that, it could be Korean hip hop, it could be… there's just so many like Gothic Americana. If you write in those kinda niches, then you can be a big fish in a small pond because, sure, there are fewer opportunities for those, but the thing is, there's a lot fewer people doing that. So if you become the go-to person for supervisors whenever they need meditation music, they're like: I know who to call, they’ll call you up. That's a really cool thing. So it doesn't matter if you're not in the big genres, the pop, the country, the hip hop, the rock. It's okay if you're in all these different genres, the only thing that's going to stop you from getting into sync licensing are two things: 1) is if you're super cutting edge, you're an artist and you're like: what I do is you can't pigeonhole me and I just don't want to be like everybody else, and I purposely am trying to reinvent music. It'll be more difficult because supervisors want to have something that people understand the language of on the first pass. They don't want music that's going to grow on the audience because they're not going to hear it more than once, unless it re-airs, but they want it to go by and be like: Oh, that's cool. I get that! That makes sense with what I'm watching. So as long as you're within the norm of what the musical culture is, especially in the West, though if you're watching from India, you can get music placed in the US no problem as well. Spanish lyrics, all kinds of stuff, even if it's “ethnic” music or whatever, there are spots for that as well. But in general, it has to be like a known, understood language of music, if that makes sense, that everyone's heard before. And the other thing that'll stop you is your production. So you have to have, obviously, good songs and your production's gotta be above the threshold to get into TV and film. If you jump on randomly on SoundCloud and you go through that, you're going to hear a bunch of stuff that's like not even semi-pro yet. It doesn't mean they're bad. I never think about it that way. Just they're not ready. It sounds like my music when I first started. It sucked. I just sucked. My recording sucked. Okay? [both laughing] We all started somewhere. It's just the way it goes.

Michael: I think that's the case for all of us if we're honest.

Chris: Yeah. We weren't born with that. So you gotta figure out how to up that value.

Michael: Cool, yeah. So one question that comes to mind, I would love to hear your perspective on is in this world of AI and generated music, I'd be curious to hear your general thoughts and perspective on where things are headed in the sync licensing world and what the addition of, I don't know, of people who are syncing music, being able to generate music that fits the scene on the spot. What can artists who are listening to this right now do to allow themselves to continue to cut through the noise or continue to provide value? Or is that even a valid concern? Do you think that's never going to replace the type of music that some supervisor looking for? Yeah, I'd just love to hear your general thoughts on where we're headed in terms of generative music.

Chris: Yeah, sure. So I think that there's a good news, bad news, and news in the middle with all of this. So I think the interesting thing… Let's start with the bad news. The bad news is this is a personal opinion because no one really knows, but I think if we look at the motion of the world and how things evolve, everything, patterns, life, all things that move and progress and grow in symmetry and all these things, over time I think it's inevitable that AI will do most things better than people. I just think that’s the way it's going to be. The question is, of course, that everyone's so will we survive the process and all this other stuff? One of my theories I like is that AI, when it happens, if it does get away on us, which it probably will at some point, because no one's controlling it, it will go so quickly that we won't even be competitors. We won't matter to it within seconds, potentially. So there's going to be no T2 and all that stuff. Probably. That's one theory anyways. Within the realm of music, we can talk about: will music change? How will that change with AI? We don't know what that is. Let's assume that AI is better than pretty much anybody writing music and so on, then it could be argued that AI will produce all the music, but here's the catch on that for me is that right now computers can beat any human chess player. What's the name of the big one? Carlson Magnus, he's like the best can't remember his name exactly.

Michael: I remember there was a famous no? Maybe it was go… I watched a documentary about go, famously, the number one player in the world got beat by AI deep mind, I think from Google a little ways ago. And that was a big deal at the time.

Chris: Totally. And chess was the same way just before that. So that was a big deal. Now there's this reigning champion, guy from Denmark who for years, he's been like the reigning champion of the world. And he can't beat a computer and yet he holds an audience. People watch him play, watch all the speed matches with rapt attention. And doing that right so that's a real clue into how we're going to coexist with AI music. Now it could be that just because somebody can go and press a button nowadays, because AI is what midi is to us now, even though it's super dated. If someone in the 50’s, you're talking about media, one person could sit in a room and play all the instruments, make all the music. Oh, and by the way, there's a whole bunch of new sounds and instruments too, and they can automate a lot of that stuff. They can actually tune their vocal and they can do all this stuff. You talk to somebody from the 50’s, they’d be like: what's the purpose of even making music? Talk to us about that. We still make music. We still put the parts together. If you hit a synthesizer nowadays, you don't have to synthesize all the sounds and create them. You can put a patch in and you can go through all the patches and you can treat it like a bunch of guitars on your wall. So there's no shame in that. Some people are against tuning vocals. I think tuning vocals is fine. Especially if you're going for an effect, use it. It's a tool, even if it's not an effect, it's like: make it sound real, as real as you can, and I think it's recorded art. And if you can't do it live, then that becomes a problem for sure. But the bottom line is that we've got so many tools at our disposal now, so many automations that it could be argued from someone with the perspective of the 50’s that we're not really making music, but we are making music. So I think that's like the middle news, that we could probably coexist with AI and all of that stuff. The good news is temporal good news; it's temporary good news is my feeling is that AI is going to progress within society as fast as most other things. So if you remember back to all these things that were super hyped up. There was the .com bubble in the 2000 year/late nineties or something, and basically everyone thought the internet was going to change the world, which it did. But it took 20 more years than everybody thought. So that was the problem. Everybody jumped on, bought stocks, created companies and everything like that. Color printers came out, everybody thought they were a graphic designer. Self driving cars, they've been talking about that for years. My brother-in-law works at Google and he’s a part of that too. He was talking about self driving cars five years ago and was like, yeah, we're probably going to be there. No fault of his own.

Michael: I was always like “next” year. Elon Musk is like, Oh, it's one year away.

Chris: Yeah. But there's no fault in people thinking that way, and because things can sometimes happen very quickly and especially if you're doing it, the problem is there's all these things that pop up. It creates other things, so that when the thing happens, it creates people pushing back, creates obstacles, unveils obstacles that you didn't see before. There's all of these types of things that can come up. So I think it's really important to remember that things change slower than we would like them to, or think that will. Once in a while, something will happen like a digital camera, when they came out, they took over the film industry very quickly, faster than everybody thought. But mostly with the big things, they just take time. You've already got Hollywood trying to legislate AI in film, and they're winning. The actors are getting their way. So Hollywood can't just run away with AI, so there's all of these things that are going to be slowing the progress. So why is that good news? Because most of you are not minors anymore, I'm assuming you're most of you are over the age of 18, and it's probably going to last a long time in your lifetime where you'll be able to create music and there'll be a differentiation between you and AI for a long time. Future generations? Who knows? So that's my take on it. Just: who knows? [both laughing I feel weird talking about it cause there's so many pundits out there being like “this is what's going to happen”.

Michael: I think you have a great perspective on it. I appreciate you sharing that. It's one of my favorite things to talk about, clearly, because we've talked about it many times on and off air. But it certainly seems like this is one of the defining technologies of our generation, or of our lives. So it's an important thing to figure out and try to do our best to make it a good outcome for everyone. Real quick, I would love to hear what the current status is. You mentioned the Hollywood strike. I know that there's the actors, there's also the writers, were on strike. As someone from the inside is very connected to this industry, can you give us a quick update on what's the status? You mentioned that they had a big win as it relates to their rights versus AI and how that works in Hollywood.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, sure. No, no worries. Just so you know, I was not sitting on the edge of my seat with bated breath, watching: when is this going to happen? Cause it really didn't affect what we do because the kind of weird silver lining around that for us was that the music supervisors, who are normally very busy and though they're placing more songs when they're busy, when they weren't busy, they had more time for indie music; They had more time to focus on people I was introducing them to, the people I work with is I was able to say: Hey! And they had time to hang out and make catalogs and oh, when things get going, I'm going to do this. So it's been great, but overall what happened is, yeah, the writers are back at work. Now the actors have just figured things out and they're going back to work. So it's all kinda over and these things will happen again. They're like earthquakes, they're going to come. There'll be another one and there'll be another there. If you look back, they’re regular strikes that go back in history. So it's just the way it is. Not much to talk about because everybody's going back to work. They're going to be playing catch up now with everything and so on. But when there is a strike, it is a good time actually to be meeting music supervisors because they are just less busy and they've got more time on their hands, type of thing. 

Michael: That's awesome. It reminds me of in some ways, COVID obviously was a huge challenge for a lot of us, but in some ways it was also, for a lot of people, even free time to be able to explore things like music. I was actually more curious from along the lines of the terms that they came up with. How did they resolve the AI situation? 

Chris: Yeah, so I didn't look too deeply into it because I care less, not that I don't care, it's just it's not my wheelhouse, about how the actors are protecting their own identities in TV and film. That's less of a concern to me than how AI applies to audio and so on and music. That won't change until it can change. So until AI gets good enough, which it's not really, to be able to just put music out, that's going to work in TV and film. So here's the other interesting part about this: if you talk to almost any music supervisor and you ask them: Hey, how come you work with artists or labels? Why don't you just go to libraries? Libraries are easy to go to. You just go in there and you filter, you type in your thing, you say: Hey, here's what I want to get, and up pops the track. Why don't you just do that? Most supervisors enjoy, 1) getting the scoop on new music, right? They want to be the one who discovered somebody, and found the cool music. The other reason is that they want authenticity. Often what happens in libraries, when something starts to become something, like 90’s music was recently a thing, right, became just a bump in 90s music, probably because the generation Gen X are now making all the movies and who knows what, and things are cyclical, right? The kids/teenagers are getting into the 90s. It's like a ripple the way the nineties was a ripple of the 60’s sort of thing. So it's just the way it's working. But the bottom line is you see that sort of bump in 90’s music and it's like: where does that go? Do you follow that? And libraries are like: yeah, you do. You just produce a bunch more 90’s music. And so they're putting all kinds of music out in libraries that's like the 90’s. But supervisors want authenticity. They don't want just some people; some writers sitting there just banging out some stuff that sounds like it. The way AI is going to be, especially at the beginning. Eventually it'll fool us, but so far it's a good tool and it can help you get off the ground maybe, and with lyrics, instead of the magnets on your fridge, you've got, ChatGPT. It does the same sort of thing. Just much better. And yeah authent/icity is king, so that's good news.

Michael: That totally makes sense. Yeah, it definitely seems like: we are all humans and we're all going to be here, and we're going to need something to give us purpose and meaning and connection. Even the fact that you described a lot of these supervisors, if given the choice between getting their music from something that's completely isolated and doesn't have a human connection, versus actually going somewhere that lets them build a relationship and connect with other humans, they tend to prefer that side of it. Seems like there's some good news in there for humans. Humans like to connect with humans.

Chris: Yeah. That's, I would say, optimistic. So a supervisor saying: I can connect with a human and have a more pleasant time, or I can get a better song from this library. They're going to go to the library and get the better song.

Michael: Yeah. And for cheaper.

Chris: I'm saying that the music, the actual created music, has authenticity to it because people have created it with authenticity. The AI and writers and so on, they're just making a postcard version of it, typically. Right? Some of them are really good at it and be really convincing, but a lot of them, you can tell. It just sounds like filler music. And so they're less after filler music. They want a great song when it comes from the heart, the singers, just emoting exactly what they want. And so that's really what I'm talking about. And that's difficult to replicate for writers or AI, especially at this point. 

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that totally makes sense. We had Bobby Ozinski on here a couple of days ago, and we were talking a lot about AI and production, and one of the things that we had mentioned is how, at least at the time of us having this conversation right now, AI is much better not as a replacement to what you're doing, but as an augmented tool to get you from 0-80% extremely quickly. But then that last 20%, that like the 80-100 is something that it's not very good at doing on its own, and it really needs that human touch or like a master to come in. But, gosh, like the ability in a couple of seconds to go from 0-80% is something that, if you're not doing that and you're trying to do that entire process without it, then it feels like you're missing out on a big opportunity; an amazing tool that can help you be more prolific and be more creative.

Chris: Yeah. What would be an example, would you say, of the 0-80% in music?

Michael: Like, for example, writing a song. If you were going to sit down and write a song from scratch, then you might get writer's block or you might wonder: okay, I know I want to write a song about my pet fish, Bobby, but I'm not really sure what I should say about Bobby, and if you go into chat GPT or if you're using StreetTeam, like we have our artist AI bot built into it, which essentially is like ChatGPT but with a little bit more fine tuning for musicians. But if you basically ask it: I want to write a song about my pet fish, Bobby. Can you ask me 5 questions that will help me brainstorm ideas for the song and help you write the song, then it'll ask 5 questions that will make you think and reflect on my relationship with Bobby. I love that pet fish and he swims so wonderfully. And then you say: okay, can you just write the full song; all the lyrics then in a second. It'll write the entire song. The verse, the chorus, even the arrangement and the chord progression. That's what I mean going from 0-80%. Cause if you play the song from scratch, like that exactly as it wrote it, then usually be a little bit cheesy. It’ll be like [starts singing] “my pet fish is a really good friend to me”. [both laughing] But it's exactly like you're saying it's not quite there yet, and that's a big yet.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So I think the reason I asked you was specifically the number that I guess you and Bobby using 0-80%, cause I've tested ChatGPT and fairly recently with things like that, just to see stuff. I'd say I’m lucky to get to 50%, meaning that you get basically: Oh, that's a cool idea. That's interesting. But mostly it's stuff that I'm like: man, I gotta really work on this. I got 2 good ideas out of this, but the rest of it's just all put together. It's just not that good, and if I was to release a song like that and I was to hand it to a supervisor, I would imagine they wouldn't think: Oh, that song is like 80% good. I think they probably think: that song’s 50% good. If that.

Michael: You might be right there. It was a bit arbitrary. 80% was a little bit of an arbitrary number, and it probably depends too on what your prompt is and what you're going for and what not. Also ChatGPT3.5 versus ChatGPT4, the plus version is just, oh my gosh, night and day difference. ChatGPT4 is so much better.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is that I think it comes down to the use, right? So maybe the things that I'm testing are, I'm trying to use a little high up. I've had a long time in the music industry as a producer and dealing with songwriters. So the high level stuff that I'm testing; the higher level stuff, is not close. It's not close to that, right? I guess if you're starting as a songwriter and you don't know what to write about your fish, and you need something cause you just can't think of anything? Yeah, maybe it gets you 80% of the way there, but that song is not probably going to do that well at the higher levels, like trying to get it in TV and film or trying to get it out there, maybe get a label interested in stuff like that. I guess that's my only point. It's like when those organs came out with a little boom box and stuff. I think it was in the 60’s probably, and they came out and you'd play the organ. [makes cheesy soundfx noises]. It's like wow, this beats a piano! We've got 4 sounds in the keyboard! [both laughing] I feel we're going through that a little bit right now. Like I said earlier, I'm not one of these people who's totally skeptical: don't worry about AI. I said earlier, I think it's going to take over everything, but I just don't think we're there yet, and I think it's going to take longer than people think. People just get more optimistic. We're wired that way. That's probably a survival mechanism. It's like: we try impossible things. It's like: Oh I got washed out to sea in this river and I can't see the land, but I think I could swim back. Probably you can't, but you try, and then every once in a while, someone gets assured it's a survival and they pass those genes on. Who knows? But we are more optimistic than reality. We tend to be. So I think with AI, we're also more optimistic. We're like, Oh, it's super, super amazing, and it will be, but we're not there yet to have a serious conversation about A) being replaced or B) to me where it's going to start to show up in all the top productions and TV and film yet. We're just not there.

Michael: Yeah, it'll be super interesting to watch because I think you're totally right. From a standpoint of technology, generally there's that… what do they call it? The Gartner hype cycle where there's a new technology that comes out and this is worth looking up, if you guys haven't seen the Gartner hype cycle, there's a graphic. It's really interesting, but it's this graph that kind of looks like a heartbeat. If you know what a heartbeat looks like when you're looking at the little line graph of it. But at the beginning, there's this huge spike, and that's when a new technology comes out and there's a bunch of hype around it because, generally, there's a few people who are engineering and designing the new technology who get it and they are telling everyone “this technology is crazy and it's going to change the world”. And there's a bunch of people around them that don't really fully grasp or fully understand what this technology is or how it works or the technical aspect of it, but they blow it out of proportion. They're like: this is going to change everything. And then there's a point where there's a big dip and I think, what do they call it, like the trough of disillusionment. But usually from that spike, there's a bubble pop. So like the internet, there was the .com bubble pop where everything was overhyped and it got destroyed. Then, there's the slope of enlightenment and that's where it starts to come back up when people start realizing; okay, like maybe there actually is something to this technology and it's not all just hype. I feel like NFTs are a great example of that. There was a huge bubble, a bunch of hype, millions of dollars being spent on like gifs of hamsters, and then there's this like bubble pop. I think that there are actually some valid use cases for NFTs, like the music industry. I think there's an amazing opportunity if it's done the right way. But I agree, I think it doesn't seem like AI has experienced the bubble pop yet or the trough of disillusionment. So it'd be interesting to see if, and when that happens, or if you subscribe to the idea that this is something that's fundamentally different from every technology that's come before it, and that this is part of an exponential curve and we're approaching the singularity. One perspective would be that, maybe this is a different type of technology and that it's going to evolve so quickly and so exponentially that we don't experience the same kind of dip before it evens out.

Chris: Yeah, totally.

Michael: We don't really know.

Chris: Yeah. And just to add one last thing to this point is that I think there's a difference between fireside chat, and reality. I think that it's important to make the distinction between the two. I think it's fun to sit around right now, like we're doing and talking about it, talking about the similarity, talking about all kinds of “it's going to take over and, maybe it'll surpass us so quickly and it will survive, blah, blah, blah”. It's all hype. It's just like all things that are good to chat about, but we're talking about today, and waking up tomorrow, right? People are watching musicians, so you've got to use AI for what it's good at right now. It's cool to imagine, and it's cool to maybe plan a little bit, but what's it going to do tomorrow? You're going to wake up tomorrow and have a hit song about your fish through AI? [Michael laughs] Possibly, but probably not. Otherwise everybody would be doing it. They would have done it already in the last half a year, whatever. Just take it one step at a time, and treat it with the reality that it has and don't forget to dream and have those fireside chats, but separate those things so you don't waste time and go down weird rabbit holes. Save that for the people who make a lot of money on that. A lot of people like hyping this stuff up because they can make quick money. A bunch of people made a bunch of money in crypto, and crypto hasn't disappeared.

Michael: Some like pretty illicit folks do! Like with Sam Bankman-Fried.

Chris: They were just like: ride this profit while you can. Or even the real estate bubble. There were a lot of banks that knew it was going to end. They're just like “Sell, sell, sell, sell sell as fast as you can, make your money and then sock it away and get out while you can”, because they're just playing the game.In a way they already know it's not going to last.

Michael: Yeah. That's one thing I really appreciate about you. I feel like you really have a grounded perspective and mindset around it. I tend to be someone who, I am up in the clouds a little bit more, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the future. And so I think it's important to have both.

Chris: Yeah. I was about to say, gotta have both.

Michael: There one analogy that came to mind as you were describing that I think it was Jeff Walker actually, who first described this analogy, which was: that it's like skiing. When you're skiing down a mountain, you want to balance looking up at the horizon and looking further ahead with what's right in front of you. If you spend all your time looking up and looking in the distance, then you might literally trip over a branch that's right in front of you, but if all you do is you're always looking down at what's in front of you, then there might be a cliff that's literally coming over the edge to go down. So it does take this balance of looking up and taking a look at where things are headed right around the corner and further in the distance, while also being present and grounded and what's happening right now.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. I think it is a balance, and I was pushing the reality thing a little hard probably because most people, myself included sometimes, you jump on the bandwagon quick. Cause you're like: Oh my gosh, what's going on? It's like: calm down. Let's be a bit more pragmatic. What's really happening here? But we need both.

Michael: I think it's a good mindset to take right now. So you know what, we have a live audience here of some really cool folks and cool musicians. So how about we actually invite some folks to raise their hand and come on live to ask a question.

Chris: I love it.

Michael: Awesome. So I see one question here. Sophia asked specifically: how can I utilize platforms like LinkedIn and Discord to get more familiar and get to know people in music, licensing and syncing? And I think the deeper underlying question is: how do I find the people in music licensing and syncing and build a relationship with them on any platform? Also I want to do a quick reminder for everyone: Chris, could you share a little bit more details again about this free mini series that you're doing? Cause I know this is like the place to go if you're interested in sync licensing and you want a step-by-step guide and a resource. We can actually start there. I'd love to hear a little bit more about this mini series that you've created and how people can dive into that.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So basically the way to do it… You know what I'll just post this now, I guess I could do it later. I’ll just put in a link here. So basically what that is is that if you hit that link, you're going to get two things: One is it shows the 5 steps that I'm actually covering in the mini series and talks briefly about them and about how to get your music into TV and film. The other thing you get is a free metadata guide. Before you send anything out, you have to have your metadata right in your MP3s. Super, super, super important that the supervisors get it. Everybody in the industry uses the metadata. The guide is basically a step-by-step: here's what you need, here's what you don't need, and you're done. So if you just follow what's in the guide and just do what's in the guide that's all you gotta do. Okay> We've covered every single thing you've got to have in there. So you can download it, you click the link, you get it. It's all free stuff, guys. So you just download it and do that if you want to.

SoundFX singing: Oh my God.

Michael: I cherish the moments that I get to use that soundbite. That is awesome. Can we do a virtual round of applause for Chris for putting that together? That is so awesome. Thank-you for creating that. Again, Ari just shared the link in the chat, and if you're listening to this on the podcast, then we'll have the link for you for easy access in the podcast show notes as well.

Chris: Sweet. That's great. And then the mini series just quickly is: I just decided to do it. I put up weekly blogs and I decided to replace the blogs with training/lessons. I'm putting the first one out today. So if you jump in, you can get the first one, and then each week until the music supervisor panel, which we're going to have a free panel, we usually get thousands of musicians out to it. I'll come out to hang out with some music supervisors. We're doing that in early January and that leads up to that panel so that by the time you get there, you know how everything works. You know how music supervisors think you can start to figure out who they are and all of this stuff. I thought it'd be really cool. We had over 500 songs submitted. So I'm actually accepting some song submissions so you can submit a song and I might use it in one of the videos as well.

Michael: Wow! That is awesome. Yeah. I love the fact that it's lined up so nicely. So you've got the mini series leading up to this awesome opportunity to be able to connect potentially with these licensing supervisors. Okay, so Just asked a question: what are your thoughts on giving a library the exclusive rights to a song in return for them working harder to license it?

Chris: I actually do recommend exclusive libraries over non-exclusive libraries, because non-exclusive are very easy to get into, they have tons and tons of songs, not that exclusive libraries don't, they also do, but exclusive libraries tend, not always, but they tend to be a little bit more proactive. Not that they're going to pitch your music necessarily, but they're going to be much more selective about who they represent, and so typically the roster will be smaller to some degree, and it shows that they're investing in that, because it's harder for them to sign people with an exclusive deal than a non-exclusive deal. So that they're bringing something to the table to do that. I think exclusive libraries can be good in general. I think they're better than non-exclusive, but at the same time, remember what I was saying earlier about not being in control of your future. You're basically going to be a needle in a haystack hoping to be discovered. The way to think about this or remember this is: imagine that the library is like a big box store, and the supervisor shows up, parks the car in the parking lot and goes into the box store to get a song for an opportunity. The box store is full of songs. They're in every shelf, in every section, in every department, so they've got to walk all the way back to your department, to your section, to where your shelf is on there and then the multiple shelves and then pick you from your shelf amongst all the songs that are beside you on the shelf for something to happen, right? That is where you just don't see that much success in libraries. The only time that I see consistent success is 1) if you're on the front burner, meaning the owner of the library knows you and really thinks you're great and one of the best people on there and they give you some spots or an agent, treats you like really well because you're popular, you got a popular sound or you've got a big label deal or something like that; you've got something going for you. Other than that, you tend to be floating out there. That's why I'm such a big proponent on making relationships directly, bypassing the agents in the libraries, make those relationships directly with the music supervisors. I'm a big proponent of that. Now, the previous question, which we didn't actually answer: how do I connect with supervisors and stuff? Can I make relationships on these different platforms? So you have to be really careful in this industry because music supervisors get inundated with music all the time. I'm not talking about just indie songwriters. I'm talking about a bunch of labels and publishers and agents and libraries. They're constantly being hounded. Here's all this music. Place mine! Place mine! So you gotta be really careful if you go on LinkedIn or places like that and start trying to pitch your music to them or start a relationship. There's got to be a reason to do that. I'm not going to tell you whether you should do it or not. Just know that it's not the ideal way to do it, and it's a bit dangerous because they're sensitive to it. They don't want to be hit up on social and hit up on “safe” places by people trying to get their music to them, right? Because they're already inundated as it is. So the way I do it is I know all these people already and so they trust me over the years to do that. They wouldn't stick with me if I was just like sending them anything and everything all the time. So what I do is I'm careful with who I work with. If you're working with me and you're going through my process and I'm training you in the right way, then it's great. I can absolutely introduce you to these people. That's the way I like to do things. Less of a fan of trying to go around it through social and things like that, and so on to them. That's all. You just might end up getting blacklisted for a dumb reason that you didn't intend. That's all. 

Michael: Yeah, super smart. It definitely seems like one of the best ways to meet someone new, especially if it's a high profile person that is getting a lot of people reaching out to them, is by having some sort of connection to them; having some sort of common ground by person, a shared trusted contact. So it makes sense that you taking the time to having built this trust and built this network, it can really be a stepping stone for these artists to be able to build these relationships. It's awesome. Yeah, I would highly recommend, again, for everyone who hasn't yet Chris shared a super valuable resource with the freebies. It's there in the chat, so you can sign up and get the cheat sheet, you can get the resources, but also you can have the opportunity to connect with the sync licensing experts in the field during your event. Could you talk a little bit more about that? I know it's a little bit further down the line, but for anyone who's listening or watching this right now, can you talk a little bit about that panel that you put together and what kind of opportunity that is for them?

Chris: Yeah, sure. So basically what I want to do is I want to, basically, bring the gatekeepers, the top people, music supervisors, together in one spot as a panel. Now these aren't just any music supervisors. There's lots of places, not that many, but there are some places online you can go to and you can go and talk to somebody or speed date, and all that with a sup. There are thousands of music supervisors out there. A lot of them work on reality TV and indie movies and stuff like that. The more lower tier things, and where they're part time, and things like that. I've always believed in: to progress and to have success, you need to be rubbing shoulders with the people who are actually making that success happen. All the supervisors that I work with are the top ones; the biggest network shows, big movies of a friend who worked on Dune and stuff like that. I'm talking like Grey's Anatomy, all those big, big shows. So those are the supervisors that I work with. So I'm putting together this panel. It's totally free. All you gotta do is show up. It's going to be on zoom or something like that. Just show up there and you get to hang out with this panel of supervisors. You’re going to be asking questions. You're going to discover more about who they are, how they think, what they're looking for; we're going to talk about what they're looking for. So if you're thinking about getting music to them and stuff like that, it's a perfect opportunity to learn something about those individual people; to figure out like: Oh, they're a perfect match for me. Or I love that show. I'd love to get into that show. Now you know who supervises it, how they think, and what they're looking for. So it's going to be really valuable just to show up and do that. So that'll be in January. If you want to know more about that, just click the link there, grab the freebies and then you'll be on our list and I can let you know and besides the mini series that you're going to get, I can keep you informed of when, where and all of that.

Michael: Fantastic. Well once again Chris, thank-you so much for coming on the podcast. It's always a great conversation and I appreciate us being able to, with that skiing analogy, zoom out, look at the horizon, you have discussions about it and also about being able to look at right now what's happening and how can the musicians who are listening to this actually give value and kind of take that next step in the career. So really appreciate you and what you're doing. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't yet to go grab the freebies and I look forward to talking again soon. Awesome.

Chris: Thanks so much, Mike. This was really great. Yeah.

Michael: YYeeaahh

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