Bobby Owsinski:
This has been a debate that's been going on for a while. It's like, okay, AI is here, AI's doing some pretty amazing things. And is it going to replace people? Well, to some degree, yes. It will replace musicians. It'll replace engineers. But not totally. So that's a good thing.

Bobby Owsinski:
In the studio, I love AI-driven plugins because it makes everything go faster. Gee! If I don't have to spend an extra hour in the studio, I love it. why should I say no to that? Again, anything that makes things better for you, easier to do, whatever, any advantages that you can get, you should take.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost into 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 slowly getting better.

Michael Walker:
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.

Michael Walker:
All right. So I'm excited to be here today with Bobby Owsinski. So Bobby is a friend of mine. He actually just had me on his podcast maybe about out a week ago. So we're coming back and we're kind of on the flip ends of the table now. But Bobby's awesome. He's a bestselling author in the music industry with 24 books, ranging from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, to Social Media Promotion for Musicians, and The Music Business Advice Book. He's been featured on CNN and ABC News as a music branding and audio expert.

Michael Walker:
More recently, he's produced and mixed an album that appeared at number two on the Billboard Blues Charts. And, like I mentioned, he has a podcast of his own called the Inner Circle Podcast in its ninth year now, with over 400 episodes focused on the music industry. So I'm not going to lie, coming onto this, I was like, man, Bobby's like... You have a ton of experience. And on the flip end of the table, really amazing interviewer. So it's kind of cool to have you on the podcast here as well. So thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, thanks for having me, Michael. I appreciate it.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. So today we are just having a discussion about, really one around focus on in terms of the conversation. And with Bobby in particular, I think he's someone that has a lot of roots in the music industry. And he has a lot of experience. He's been here for his 400th episode. And I think it would be really interesting to kind of dive into the transformation in terms of the music industry in the past, really the past 20 years, especially things have just changed so much, and they're continuing to evolve and continuing to change on such a quick basis that it would be great to hear his perspective on some of these transformations that he's seen happen firsthand. And we kind of see the music industry going nowadays. So Bobby, before we get started, maybe for anyone who this is their first time meeting you for the first time, could you maybe share a little bit about your story and how you got started here?

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, I started as a musician, and I still am, but less so. I was playing like four or five nights a week when I was still in high school. You could do that back then because there was just so many venues to play. And eventually got a gig with the best band in the area. And we went on to tour around and did some albums where I found, the first time in a big major studio I found how mediocre of a player I was. It was a real shock.

Bobby Owsinski:
So that prompted me. And also being around the studio, I really wanted to become a producer. And I went to Berkeley College of Music to study arranging, which I thought would be a good idea. It was from one standpoint, not from another, but about three four semesters in, they asked me to be an instructor there. And the reason why was I had a degree in electronics and I also had studio experience because I was doing all the demos for this record company we we were assigned with and I knew more than most of the people there.

Bobby Owsinski:
So I became a teacher there where I was a student and a teacher for a while, which does not work, I can tell you. So then I just stayed as a teacher and I was going along okay. And then one day I walked into the teacher's lounge and I heard someone complain, oh, this place is for rookies or has-beens. And it hit me right between the eyes. I don't want to be either of those.

Bobby Owsinski:
So I quit and I packed up and moved to California. Mostly because it was warm, but there was lots of opportunities. And when I came to California, I was just like everybody else, I started sleeping on people's couches, with no money and just taking any gig. So I had some reasonable engine nearing chops. So I was playing in bands. I was recording bands. I was recording commercials. I was recording movie soundtracks. And just about anything to keep going.

Bobby Owsinski:
Eventually, a turning point. It just goes to show you sometimes the smallest thing can turn into something really big in your life. I was on tour and the bass player came on the bus and said, I just got a job writing for the music paper. Now music paper was a really big music paper that came out every week in the New York area, New York City area. And it had all the gigs, it had everything about music. It was really fantastic. But I thought, if he could do that, so can I.

Bobby Owsinski:
So I put out some feelers and got a job writing for a Mix Magazine. One article, which I just came across recently and was totally horrible, very embarrassing. But anyway, it led to kind of a second side career as a writer. The next thing I know I was writing for a dozen music magazines, EQ, Engineer Producer, Granny Magazine, Billboard, you name it. But I was still recording and I was still playing. And actually, I was playing quite a lot. And I was not totally happy doing it, especially being on the road.

Bobby Owsinski:
But what ended up happening was I was not a particularly good mixing engineer. I was a good recording engineer, but I wasn't good at mixing. And I thought, if I feel like this, I bet there's a lot of other people that really want to learn. So I happen to know all of the best guys. They're all guys at the time, but all the best people that were mixers, best in the world, from writing articles already and from being in the studio and rubbing elbows.

Bobby Owsinski:
So I went to them and I asked them how they did it. And they told me. And it resulted in me getting a lot better, first of all, but it also became my first book, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook. There was no book on mixing. There was zero at the time. As a matter of fact, everybody said, you couldn't do it. It's too subjective. But I managed to do it. And it became a hit.

Bobby Owsinski:
I suffer from the same thing Every writer does. You write a book and the first thing you do is say, I will never do that again. Too many brain cells die along the way. But my publisher was very persistent and came a second book, Recording Engineer's Handbook, and the Mastering Engineer's Handbook. And they kept on coming after that. And they kept on getting easier for me to do.

Bobby Owsinski:
So that became like a second career. One totally unexpected, but one I really enjoy until this day. I really enjoy it and still doing it, still releasing books. And then from that came some online courses as well. Because after a while, it's like, well, I can write a few more books, but I won't necessarily make that much more money. So maybe a way to make a bigger impact on people and actually show them physically the things that I've learned, let's try some modeling courses. So that's kind of my story in a nutshell, where I've been in various parts of the music business throughout my life and I still dabble in all of them. Just like everybody else being a hybrid.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Man, 24 books. I mean, I have aspirations to someday write a book, but 24 books is a whole new mountain. That's awesome.

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, it's actually more than that, Michael. Because I've done it more than 50 times. Because a lot of them are on their fourth and fifth edition. And some are... I've written three books that are outside of the music business as well, that aren't in those 24. So I've gone through this a lot. I'm pretty good at it now.

Michael Walker:
You should write a book about how to write books. And create a course on... There you go. Awesome. Man, that's super cool. And one thing that kind of sticks out about your story too, that I feel hopefully is inspiring to anyone who's listening this right now is around your perspective around how you learned to become an amazing mixer. I mean you just recently produced a mixing album that appeared at number two on Billboard Blues Chart, right? That doesn't just happen, right? You have to have the base amount of skills to be able to do that.

Michael Walker:
And the way that you mentioned that you started out like anyone starts out as something new. You didn't really have the skillset or the experience to be a great mixer, but you learned by finding and connecting and building relationships and interviewing the people who had that experience or had that knowledge. And it seems like that's a common pattern that, like you see with a lot of people who kind of rise up in their field, is that it didn't just happen in a vacuum. They did what you did, right? They found they actively sought out, or they happened to lucky enough to be mentored by someone else who had already invested 10,000 hours plus into their craft and were able to kind of learn that, interview them and kind of actively take on that new skill.

Michael Walker:
And I think, yeah, the same thing applies for all musicians too. If you want to become the top of your game, then go find and connect with five other people who are at the top of their game and interview them, and learn from them, just absorb their experience. Super cool.

Michael Walker:
So one next question for you. At this point, you have a ton of experience connecting with artists and different levels of their careers, both from the mixing engineering side and also just from the music business side and building successful career. What are some of the biggest challenges or struggles that you see musicians facing when they first come to you when it comes to the new music business?

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, first of all, I don't look back nostalgically on the old business. Honestly, the way... It's always been difficult. So it's no easier difficult today than it's ever been. It's just different in the way that you do things. Back then, you were kind of relegated to being in a band. Today you don't have to. You can do it completely on your own.

Bobby Owsinski:
And I guarantee everybody that was in a band back then would be doing it on their own, in their own home studio today. Because that's what we all wanted to do, is express ourselves. So that was a big difference, but really, you tried to do your own music, you tried to get a record deal, a record deal was much more important back then than it is now.

Bobby Owsinski:
I think one of the things that never gets brought up though, is we talk about 10,000 hours. Were so many places to gig back then in the seventies or eighties even, or beginning of the eighties that you got your 10,000 hours on stage, you got really good with an audience. And if you're playing four nights a week and sometimes six, seven nights... I remember one band I played with, we did 37 nights in a row. We were begging the manager to not book us for a while. And we were one nighters. So it was really hard. But you could do that back then. So you got really good.

Bobby Owsinski:
What changed everything was, first of all, understand the economics of all this. First, the drinking age was 21 for the longest time. When most states brought it down to 18, all of a sudden there was all these new drinkers. And they wanted to go someplace and parties. So now all these new clubs opened up and they needed entertainment. So they brought in bands. That's why there were just unlimited supply of venues that you could play at and get good. And it was also a great farm team because sooner or later you got good at that. And you moved on, you moved up, if you're any good anyway.

Bobby Owsinski:
But what ended up happening was the drinking and driving laws that came about. Now, there's a reason for them, but all of a sudden it was much more difficult to be able to drink. And then the states brought the age limit up to 21 again. And as a result, all of these clubs started to close. And the music business changed dramatically at that point.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, it coincides with MTV. It coincides with CDs coming out. So that's sometimes overlooked because, again, there are bigger events that were happening economically in the music business. But that was big because it was a lot of where people learned how to do things that suddenly that was gone.

Bobby Owsinski:
So today, in order to do something similar, yes, there's plenty of clubs, you have to travel a lot more to do it. And you're paying to play in many places, or you're getting, you know this very well, you're not making any money at all. Where back then we get paid all the time. I never paid to play ever, ever. I was making more money than most people in high school just from playing. So again, it was a different time and a different way to do things.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, today, if you look at everything the way it is for a new musician just starting, it's easier because... And it's easier from the standpoint that you don't have to join a band if you don't want to. Join a band is a pain because there's, as you will all know, there's personalities you have to deal with, there's just the fact that it takes you six months, at least, to get together to play. Just so it sounds good. And even on vocals, if you have strong vocals, it'll take you six months until the blend is there. And this is doing it all the time.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, you don't have to do that. So why would anybody even choose to be in a band when you can stay at home and do everything yourself? And not only that, then there's the different ways you can distribute your music. You can get it out there without any problem at all. And it doesn't even cost you a lot of money.

Bobby Owsinski:
So that's the good part. But the bad part is there's increased competition. Everybody can do it. So everybody does. So now, on your shoulders is all the marketing that you have to do that no one ever thought of back then. The record label did it all.

Bobby Owsinski:
So as you can see, there's good and bad on each side. It's not any harder. It's not any easier. Some parts are, but then there are other parts that are more difficult. So again, I don't look back with any kind of nostalgia except for the fun of it really, but I can't look back and say, oh, it's easier then, or it was harder then, or whatever just was.

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you about a free special offer that we're doing right now exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians. And connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast. Or if you just want to know the best suite to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you.

Michael Walker:
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On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds, where our highest level of modern musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our music mentor spotlight series. And that's what we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now.

Michael Walker:
And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top of the music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast, they're live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly.

Michael Walker:
On top of all that, you'll get access to our private music mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of music mentor and maybe the most valuable, is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up, collaborate, ask questions, good support, and discuss everything related to your music career.

Michael Walker:
So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now and sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community, and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show. So don't miss it out. Go sign up for you now. And let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
It's a really interesting perspective. And I think it's so true because it seems like no matter what you do, how successful you are, it's not like achieving that success means that now you're going to live a problem-free life. If anything, in some cases, more problems come up, but they're just like higher-level problems. And the way I've heard this described before is related specifically to money, because I think sometimes when it comes to money, people are like, oh man, if I had more money, like I'd have to deal with more problems or different problems.

Michael Walker:
And this quote says something along the lines of, whether you have money or not, you're going to have problems, but I prefer the problems that come from having money versus the ones that come from not having money. And to your point, there's still problems. Problems never go away. And if they did, would we just live in some sort of boring, kind of like, all right. Can you imagine watching a movie where it's just nothing happened because there was no problems and it's like John was happy and the end. He was always happy, right?

Michael Walker:
It seems like problems are sort of you can't have a good story, you can't have movements or fulfillment without some sort of dissonance, or discomfort, or challenge, or growth and problems are inherent in that. But there's different levels of problems. And there's higher-level problems. And the problems that we have now with the music industry come from this increased ability to have higher, creative output, therefore being able to stand out. It's really interesting.

Michael Walker:
I love the point that you brought up too, around the difference between, it seems like in the past, like you're saying, you could really hone your craft and hone your skill on stage with the feedback from a group of people. Whereas now, maybe you could do something similar through live streams where you just perform over and over and over again like on a live show, but developing that craft is kind of a different beast. So what do you feel like... Oh yeah. Go ahead.

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, just show you how different things are. You got your 10,000 hours, generally speaking, in front of an audience where you knew how to work an audience. And that's a skill in itself that you don't get from doing a live stream. It's not the same at all. And it's such a difference that there are many artists that have a hit that have never played in front of an audience. And then when they do, it's very difficult for them to learn.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, just to show you, I have a very good friend who's a very successful record producer. And his daughter had a hit and she never was on stage. So what he did is he hired all the best people to tutor her. So much so that when she went on stage, there was a person off stage that was telling her in her ear what she should say to the audience.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, it turns out that this was so successful that all sorts of other celebrities would come to him and say, can you do this for my son or my daughter? And it turned into a business forum actually, because there's all these people that wanted that ability, but they could have gotten if they just went out and played, but it's not that easy anymore. So they're great difference.

Michael Walker:
That's a whole idea for a service like personal live performance coaching. Cool. It's way easier in retrospect to look back and see what the waves were, see the trends. They've already passed and we're like, oh yeah, this happened. And it seems like a really valuable skill is learning how to look forward and kind of decipher what are the upcoming waves, right? If we're all kind of surfers, like what's cresting our right now and how can we kind of catch that wave and get momentum from it?

Michael Walker:
What do you view as some of the potential movements or the waves that we can kind of feel right now that if someone was looking at the music industry, looking at their music career and they're thinking how can I really kind of capitalize on this upcoming trend? Where do you see some of like the movement happening in the music industry right now?

Bobby Owsinski:
There's two of them. I think, and people will call this Web 3.0, but I prefer to just call it virtual reality. I think Web 3.0 is, it's something that's looking for a reason to be. But really. It's all about virtual reality. But virtual reality's real. It's been around for a long time. It'll be a combination of virtual and artificial reality. And there are already some fantastic examples of this going on.

Bobby Owsinski:
Right near me, not that far away... I'm in Burbank, California, and five miles away in Pasadena. I haven't been to this, but I have a friend that actually worked on it. There's an artificial reality. You go in and you become a storm trooper in Star Wars. And this is brilliant. Because you put on a backpack, which is a computer. You put the helmet on, and the helmet actually contains the screen and everything.

Bobby Owsinski:
So then you go around and it says, okay, pick up a weapon and you go and they have what feels like a weapon. And then open up the door and then go into another room. And then they have the audio that's immersive, that's complete with the HRTF. So it's following your head and everything. And apparently, this is so real that people are just freaking out about it. So there are these things that are coming up.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, the hard part that they figured out was the fact that you put a helmet on and there is a backpack with the computer. So that made it easy. That's brilliant. The rest of us won't have that ability, I don't think. But nonetheless, what's coming. And I'm going to tie that into immersive audio. Immersive audio is really impressive and it is Dolby Atmos, primarily. Music is fantastic in that.

Bobby Owsinski:
So I think it's going to catch on under certain circumstances. I've lived through the surround sound period, through the 5.1 period. I did 120 mixes for all sorts of acts during that for DVDs and SACDs and everything. And the biggest problem was always on the consumer side. And it was, okay, you got these five speakers you're going to put in your house, and they have to be here, here, and here, but then the wife or significant other comes in and says, wait, you can't put a speaker there or the speaker's next to a door or something like that. So next thing you know, you have five speakers up against the front and you don't have the experience at all.

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, we are overcoming that now because what we're getting is some fantastic soundbar that will shoot up into the air and you get it bounces all over the room and can sense the room can and knows exactly how to work at their wireless. So one of the big complaints was always, I don't want wires across the floor. Well, we don't have to. And you can get a pretty good experience at just a soundbar and a couple of surround speakers in a sub-woofer. So it doesn't cause that much either.

Bobby Owsinski:
So we're going to see that coming to the home, but I see it going another step. Audio reproduction hasn't changed in 120 years. We're still using speakers. We're still moving air with cones, with paper cones. And other things have been tried and nothing has been effective or efficient. We need a revolution, something brand new, new technology. And it in fact is somewhat on the horizon.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, I always thought that not only would immersive audio, but immersive music really take off when we don't have to think about speakers anymore, when the walls become our transducers. Whether it be a paint or something else, but the walls will become transducers. So you walk into a room and it's already immersive. You never have to worry about the playback system, or at least that part of it. It's on the horizon. Not going to be here tomorrow or in five years, even, maybe, but it's on the horizon.

Bobby Owsinski:
So I look at that and I think that's really when all this is going to take off. And if that takes off, the way we make music is going to change as well. The way we think about music, we're not going to think of it in the same terms because we won't listen to it in the same terms. So that's what excites me about music, the future of music. There are other things, of course, but that's the one thing being a tech nerd, I nerd out on that.

Michael Walker:
That's super cool. And I love this conversation. And I don't think I've ever heard someone describe it like that or kind of paint the vision with immersive audio. That makes a lot of sense in terms of just, on the consumer side, the technology's finally there to make it easier to be able to listen to this type of music.

Michael Walker:
I know we have a couple of home pods that have kind of built-in like Dolby Atmospheric sounds. And it took a little bit of getting used to at first. because I was like, wait, where did that come from over there? So I think, obviously with like a new tool, people starting to figure out how to be able to use it and actually kind of implement it. But super interesting.

Michael Walker:
And I'm right with you in terms of the virtual reality and kind of the movement towards, essentially a virtual environment that eventually could be very similar to our experience right now where we're just sitting in a room, or sitting wherever we are with headphones, but what if this was just all like virtually created? Especially if it was combined with brain interfaces or something like Neuralink from Elon Musk and we could just think like, I want banana split. It's like, boo. There's like a banana split in our original environment instantly. It's really interesting.

Michael Walker:
And the thing that you're describing, the Star Wars, there's actually one of those in Orlando at the Disney World Star Wars place. And I went and I did it. And it was exactly like you described. A very cool virtual experience. The way that I've heard it described with virtual reality is that it's about tricking the brain and giving it a sense of presence. In presence was one of the key terms around our brain. You would think that we're smart enough or we'd be aware like, oh, no, this is all fake or this is all virtual. But when you actually have the visuals, along with the sounds, along with like the movements corresponding with your hands, then it actually can trick our brains into having a false sense of presence and actually feeling like we're somewhere else.

Michael Walker:
So yeah, we're just at the beginning of that. But super interesting to think about that and how it could have ties in with music as well. So do you think that with like virtual reality that the way that music is involved is around virtual concert spaces? Or what are some potential integrations do you think with virtual reality that are relevant to musicians?

Bobby Owsinski:
I think that's going to be a peripheral part of it. I don't know if it'll be the main thing. For instance, livestream, everybody thought live streaming was the next coming of live music. And as soon as the pandemic died down, somewhat died down, so did live streaming. So that was not what everybody thought.

Bobby Owsinski:
And I know that some virtual concerts have been really successful, but I go back to a friend of mine, who's my publishing champion actually. And he's a guitar player and a singer. And even back in second life, he used to tell me he would do virtual gigs in his virtual club and people would pay him. He would actually do a gig and he'd make like 50 bucks. It didn't last very long because second life didn't last very long, but it just goes to show you that it has happened and it is happening and it will happen again. So yeah, that's where we're going.

Michael Walker:
Are you up to date on the whole meta shift from Facebook and the idea of these like blockchain like NFT-owned deliverables within these spaces? Do you have any thoughts about that or is that to be too far off on a tangent?

Bobby Owsinski:
No. I have lots of thoughts on it. And I have to say the whole blockchain chain thing, I wish people would stop using the term, unless it's way, way down the list of provisions as a feature of what you're doing. There was a period of two years or three years where I would get proposals for startups. And it would be blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, we're blockchain. That would be the major feature. And then the other thing was, this is the future of music. This is going to save the music business. I'll just cratch my head and go, yeah, really? How? Well, it'll allow everybody to charge what they want. Does that really work?

Bobby Owsinski:
So, again, blockchain is a technology. I wish people just look at it as a technology and leave it at that. As far as NFTs, I have a very cautious outlook on it. And the reason why right now the majority of NFTs are done in, probably not entirely legal way. We see this where people are issuing an NFT, minting an NFT and they don't even own the product to begin with. Or we see where someone doesn't have the total ownership. Oh yeah, I wrote this, but oh, by the way, the record company also, they control it. And I haven't talked to them.

Bobby Owsinski:
I mean, there's all sorts of things like that where there's a lot of entities that have to sign off on it. And most people don't understand that. So as a result, there's consumers that are buying into this and then finding that they don't really own anything and they can't do what they wanted to, which is flip maybe later. So that's casting pall on the whole NFT thing.

Bobby Owsinski:
Now, there are certain sports, especially, has it good. And I know you're tied into that with the NBA, MLB, MBA, NFL. They got that down pretty much. I have a friend, really good friend, as a matter of fact, that is doing this for colleges, for NCAA colleges in association with Tim Tebow. And they have the Heisman trophy. So they're doing Heisman, Heisman NFTs. And he talks about what's really interesting is not person one, a Heisman. Okay. Here's an NFT of this person with the Heisman. No. What it is would be the whole collection of people that were eligible for it.

Bobby Owsinski:
And as a collector, you'd want each of them. So it's the same thing with the football team. If you get a football team that wins the championship, well, it's not just the championship or it's not just the star. If you're a collector you want all of them. So if you approach it from the standpoint of this is a collectible, then it takes on a completely different outlook, I think, than if it's just, oh, it's a cool thing, I want to own that. Or, oh, maybe I can flip that and make more money. So it's a different mindset.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Absolutely. That's very similar to my outlook on NFTs right now in terms of... Obviously, with cryptocurrency and NFTs in general, there's so much hype and kind of trendiness around them. And so much also, confusion or vagueness. And a lot of times how people define them, it's kind of like a jungle, right? And you don't really what's what. I do think there's, like you mentioned NBA Top Shots, and there's some organizations that are creating a marketplace around NFTs.

Michael Walker:
And I think are doing it really well. And the way that they're doing it, that we want to sort of emulate with modern musician is creating a series of collectibles that, the way that NBA Top Shot does it, each of their different teams have different... It's almost like trading cards. It's like trading cards with different levels of rarity. And a lot of the value of it is around the ability to collect them and to showcase them.

Michael Walker:
But I personally, I don't fully resonate with the idea of artists giving up their copyright or royalties for their music as like an NFT or to give up ownership of their music so that fans can buy into to it. And I know there's some significant kind of movements around that idea in and of itself. But the way I look at it is, the Mona Lisa is worth something like 800 million, but the person who buys the Mona Lisa, they don't have that copyrights or own the artwork. They own the original, authentic Mona Lis that was created.

Michael Walker:
And so I don't think... I think there's maybe a conflation of thinking that you need to own the copyright or royalties to it, which I'm not a hundred percent sold on that being the the right move for the music industry as a whole.

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, speaking of that, what's interesting as well, and another trend would be AI and how much AI is useful to the average artist, the average musician. Now, there's a lot of AI-produced music that's out there, strictly AI done. And there was just a ruling by the copyright board just recently that said you cannot copyright something that doesn't have a human interaction with it.

Michael Walker:
Wow.

Bobby Owsinski:
So if it's AI-driven only, it cannot be copyrighted even as an algorithm. That kind of changes things because this has been a debate that's been going on for a while. It's like, okay, AI is here, AI is doing some pretty amazing things. And is it going to replace people? Well, to some degree, yes. It will replace musicians, it'll replace engineers. But not totally. So it's a good thing. In the studio, I love AI-driven plugins because it makes everything go faster. Gee! If I don't have to spend an extra hour in the studio, I love it. why should I say no to that?

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think seeing anything that we can replace with artificial intelligence at a high level... I mean, there's some things that just is better than humans, we just can't compete with, mathematically, computation type of stuff. But really, that frees up resources, right? It frees up time, it frees up energy that we can spend doing something unique to our ability to have creative thoughts and creative impulse.

Michael Walker:
Super interesting. We can definitely geek out more on like on artificial intelligence and AI and that whole conversation. Have you heard of Neuralink by Elon Musk-

Bobby Owsinski:
For sure.

Michael Walker:
brain interfaces and that?

Bobby Owsinski:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
What's your take on that? I know for most people want to have a conversation about brain interfaces. They're like, wait, they're going to put what inside your brain? That doesn't seem like a good idea. What are your thoughts around that whole concept?

Bobby Owsinski:
I have no objections personally. Well, first of all, I think it would be best if it was used to help people that were disabled and needed that sort of extra help. And I think if that was the major focus, that would make me feel better rather than just, okay, I'm going to implant this in my head in order to do what I do better. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that either, but I think there's a need that's greater. And if it would serve that, that would make me feel better. I know that's going to happen, but I have no objections to it. Again, anything that makes things better for you, easier to do, whatever, any advantages that you can get, you should take.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. To your point, I think that, whether they want to or not, I think that the only way for them to really develop this technology is by focusing first and foremost on the use case of making sure that this device helps people who have lost access to limbs to be able to have ability to be free again, which is really awesome.

Michael Walker:
And then from there I think there's big steps to happen that can kind of integrate with our thoughts. And some of the idea behind the value of those devices I find really fascinating around specifically around this idea of like the internet being this huge revolution in terms of internet is like an ocean of information, right? The ocean is doubling every year. And it's just so much information that literally we designed all these algorithms like Google, as much as possible, to put all this entire ocean down into a single little straw that we can like drink this massive ocean from. And this straw is genius straw. It's literally designed to like look at who we are and track everything about us and try to find out what's the perfect amount of ocean to put through the straw.

Michael Walker:
But that still, it's just a little tiny straw because the bandwidth of our brain just isn't nearly enough to absorb that amount of information that quickly. But with brain interfaces, potentially maybe we could expand the straw and we'd be able to more effectively interface with the internet and with each other, and potentially be able to communicate with each other more on the level of thought, as opposed to the level of language. Because we can't talk nearly as fast as we think, right? There's like this bandwidth issue.

Michael Walker:
So that I find super fascinating and kind of the edge of at that point there's... I think part reason there's so many concerns is because of the fear of losing our privacy, I guess our privacy and like, and our thoughts and ideas. It's one of the last things that we can kind of hold separate from everyone and everything else is like we think, well, at least my thoughts, no one can see or hear my thoughts.

Michael Walker:
So I think that there's a lot of fear around this idea of being fully seen or losing that sense of separateness. But I also view it as you sort of this movement that's happening towards greater collective enlightenment and being more interconnected. So, super interesting.

Bobby Owsinski:
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I have a cat that's sitting in my lap and purring very loudly if you hear that in the background.

Michael Walker:
The cat is probably secretly a AI robot that's coming to listen to our conversation be like, ah, they're not getting too close to us, right? Because the cats are still planning to... The robot cats are still planning on ruling the word very soon.

Michael Walker:
Kind of interesting too, thinking about the intersection between thought and musicians and the ability to create music in and of itself, it seems like the most talented musicians are the ones who are at the top of their game, they literally have this ability to channel thoughts or creative energy. In and they don't have to think about playing anymore. It just kind of like comes through them and they're able to take this thought and turn it into actual music.

Michael Walker:
So if we could have an interface that more directly allows us to stream that through, what if we could create like a symphony in real time with our thoughts, it's kind of interest thing.

Bobby Owsinski:
Yeah. Just let your imagination run wild. And it works.

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Bobby Owsinski:
And you create.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. And I guess that's kind of what it's like already, right? It's like we all, as musicians, especially, we're creators and we create with our thoughts. And then eventually, we turn those thoughts into actual tangible stuff, but it always starts out as the thought and it takes time to turn it into real stuff.

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, if you want to geek out about it, one of the ways that could help musicians would be, if you ever have a great idea on something and you just ad you're somewhere you can't write it down or sing it or whatever. A lot of times it's you're at home. Okay. Let me turn on a computer. And oh, now I have to do this. Oh, oh, oh, I forgot what I was doing. Or you have a dream at night and, oh, I'll remember it in the morning and you never do. So that could be very helpful, in fact, if that was a way that you can have some storage for those things.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. There we go. All right, Bobby, it's you and me. We're going to make this device starting tomorrow.

Bobby Owsinski:
Yeah, there we go.

Michael Walker:
We're calling it bike, Bobby and Mike together. And it's not going to be confusing at all.

Bobby Owsinski:
No, I like it.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Well, hey, Bobby, man, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having this conversation. Being able to kind of geek out about really like the future of what's coming in virtual reality, and braided faces, as well as just seeing the history of where things have come and are going through music history. Super interesting.

Michael Walker:
So for anyone who's listening or watching this, who would like to check out your books, or learn more about you, or dive deeper, what would be the best place for them to go to learn more?

Bobby Owsinski:
Well, it's always best to start at my website because that goes everywhere else, the podcast, the blogs, my courses, all that stuff, books. So that's bobbyowsinski.com.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Cool. Like always, we'll put the link in the description for easy access. Yeah, man, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you. I appreciate you taking the wisdom and taking everything you learned through interviewing all those different mixing engineers and turning that into a book, and turning that into, at this point, more than 24 books, all these multiple rewrites and whatnot. It's really great when someone focuses on providing value and turns that into tangible stuff that's going to create ripple effects and serve people for many years to come. So thanks for what you do and appreciate you coming on here to have a conversation.

Bobby Owsinski:
Thanks for having me, Michael. It's really good as well. I hope we can have more conversations in the future.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about the 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 I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music career to the next level.

Michael Walker:
It's time to be a modern musicians now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.