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. 

Jorge Brea: Look, any artist wants to make it big. I get it, and the thing is that you don't go from the coffee house to the stadiums overnight. Certainly, “overnight” might be 10 years for an artist journey and or it might take a little while, right? So what I always tell artists is: the organic way is always the way, right? You want to build followers, not streams.

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. So I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Jorge Brea. So Jorge is the founder and CEO of a company called Symphonic, which is a digital music services company. He started his career as a DJ producer at 16 years old, and since then he's helped transform the music industry. He's worked with some notable artists that you might've heard of, like Deadmau5 and many others. He's been actually officially recognized as the Billboard magazine, indie power player, and today we're going to talk through digital music distribution and royalties. At the time of recording this, there's been some updates and things that Spotify is making recently. Yeah, really looking forward to connecting and thanks for taking the time to be here today.

Jorge Brea: Absolutely. So excited to meet with you and, for your audience as well, listening and the ones that will listen to this later as well. I think it's a fun time right now in the industry, so really happy to be here to talk about it.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. To kick things off, maybe you could share a little bit about how you got started and really discovered this digital distribution platform.

Jorge Brea: Sure, absolutely. So I was, as you mentioned, a pretty active DJ and producer, way back what feels like a century ago now when I was around 16 and I really always wanted to have my own record label and be able to release my own music, and obviously release music from others, but I didn't have the means to press vinyl and CD, particularly vinyl, which I'm a huge fan of. [pointing] This is not my entire collection. This is just a little bit here. What I have in my studio here. I wanted to release music and press it, but it was just so expensive and I started to see that there was this trend toward digital. iTunes had launched after Napster, and there was a site particularly that I was interested in called Beatport, which was mainly an electronic music store for DJs. I put my music up on there and lo and behold, people started liking it and buying it, and I started to make income from that to the point where the light bulb came up in my head and I thought: okay, digital is definitely going to be the way of doing this now going forth. So I worked with a lot of different labels that had pressed my music previously on vinyl and CD, and I effectively helped some of them adapt to digital. These were independent labels here from Florida. Nothing that was like… no household names or anything like that, but folks that had helped me and I wanted to effectively repay the favor and get them on the digital world, because it was certainly doing really well for me. Out of that is how Symphonic really came to be. I was with a distributor before, but the experience just wasn't really great. First, there wasn't a lot of infrastructure back then. We were even still, when we first started, sending hard drives to like Apple and others just to actually ingest music, for example. But even before I started Symphonic there just wasn't a lot of education/a lot of guidance of the distributors that were out there. I want to create a music distribution company that was for artists, by artists. So the business has certainly been around for a while. We launched in ‘06, we bootstrapped the company for many years and we launched a bunch of different services, not only just digital distribution, but game changing technology that helps artists to not only distribute a manager catalog, also transfer the catalog to us, if they want to from another distributor, as well as real time analytics, we have splits so you can actually send a portion of your royalties to somebody else if you want to free of charge, and a bunch of different things that really helped to, effectively, help any artists create, run, and grow in their music career, I would say. So it's been an interesting journey thus far. That's for sure.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, super cool. It definitely seems probably the core defining movement of the last 20-30 years as it relates to music has been the ability to distribute it online and not necessarily have to go through the physical channels. For anyone who's listening to this right now, who maybe just needs a quick crash course on exactly what it means when you say music distribution, could you share in a sentence or two the core problem that you're solving with the music distribution platform and exactly what that means.

JorgE: Yeah. I'll try to keep it brief, actually. I don't know if it's one or two sentences, but essentially if you want your music on Spotify, they won't take it directly from you. They won't accept a CD. So you need to go through an approved distributor like ourselves in order to get your music from your studio all the way into the platform for everyone to consume. That's the core piece that we do because, again, the DSPs, as we like to call it, the digital service providers, they don't work directly with artists, so they not only take in music differently every single one of them, but then they report and pay out royalties different’ different schedules, different formats. So we aim to make that super easy where you as a creator can just make the song, upload it and focus on the promotion aspect of it as well.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for that. That was a great summary.

Jorge: Sure.

Michael: I think another good question would be with the music distribution service that you guys offer and the additional services that are complimentary to it, what do you see as the defining benefits, or what makes you unique compared to maybe some of the other platforms like, I don't know, DistroKid or CDBaby or TuneCore?

Jorge: Yeah, for sure. We get that question a lot. I would say first, we have pretty unique plans, right? So as an artist, you can choose to work with us at whatever stage you are in. So we have one plan that is called Starter that is effectively a competitor to a DistroKid or TuneCore. It's $19.99 a year, 100% of royalties. All you can eat. And actually, a lot of what are upsells at different distributors, we actually give. You can do your splits for free. You don't have to get your artist to be on subscriptions in order to receive payment, and you can also select where you want to be distributed, you can choose your release date, you can have a custom label name, all those different things effectively for free without upsells, whereas other competitors might charge for that. So that's one of our intro plans, I would say. So if you're just starting out, that's a great one. But then you can move up with us, so to speak, and get on a percentage based plan, and that enables you to pitch music to us, as well as a couple of other features that are a little bit limited on the beginner plan. Like with this one, you can have multiple primary artists, for example, whereas on the starter plan, which is what we have, you are limited in that, but the aim of this is: you're starting your career, so to speak, with us, and then you're able to grow into being able to talk marketing and give us stories that we can then take to the DSP such as Spotify and so forth, and it's not easy or guaranteed by any means, but it's that ability that a Distrokid or a TuneCore, for example, don't have, with all respect to them, because we're good friends with all of them and they do a great job. Beyond that, I say we have some analytics tools that the competitors don't have. So we actually can give you analytics on who's using your material on YouTube, for example, where you can actually see the videos that are being created using your songs. You can also see how many creations are being done on TikTok from your songs. In addition to the usual suspects and things that you might see on your own as an independent artist, you can see how many streams you're getting on a day-to-day basis on Spotify, Apple, TikTok, Pandora, YouTube, and a number of other players as well. Track playlist pitching and so forth. And then the big one is, we do royalty splits, which has now become something that most of our competitors are doing as well, but we have an additional tool to that, which is effectively recoupments. We consider that another free add-on to our splits tool where you as a user can actually have 4 contributors, let's say, that you're wanting to pay, but if two of them need to earn a certain revenue threshold before the splits go out, you would actually have that capability with our technology, all included from the moment you get an account, and that's available across all plans as well, because we want to give that control and the ability to grow from day one and to be able to do it sophisticated wise.

Michael: Super cool. Yeah, so it sounds like there's a few big things. One that you just mentioned was around the ability to collaborate and have multiple contributors, and that's a feature that a lot of these other services don't provide out of the gate for free. They require everyone to have a subscription to that service, whereas with what you offer, that's actually something that's built-in that you can provide out of the gate. Super cool. I did do a little bit of research before coming on here and looked at the comparison page too. So it's definitely worth checking out for everyone. You can see a clear cut comparison of some of the different services and yeah, it's great. With that, I would love to talk a little bit about some of these updates that, at the time of recording this, Spotify has announced and rolling out and how that relates to independent musicians and the way that the royalties are going to be paid out moving forward.

Jorge: Yeah, for sure. So this is definitely obviously big news, pretty relevant news as the past few weeks ago. Us too. We're just pretty much in the past few weeks, we've been really getting acquainted with all the changes, and there's really 3 primary ones. I would say before I discuss what I think it really means to the indie artists, I think it's important to understand what these changes are and why, really. The first change is really that an artist has to earn 1,000 plays for their song in a trailing 12-month period, and also from 50 unique listeners, right? That's one change. The second change is what they're calling functional music or non-music. Let's just say audio, such as white noise and rain sounds, for example. A) is going to be valued at 20% versus the original royalty rate, and B) you're going to have a 2 minute plus sort of audio file in order to generate a royalty for that. And I'll explain why all these things a minute. And the third change is one that I'm not entirely happy with but I also see the logic with which is penalizing suppliers for artificial streaming, and it will be at a $10 per penalty rate. So going back to the first one with a thousand streams, there's a lot of artists that are like, oh, this is going to take a lot of royalties and so forth away, but Spotify's main aim is really to stop preventing the folks that are gaming Spotify, really, with this. For example, there's tons of music right now that you can search online, let's say music for dogs or relaxing music for kids. Whatever it might be in that regard. A lot of the suppliers that do this, they're not doing anything wrong by distributing music this way, but they are effectively flooding the market and putting out a ton of music and re-releasing the same audio over and over and over. And with the amount of volume going in and the amount of interest in these genres and styles, because it's lifestyle and there's moms and folks that are wanting their pet to go to sleep, for example, and go out to dinner or something. All of that is effectively taking a bit of market share from the royalty pool. Just as a quick refresher, the way Spotify makes money is it's a royalty pool, right? And in that royalty pools, every premium subscription, and then there is every single ad-based revenue and however else they collect monies to create this one pool. The pool will increase over time when the price increases kick in. So that means that the pool will expand. But the way that it really works is: Spotify keeps a certain piece off the top, no matter what, and then what is left over is divvied up amongst major record labels, indie distributors like us, artists, et cetera, based on the amount of streams that they might have. So Spotify's main aim would change 1) is to try to not have all of this sort of gaming of the system really take from that royalty pool so that an artist that maybe is generating 1,001 streams, the per play stream rate actually becomes better than what it is now. So while a lot of people and indie artists are concerned that this is actually taking money away, it's not taking money away and giving it to the majors. It's not going to go to that. It's going to go to the overall pool, so your streams actually will be worth more over time. There's going to be wider arguments in the next years ahead about AI also creating this problem with the amount of volume going in, but this is a step in the direction to sorta put controls and barriers on an industry like us. That's the first one. I'll pause on that one. If you have any questions on that.

Michael: Yeah it's super interesting. After we go through the big 3 changes, I'd love to just hear your perspective on Spotify overall and the business model. I know that they've never been profitable, and so it'd be interesting just to explore that as it moves forward. You touched on AI as well, and how that's about to explode. There's already so much new content coming out.

Jorge: I love all these topics. This is where I nerd out on this stuff.

Michael: That's super, super valuable and helpful to understand the perspective too. Cause I know that's the first thought for a lot of people is that: oh man, they're not paying out any of the ones that are under 1,000 streams and that's going to be so bad for all of the smaller indies, and it sounds like what you're saying is that: it actually shouldn't affect legitimate artists nearly as much. It's really meant to filter out fake accounts and people who are gamifying the system.

Jorge: There's many that might not agree with that, but the reality of it is: it's 2% of the overall market, let's say, of Spotify that they're not monetizing to make the other 98% much healthier, much wealthier, so to speak, and that means even an indie artist as well. So I think when there's a lot of change or things that are different, there's always a lot of fear and concern. I can tell you that when Discovery Mode first was launched, there was a lot of concern over it. For those that don't know, discovery mode is the promotional program that Spotify has to encourage algorithmic discovery of your music if you're enrolled, but that means that you're getting an actual less than what you would normally. But what we've seen is that it actually has in fact helped discoverability and has helped certain artists grow and make revenue, even if you're giving a little bit more to Spotify. There's a lot of arguments over if it's pay-to-play or whatever that is, but that's worked. There was a lot of angst about that in the beginning. I'm not 100% sure what this will do to the entire market, but I think it might be positive, at least in the beginning, and then there's going to have to be further controls and standards, which I do support that, a DSP should put the pressure a little bit on distributors to up their standards. This is one of the things that we've been doing. We've been focusing a lot on KYC (knowing your customer), trust, and safety. We've literally launched identity verification so if you want to sign up through the web for us, I started with a partner, we are going to ask for your identification because we believe that's important, not only to secure your account, but also to make sure that we stop these bad actors from further diluting and taking from the royalty pool. That's our me method of doing our part because the less that we have bad actors coming through to us, then the less penalty fees we'll eventually have over time, for example. So that's the big one there. Just briefly on the other two, with the functional non-music one, I think that's the same goal, it's just that Spotify doesn't believe that it's fair, and I agree with this, that rain, just rain hitting a roof, should be worth the same as somebody that's a creator of music and certainly the reason for the 2-minute minimum is because generally people, to game the system, might create a release for the 100 songs that are 31 seconds because 31 seconds is what currently unlocks the royalty. So putting controls on that genre I think are helpful. I would say that this isn't an issue for Apple and the reason it isn't because Apple puts really strong, valuable standards on controlling suppliers. So I think that while this is the current change, over time, Spotify should just say we don't want certain types of content or this content from even hitting our platform under this artist name, for example. That I think is another future thing that I see Spotify doing in terms of controlling for that change, for example.

Michael: Yeah, that's really interesting. It sounds like what you're saying is that with the second change, basically what they're pointing this at is background tracks are mostly like, sound effects are an example of them, but things that people aren't really engaging with. It reminds me of a meme. I've definitely seen this floating around Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it. They showed a graphic of a 30-second rainfall versus Stairway to Heaven. And it was like: these two tracks pay out the same royalty. And it's made it really clear that there was an issue with it because they actually gamed the system.

Jorge: Yeah, that's definitely an issue. And that's the one thing that artists that are thinking that the 1,000 change, for example, is bad. That's actually a beneficial one, probably more so than even the first one and or the last better, because that's going to bring a substantial amount over time back into the royalty pool. And once again, the per play rate should see increases over the course of the next year, I would say.

Michael: Cool! So how about number three?

Jorge: So number three it's one that I'm not entirely a fan of because it's like putting distributors a bit as the real responsible party, whereas I believe that DSPs have more data and more control over this, in my view. We are part of the Music Fights Fraud Alliance with our competitors like TuneCore and DistroKit, et cetera, as well as our DSP partners like Spotify and so forth. So to be in the same room to try to solve a problem, but now we have to effectively penalize for it, I'm not happy with it because the goal of it is to “mean business”, so to speak, in a mindset of Spotify's done messing around with this, but they could very well also have penalized in other ways, like just taking songs down that have egregious behavior, and they do, but I can tell you that they leave quite a bit up, in my opinion, and more could be taken down that would also actually have such a powerful impact. So I think over time maybe that changes, but it'll remain to be seen. I think what everybody's concerned about, which is rightfully and what I'm concerned about is: sabotaging competitors purposely. Like someone might use a bot to purposely infiltrate playlists of others to take them down and penalize them. Then it's the lack of transparency in this at times, when these things happen, there isn't a lot of detail that we have to go by, for example, to give to the suppliers, and I would say this DSP wide. So I think: if the transparency piece can be resolved, I think everybody will feel comfortable and I think we'll be able to learn more about how to stop this behavior from even leaving a distributor, for example.

Michael: Got it. Yeah. That's definitely interesting. So it sounds that third change that they're making is basically pretty severely penalizing distributors, and basically saying you're responsible for verifying is this legitimate or not? How did they define what qualifies something as legitimate or not?

Jorge: Yeah. So there's a lot of unknown, I would say on this, because Spotify purposely wouldn't disclose it to prevent bad actors for creating rules around this. I would say some pretty obvious ones though: if you are 1 account and you're streaming a song 1,000 times in a short amount of time, they're going to know, and that's going to be non-payment, right? I think there may be other things that are probably gray areas. Unfortunately, one of the most common things I do here is an indie artist hiring a marketing agency, and then that marketing agency using bots and kinda creating the same problem. So unfortunately, an artist might get screwed over this way because they have the right intention, but then this happens.

Michael: Sure.

Jorge: I would say that for any artists on the calls, SubmitHub to me is one of my favorite brands. We have what is called streaming promotions, but it's a bit more boutique, and I would say a little bit of a higher price margin, mostly because we are doing a lot of reach out personally to a lot of curators and so forth. But trusted 3rd party playlist firms like SubmitHub I think, for example, is a really good one to use because, actually, they do the vetting on who the folks are, even though it is challenging to get placement because I know first hand that’s like. It is something that works. Ultimately, this is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of it is the major record labels are loving this one, and this is all to benefit them. My conspiracy and my thought on it is: a major record label would be totally fine by not having much independent music on a DSP. But what they don't know, and what they're starting to realize every year, is that the independents are gaining more and more power, and they want to also operate like us. Almost 50% of the Grammy nominations this year are independent artists. So that's showing the power that the independent community has and why the majors, what they can only do is make it harder for companies that obviously know that they can control the independents at the end of the day. That's my viewpoint. It is what it is. I'll tell it to any major record labels face as well. I have no problem with that.

Michael: [sarcastically] It's probably a good time to mention that everyone in the audience right now is a major record label owner.

Jorge: Excellent. I'm glad you guys are listening.

Michael: They’re fuming. They're fuming in the chat!

Jorge: I can't wait to talk to you all after this. [both laughing]

Michael: That’s super interesting. And so to be clear, it sounds like the part that they're cracking down on is artificial streams. So they're looking at like bot streams or people that are artificially boosting plays. Who exactly are they looking to penalize for that? 

Jorge: So they actually start with the supplier. So let's say an artist does this on DistroKid or TuneCore or Symphonic, for example. They won't go after the artists. They're going to say: Symphonic/DistroKid/Tunecore provided me the song, therefore the penalty goes to you, and it's on you to then take the next steps to investigate and, if anything, pass that on down to the client and so forth. But the bigger problem is, and this is where I already know this is going to be a thing on day 1, fraud happens really quickly, right? So when someone registers on all of these platforms, they upload music really fast, they bought it really fast, then they move on to the next one, and/or they create multiple accounts in order to then manipulate the system. Then what happens is if you take down the account before you actually have any royalties coming in, then every distributor effectively is left with a little bit of “holding it back”, so to speak. So this is where I think the distributors rightfully have an opinion to be a bit upset about it when we're trying to do the good thing as well. We're not encouraging this behavior. It's just difficult behavior, and it's difficult even for the DSPs to solve. Over time that'll be controlled, and this is one of the main reasons also why we put identity verification because we're going to know everyone that has every account with us, regardless of what's entered in there. For any artist that's listening that does bad stuff and/or that knows friends that does bad stuff, trust me, I'm going to know about it and you won't get paid because I will forbid it when you're doing bad things. For sure.

Michael: Got it. 

Jorge: Your audience is probably awesome though. So sorry.

Michael: [laughing] They are. I don't think that anyone in our audience is… I mean, we talk a lot about just how it's not really a worthwhile investment to invest in artificial boosting because it might make you feel good on the surface, like: Oh like your numbers look bigger, but you're not actually providing any value to those people, and it's just like a straw house that will blow over. There's no substance to it, and so therefore it's not a long term solution.

Jorge: I would say that, look, any artist wants to make it big. I get it, and the thing is that you don't go from the coffee house to the stadiums overnight. Certainly, “overnight” might be 10 years for an artist journey and/or it might take a little while, right? So what I always tell artists is: the organic way is always the way, right? You want to build followers, not streams. What I'm doing personally as an artist, I'm by far not a big artist or anything like that, but I'm making music now and I've been working a lot with the clients that we distribute remixing them, and I'm playing the mindset of they have a certain amount of Spotify month listeners, but also a certain amount of followers. So every song that I do with those primary artists, if I collaborate and do a song organically and they release it, then those followers might start to progressively over time, come to me and I'm not spending a dime for it. I'm just spending a harder time in creativity by doing it, and then they are effectively helping to promote me. I always say that's a very natural cost effective way if you have the ability to make music fast or collaborate with most, and also I would recommend that as an artist, if you are a singer/songwriter, or you're focused on a genre, expand into different genres, because nowadays everybody likes everything. I don't think that an artist needs to just be conformed into one style. As terrible as this might sound: Spotify is almost like a social media platform where when you're an artist, you're putting out content and that's your profile. Now, I'm not saying you need to put out content every day or every week, even. I do think that art matters, but what you put out should also matter in terms of the reach that it can have because if you just put it out and you're just going to SpotifyForArtists, I can tell you from experience, that's not bad, but it doesn't necessarily lead to results. You want to put your name associated with others, and then you start to see organic growth consistently over time.

Michael: Super smart. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're recommending is one of the traffic strategies is to collaborate and remix and feature other artists and it's a great way to come together. It's like a tale as old as time with touring artists, right? Like opening for other artists on tour, and that's one of the best ways to really, to build an audience. [sarcastically] Man, if only there was just like a place where a bunch of really talented musicians were coming together in a community and they could talk to each other and they could network and collaborate together and write songs together. Man, that would be, that would really be something.

Jorge: Yes. I like that. I like your plug right there, man. Yeah. For everybody listening here, start making music together because your numbers will only help each other and, hey, you're creating assets every time. One song is an asset. That's like a brick: each song is a brick to a giant skyscraper, hopefully, if you're able to do that. Totally recommend it.

Michael: 100%. Yeah, it's something that it seems like the electronic world has really jumped on this opportunity. It's been fantastic. It's one of the reasons that it's been able to grow as a movement so well because there's all these people who are remixing each other's songs, and they're featuring each other, and they're collaborating. So I would love to, for everyone that's here right now, we have 72 people in the live audience, you guys are awesome, and I don't know how many talented musicians there are. There's such amazing, talented musicians who all own the full rights to your music and so I think that together, we can really support each other and collaborate and do things creatively with each other, like you're mentioning, in different industries and really create some cool music babies together.

Jorge: Definitely. No, and listen, I come from the electronic music world. That's the music I produce and I do always get a sense that electronic music is a bit in the forefront in terms of knowing how technology is affecting music, right? I think other genres and folks that specialize in other genres are certainly catching on 'cause just the world has gotten more digital for sure. But, I'm all about the electronic stuff. That's for sure.

Michael: 100%. Speaking of which, it's probably a good segue towards some of the conversation that we opened up the loop for earlier around AI and music production. AI and music, just in general. Obviously right now, some of these changes that Spotify is making maybe are, in part, to help them get ahead of the curve as it relates to just the sheer amount of content that's about to get generated through AI. I'd be curious to hear your perspective on: what's around the corner as it relates to AI and music production, and then maybe specifically for people who are independent musicians who are here right now who are sort of looking ahead and maybe it's a little bit scary, even just like thinking there's going to be so much change happening right now. How should they view this upcoming change and how can they best align with it so that they can actually use it as a positive tool?

Jorge: Yeah. So I believe that these changes don't necessarily control the AI dynamic, right? I do think that a 4th change would be that they have some method of identifying music as AI-made and then attribute a certain percentage, and then that maybe deems the actual value that it would get. I think that's very difficult, but it's possible, and I think that everybody would be okay with something like that because I'm not necessarily against AI but it would be the same argument as rain sounds whereas well, why should a 100% generated song equal the same royalty as Led Zeppelin or Queen or anything like that. So that will be an argument that will probably happen over the next year or two I would say. I think that is definitely a productivity tool. In the business, we're starting to incorporate it not as a replacement for employees, but rather how to make them better and be able to provide a better service. I think for artists… I've experimented with AI in terms of helping me to generate new basslines and concepts, because sometimes I have a tough time making a song from the beginning. Like I just had a writer's block of sorts. So I might use it and then be able to create a stem-type format of it or generate stems from it using another AI tool, and then use that to build a song, for example. So I think that most artists that still like the human element are going to do that. I do believe though that AI is going to create a lot of creators that have no experience making music and/or even, I would say, interest in making music, and I definitely am now one to think negatively. I'm always trying to find the bright positive side and everything. But this is going to be highly concerning I would say because a flood of content will create a problem on the royalty pool that I mentioned earlier. If right now there's 120,000 songs. In a year from now, it might be 200,000, and those songs will have to generate a certain amount of streams first to get revenue, and the bigger concern long term is on the Spotify changes is does it go from 1,000 streams to 5,000 streams? Does it go to 10,000 streams? And I hope that there is more dialogue at that point over how to prevent it because there are actual practical ways of preventing more dilution of the pool, let's say, because of AI. So I would say it can be a scary thing to think about, and I think that the DSPs in particular for all this like functional non-music content, for example, like meditation or relaxing music, piano music, whatever it is… That I think that they will go the route of creating content using AI, and I think many record labels are going to start to get into the mindset of: why do we want to find artists? We can just literally program the right song for the radio and we have the resources to market it and we own it from the get go, we don't have to pay anybody for it, other than an employee that maybe sits in a computer. That might be the future, but what's to say that an indie artist doesn't do that even? So I think it's an argument that's still going to continue. I think that the bigger problem is, or the bigger outstanding questions are: can you use these platforms to create content and distributed? Many platforms do not allow you that, right? But there are a few that do in terms of using generative music platforms, and I think these platforms are gonna have to disclose how those models were trained and/or what sources they were trained. Because the whole argument is “I make music and it's copywritten, why would I want to just let my music influence somebody else without any attribution towards it”? And that's the type of stuff I'm interested in, and we're working on with a company called SOMMS.ai, which is to create a model for every artist to be able to effectively generate music using their own likeness and attribute any influence of a song being created to that original artist. Incredibly difficult, crazy technology, but that I think is responsible AI. We'll have to wait and see if it actually really works well, of course.

Michael: Wow. That is awesome. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about that. Yeah, some of the things that have come out with “AI Drake” and some of these like AI artists and the way that the likeness is being used… Obviously it's early on, so if someone might point out and be like, okay, like you can tell that it's not Drake or you can tell that it's not whoever, but it's pretty good, it's pretty good. And it's so early on.

Jorge: I think controls will come way before anyone doing an AI song that has no original likeness of somebody. YouTube and Google are just now really getting into that game and they're enabling this, but they're not just gonna let anybody take Drake's likeness and put it on Spotify for their own benefit. It's very much contained in that ecosystem and I think that's a thing, and then I also think the last thing will be that companies like OpenAI or other AI generated platforms, their whole shtick is gonna be: “let's protect you if you get sued” type thing. I also think that's like a funny way as the most practical idea is to protect you if in the event that you get sued, but it's something. It's better than nothing because legislation controls regulation and all that is going to take a long time and by the time they get to it, they're already going to be on something else at that point.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I know that OpenAI has publicly released a shield and it's basically that idea: Hey, we've got your back. If anything you generate using ChatGPT or using our AI there's like legal issues, then we're going to cover the legal issues. So that's super interesting. Where my mind goes is around using AI models that. It's pretty clear cut if someone's using someone's likeness, and solely they're just like, it is them, then it's like: okay, like you can't do that. You're clearly using it. Where I wonder, it might be difficult; it might blur the lines when, I don't know, what if someone creates a model that takes the top 3 artists and creates an AI avatar of Coldplay meets Ed Sheeran meets Drake into one new artist AI musician. Then it'd be similar to how new human artists usually, in a lot of cases, big breakthroughs or new artists come from having a baby between 2-3 different genres or 2-3 different styles, and they create something new that also has the DNA of their influences. So it is an interesting question of: where do we draw the line between having influences ourselves versus drawing the line and like saying, this is a clear, carbon copy of another artist?

What I like about what you brought up with your service is the easy ability to add contributors and collaborators. It does seem like in this world that we're heading towards, and I think this is hugely relevant to everyone that's listening to this right now, is this opportunity to interact or bring your fans into the fold, and do more co-creative things with them, and involve them in your music creative process, whether it means the recording of the songs, the song ideas, the stories you're telling in the songs, the marketing for the songs, having them in videos. It'll be interesting moving forward fairly compensating people and different contributors and collaborators. It seems like it's really important to have a good system to do that, which is what you guys have built.

Jorge: Totally! Yeah. And I will say that, even the technology right now, let's say that there's any artists out there that… one of the things that we've seen in international markets is that there's an artist that makes a song and they'll give a portion of the royalty stream to the guy that directed the music video, or the graphic designer and all that jazz. And you do have the control of effectively inviting anybody that you wish to get a percentage of your stream. So I do think that more like fan-oriented models of: Hey, I have this project. Invest into it. And you don't own the right to it, but you get a royalty stream from it and it's all up to you, type thing. I think it's very common. And at least you have the ability, not necessarily of doing fundraising through us at this moment, but being able to compensate and settle that up in a way that is seamless, and also that person, they don't just get royalty streams. They also do see the same analytics that you would as well. So it is pretty transparent from you to your collaborator also.

Michael: Really cool. One thing that we're working on with Modern Musician right now is what we call Music Relics. They're basically like music NFTs that an artist can create a limited amount of for the different music assets, and then their fans can own those music assets, and they unlock different levels of access to the artist, and different exclusive content, and what we call their inner circle. So it might be something that we can connect more on in the future, and maybe setting up an integration where, if someone's in someone's inner circle, or they get one of the limited edition relics, then that comes with a 5% royalty commission or something like that could be fun to explore.

Jorge: Absolutely! That's totally possible. We teamed up a little bit with a couple of artists that are doing this with companies as well, and we've helped facilitate that as well, which is great.

Michael: Cool. This has been really fun. How about we open up the conversation to some questions from the audience? You guys are awesome. I see we have 69 people who are here live right now. So let's actually open up the floor. So if you want to actually come on here live and ask a question, then you can raise your hand by clicking on the little hand icon and raising your hand. Otherwise, if you'd like to just ask a question in the chat, then you can also just type a question there and I'll go through and ask some good questions. Yes, and just to remind everyone, the name of the company is Symphonic Distribution.

Jorge: Yeah, and then the website is Symphonic.com. Just in case.

Michael: Awesome. I see Kayo requested to speak. So let's invite you on. What's going on, Kayo?

Kayo: Hello! Yeah. I had a question that I've been trying to find out from various distributors. I have a catalog distributed with CDBaby. A CD I released 10 years ago, and I was wondering what happens if we take our music down from a particular provider and say migrate it to a new provider. What are the pros and cons of taking your back catalog off an old provider that is perhaps obsolete and then re-releasing the tunes, say, packaging them up or changing the order of tracks and re-releasing them? What do we need to consider in re-releasing old content or switching distribution providers?

Jorge: Yeah first we created a technology that helps to do that. Where you could just put it in a Spotify release, for example, and it does migrate all the metadata. You would just have to upload the audio, for example, and that sort of helps to cut down on that. The pros and cons: I would say the con, first off, is depending on the genre of the music, or I would say if it's a public domain song that you have some clearance of, or if it's a classical song, the way that primarily Apple thinks about the world is whatever their style guideline is today is what governs it, even if there's a title that's been there for 10 years. It's not likely a problem for a lot of the folks in this audience. We actually had a label, I had Casey in the Sunshine Band. That one wasn't just automatically live. We have to go through additional steps to clear it, effectively, with Apple according to their style guidelines. So that's really the main con. And the other con is if you don't do it in the right order, because there's a slight logistics to this where you want to load this on a new distributor, submit it, and you're going to have your release duplicated for at least like 5 to 10 days. You want to do that so that all the playlists placement stay, all the streams get retained, and then you take it down from the previous distributor. That's the cons, I would say. The pros is you might have a chance to clean up the metadata, because if the album's been live for 10 years, for example, you might have the opportunity to tweak it if need be to improve the metadata, which might improve more discoverability and, as such, will increase streams, for example. Marketing back catalog is usually a bit difficult with the DSPs. They don't generally do it. But I would say that would be probably the bigger pro. So we constantly see this with different artists that had collaborators where the way that you could submit featured artists back then was different than how you do it now, and we've seen artists be able to get a boost from that.

Kayo: What do you mean when you say that the DSPs don't typically market back catalogs stuff?

Jorge: Yeah, they don't have a method for distributors like us to effectively vouch for any back catalog. They're constantly thinking about new releases and what's coming in the future, unfortunately. Yeah, we're very catalog driven, but that's probably the bigger con.

Kayo: For independent artists like us, probably a lot of us, at least in my case, the use case is that I released music 10 years ago. It's stuff that potentially could be re-released because, your back catalog for people who have not heard your old music, it's new.

Jorge: Yeah. When you're re-releasing it, unfortunately, you have to stick to the original release date, because then a distributor like us actually gets flagged from Apple, for example, because that's kind of like gaming of it that they want, even though I agree. One thing that I've seen though is folks usually upload a brand new remastered version of a back catalog, and that then is able to effectively be considered as a new release with new ISRCs and so forth. And you can definitely market that, which helps the back catalog as well.

Michael: Cool. Hey, Kayo, thank-you so much for coming on here live and asking that question. Fantastic. I think a lot of us probably had a similar question about migrating over. So thank-you for that. And let's keep on rocking and bring on some more folks come on live.

I saw that As A Structure Fails has requested to speak. So let's give them the opportunity to come on here live. They were actually recently on the podcast. Kyle is a fantastic musician. They've accomplished some really incredible things with their band. Hey, Kyle, how are you doing, and what's your question for Jorge today?

Kyle: Hey, really good. Can you guys hear me?

Jorge: Yep!

Michael: We've got you.

Kyle: Perfect. I just wrote it down here, the base of my question, and I'm not a master, obviously, of this area but the base of the question is, what is the most cost effective way to collect publishing royalties? What I've found, and from what I know, is that if I'm with BMI, they are supposed to collect the royalties on my behalf, and then pay me those royalties, however, on TuneCore, for example, they have this service called TuneCore Publishing, and that service will register the songs that I input into TuneCore, they'll register it for me on BMI, however, they then take a cut, andI'm asking myself: Is it literally that all they're doing is registering the song for me and taking a cut, or are they somehow bringing in additional royalties that just being with BMI alone wouldn't get me?

Jorge: Yeah, good question. So the big difference is when you go to BMI directly, it's being registered worldwide if you have that ability or that right or BMI has that on your account, for example, but the difference is BMI is actually also collecting a percentage from each territory, for example and it also takes significantly longer, sometimes, to get it through a BMI, the likes of TuneCore who the publishing is ran by Centric, and then SongTrust, for example: what they do that's different is they're not just actually registering on a BMI, they're going to the equivalent of BMI in other territories, registering it directly there and effectively not leaving the work up for BMI or ASCAP to do that piece. So it means that you actually get international collection much faster and with less of a fee when you're (effectively) doing it through BMI directly. But I will say that starting out with BMI directly is not a bad thing even, and if you have good earnings even from a streaming perspective, let's say, and you're starting to get a lot of your songs either being considered on radio or public performance and things like that, that's when I always recommend folks to really explore an expanded publishing relationship. And I think the likes of TuneCore and SongTrust are not bad at all because they will at least save you time from having to do so directly with BMI, in addition to the international territories.

Kyle: Essentially, if I didn't want to pay that fee, I would have to just… Is it just the waiting period? I would have to wait much longer to collect them, or is there a possibility that they wouldn't ever get collected?

Jorge: It's a little bit of both, actually. I've seen folks that do registration directly with the PRO’s. No disrespect to them, but they're just not as acquainted like a publishing administrator to really go deep in there and even audit some of the PRO’s internationally as well, right? So I think if you're working with a TuneCore, let's say for example, I think you're actually doing an okay thing, even though you're paying them because they're actually getting the music registered in these international territories and just working more hand in hand with them, because that's what, truthfully, a publishing admin does. Otherwise, yes, most people would just go to BMI, for example.

Kyle: That really helped.

Michael: Awesome. Thank-you for the question. It's a good one. This is some pretty high level, geeky music licensing stuff. Real quick, just in terms of Symphonic, what do you recommend for anyone if they are interested in using Symphonic or they currently are using Symphonic and they're interested in collecting those royalties? We've also had SongTrust on the podcast a few times and are big fans of them and what they're doing, but what do you recommend is like the best use case for using Symphonic if someone wants to also leverage those song royalties?

Jorge: Actually, we have a partnership with SongTrust. We have 2-fold. On the publishing side, it's always been not a major core focus of ours, but I will say that's going to start to change over the next year or two as we're really looking at beefing up resources and focuses there. So we have a kind of affiliate deal with SongTrust where essentially you do get onboarded out to them through us. And then we have certain as you Like specific artists that we know we work with that we actually represent from a single-licensing perspective that we do the actual pub admin directly from, utilizing SongTrust as well as a partner. So I would say working with SongTrust directly is not bad, but definitely going through us from our website, you can actually sign up through there and you'll be able to be onboarded to that platform as well.

Michael: Cool. Good to know. Awesome. Hey, Jorge, it's been great connecting with you today and thank-you so much for taking the time to be here and to share about some of the updates that are happening at the time of recording this, keeping our fingers on the pulse of how things are evolving with AI and with music distribution, how Spotify works, and thank-you for creating a service that helps artists to get their music distributed and get it in the hands of their fans.

Jorge: Absolutely. 

Michael: For anyone who's here live right now, who's interested in diving deeper or learning more about Symphonic, what would be the best place for them to get started?

Jorge: Yeah, for sure. So Symphonic.com and then on Instagram, we're doing a lot of cool stuff where we're always talking about our artists, as well as putting out a lot of educational material. Through our website, you could access our blog, and it's just symblog.com. We put out a ton of educational material, a lot of resources to keep this conversation going as well. So I would highly recommend that. We're doing a lot of that. And then video content on YouTube. Searching SymphonicDistribution across all socials. We'll give you all the access to that, but then the main hub being symphonic.com. 

Michael: All right. Fantastic. So like always for easy access, we'll put the links in the show notes and let's give a round of applause for Jorge for being here today. 

Jorge: Awesome. What a nice crowd! Thank-you very much for having me on. Thank-you for all the good work you do and to the community as well. Keep on crushing, as they say.

Michael: Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that. Yyeeaahh.

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. First if you hit ‘subscribe’ then that’s make sure you don’t miss a new episode. Secondly if you share it with your friends, on social media, tag us - that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review it’s going to help us reach more musicians like you take their music to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.