 it's the mat work. What's up everybody welcome to music news that matters we're on the first of every month we help you sift through the noise to bring you the most important industry news. We know there's so much information out there but we're going to focus on topics that are most relevant to you guys and as always we'll give you our perspective as well. Today we're going to be chatting about Spotify testing several new features some good and some bad and we're also going to discuss the value and importance of sync in the music industry. And of course before we get started since these videos are only once a month make sure you sign up to our newsletter to get notified of the latest news and why it matters between episodes and don't forget we're on oh that's your part i'll keep going though we're on to the podcast on Spotify Apple Music Sound Cloud and all of the good things thanks to Josh let's get it everybody sweet so we're going to start off Sean with Spotify and the first thing i want to talk about is the fact that they've removed the um listen account from the discovered on playlist on desktop which i think is a very disappointing thing to close out. Yeah there's so many interesting arguments I hear about this what what is your perspective? So from one perspective I can understand you know it was you know supposed to be like normally use it so much maybe because obviously it's not on mobile but and also they're thinking it's probably going to stop like the fake playlist so much but I actually think that by taking away this you lose transparency so if I'm looking at if I'm trying to picture a playlist a smaller playlist and I can see smaller artists I know that that player is probably going to come up on their profile and if the matter of listens is not correlating to the actual number of followers then I know it's not a good playlist I won't have that option anymore to check. Right and that's the interesting thing man because it's all about who are you trying to serve at the end of the day all right we can say hey this platform is for consumers it's not necessarily for artists in that way we use artists to serve consumers but it's not necessarily for artists so it does make things interesting right because you want to please artists to the extent that you can serve them to the consumers but at the end of the day it they they try to it's one of those politic things where you use an argument that sounds like you're doing good really to also take more control over the platform and eliminate some of your competition because ether party playlist yeah a real thing right they're useful but you take away somebody utility from the artist like you say like it makes it a lot harder to understand how do I take advantage of of this playlist which ones do I want to get on and I know they say that it's it helps more so with making sure that people are focused on the qualia playlist and and you know not gaming numbers and things of that nature but really it just makes it I don't really find a world where it's actually better for anybody no it's annoying because obviously it doesn't make any difference at all to bigger artists because obviously numbers are going to be big but for independent artists and smaller artists it's a big difference especially as a lot of artists are tweeting out that it's um it's a really valuable free marketing tool and there aren't many of those around they're actually free and accessible to everyone yeah yeah I mean and to me though at the end of the day I go in over thinking because look if you see you can still see the type of playlist that certain artists on all and so you can still reach out to a playlist of artists that you're listening to and things like that's one route right if I'm if I'm listening to artists I or I go to similar artists I can see what playlist of music has been picked up on so I'll just go reach out to those playlists it makes sense you know you can tell still that it's owned by Spotify or not so there's still that path of kind of understanding the quality of a playlist which is more how you want to be looking at playlists anyway like there's still paths to get there and then you can utilize other sites like chart metric uh to I mean you're paying for you know the professional premium account to start to get an feel of which of these you might see the exact same status so everything in the spot of it five is taking it and more on chart metric so that's still there you just have to get some more money exactly the important things for this are that usually you'd go on the desktop on Spotify and you go on the artist profile and you would see the five top players there on you'll no longer be able to see the listeners count you should be able to see the playlist and also this doesn't impact Spotify varieties at all you'd be able to see all the players you're on yourself when you're in account doesn't affect that you have to see what players you're on and how many listeners listening to your music it's just on the front end for you know the general consumer general user you can access it yeah I mean in that vein I might actually slip I mean I I could at least understand in that instance because I if they're trying to say that they don't want people to follow a playlist based off of social proof they want people to follow a playlist based off of whether they like the playlist is that what they're trying to say well maybe but that doesn't go far enough because to do that they would remove the followers count from the playlist all together wouldn't they they're gonna do that well you're saying the consumer wouldn't see the playlist though right well they'll have to see the place they just can't see the number of listens it's got on those top five playlists well that's what I'm saying they won't see the five but your argument is that it wouldn't just be that the consumers can't see the follower account you think that if they really care they wouldn't let anybody see the follower account yeah I think so because obviously they obviously you can everyone can see at the moment they can see the number of followers the players has got or what you want to know is how people actually listen to that playlist and removing this takes that away to some extent it's just it's the listeners that are more important than the followers they have to be engaged I don't I actually I just agree with that because I think that if the consumer you know they should be focused on whether they like or whether they like a playlist or not nothing more than yeah yeah so but on the back end there is still utility if I have a playlist I'm gonna be able to know how many people are following my playlist because I can judge other metrics there's a lot of reasons for me to understand that so I wouldn't say I don't know like just like anything right there's a lot of websites that don't allow you having to have an insight on the front end because it's not too easy to experience that allows you to see a lot more deeper into it on the back end because there's all these functions to it so yeah the other point I made the other point I made on the newsletter was that oh monthly this was just on desktop it wasn't on mobile apps which is the main way that Spotify is used anyway therefore will it make much of a difference now that part yeah now that part brings things at the question like what are you doing or why are you going if you yeah why are you going about this way because as you said it's used mostly on mobile so what's the point of just doing it on one or not or not the other I guess we have to wait to see for this one but if there's just a sign of things to come we're always going to find on a different way around to do whatever we need to do the next up from Spotify lots of new features um one of them is they're launching these new songwriter pages which expansion on the line of notes for song credits so for example you know if you go into song credits on songs you'd be able to see you know who's who's contributed to the music and you can now click on the songwriter and they get their own sort of like Spotify artist page and the sort of things you can see on here you can see a picture of them all the tracks they've written and appeared on their most frequent collaborators are linked to their website and social media and also they have their own playlist generated by Spotify called written by and then ex songwriter so you know it's nice to see Spotify given some more recognition to songwriters but my biggest point about this is that I'm now going to read out how you access this profile page so what you need to do is right click on the track or if you're on mobile tap the dot dot dot next to the track you then need to go down and find song credits you then need to hit that then you need to hit the songwriter's name then you'll find the songwriter's profile page but in this day and age we use we're doing a lot of you know passive listening or having our phone unlocked or using a nap I really give me that actively engage in Spotify to go all through that process to find a songwriter's page probably not probably not at all I mean there's those people who actually really care about those that stuff right they will get a lot of benefit from this but of course we know that's a percent of the percent type situation I I mean yeah this is just an additional feature it's a nice to have I guess but there's no legitimate impact to the platform that this makes in my opinion I don't know who vouched vouched for this or well no I think it's a good thing it should be done yeah I take that back yeah it's it's it's like I said it's a nice to have but there's so many other issues that are important in terms of innovating the platform this is just adding another feature as opposed to improving the actual experience and innovating on a platform again which obviously I've kind of posted gripe about that before so what they should have is that they should be the same they should have their own artist page you can just search them straight from you know when you search for music you can search for the songwriter not just an artist and then their own complete page profile page and also that's a great idea and also well you know when you've got this is you know it says music and he says like songs artists and albums songwriters have their own tab as well I feel so you can follow certain songwriters if you like a lot of their work there just needs to be more done this is a good first step there just needs to be a lot more features to make it more accessible for people to actually find new songwriters yeah now I agree if it goes that path then yeah if you're going to do this actually do and treat them like artists as well in the same way as anyway of their own tracks so essentially the pages can be pretty similar from a user experience um standpoint for a long time that I'm not interested in that so in more work to do on that but it's a good step in the right direction a few other things from Spotify you can now share your Spotify canvases to your Instagram story so we'd say when you share your album artwork of your song you can now share the canvas as well so if you've got that option it's a nice little feature and the other thing is they're also testing out real-time lyrics so underneath when the music's playing before you might have seen storyline but now that you've strolled down you can actually see the lyrics that are populated in real time for some tracks so they're just testing these out rolling them out slowly you know seeing how they how they get on but um you know these are all just little things but you could make a better platform in the future now that I think is interesting because we talk so much about the passive listening that happens on Spotify this is something that might force people to engage and have their eyes and ears at the same time which is something that obviously they've been trying to figure out how to get for a period of time since they've been explaining what brand video on the platform for the last couple of years this also goes back to our point about uh Reza a few episodes ago where they're going to have like memes and discussions in the actual songs rolling as they play that'll be a great way to be able to actually stay on the platform and keep their app open on the screen on so Spotify can start doing more of that then we're going to get more engaged listening all right because we know people care about lyrics right lyric videos are popping on YouTube even all right we know people want to get lyrics and it seems that it's a better experience to hear and see lyrics at the same time right you're a karaoke like experience and that's another thing actually people can now use Spotify for karaoke um right like that that's that as well so you're actually kind of inching into another market inadvertently so that could be really good but i'm i would actually not gonna lie so yeah when it how do you know when they it's just like a beta test yeah it's just beta test yeah also the other thing is you have to scroll down to find this stuff so you only have the canvas or the artwork i mean if you scroll down to find the storyline of the lyrics like it probably should be a bit more prominent maybe like a swipe i don't know the idea of like having to scroll down to find it should just come up on the screen maybe i think it's just the user experience isn't quite there yet with it right if i had to bet long term it would start to get more and more prominent on real estate as you said it will take some time probably but that should definitely stay yeah and the final thing from Spotify is um not anymore we've gone we've gone through the news and the features they're implementing but i actually was reading an interesting opinion piece by a guy called muggle donson who's the founder of h dimension records and he has said is the title of the headline is why a tip jar on spotlights a bad idea so this caught my interest because we've been talking about tipping a lot and how it's you know working well on loom and why Spotify should potentially do it to help our eyes but he makes a very strong argument for why this wouldn't work have you got any have you got any thoughts before we go into it like immediately do you think it's a bad idea on the face of it yeah i mean a lot of my my thoughts honestly were around is but yeah like you know you think that tip jars at first it sounds good oh more revenue for money but it just doesn't work like that when it comes to the way it's set up for most artists right there there's the good and the bad for the independent artists yes it could be a very good thing but for the signed artists there's a little bit of a good mirrors because you're not tipping the artists themselves right like this is you're tipping and that artist won't see the tip for probably like two quarters from when you actually give them that 50 cents or five dollars and in that five dollars is actually going to be what is the 30 percent that Spotify was going to take which is cool right take your transaction fee or make or well that's it was 30 percent that's way more than a regular transaction fee i know yeah yeah it's not confirmed i don't think the fees confirmed but it probably will be around that ballpark yeah that's actually ridiculous now i think about it that is that much particularly when they're already doing what they're doing youtube is worse we're going to come on to that later but youtube is a lot worse yeah this new this new feature yeah yeah youtube's payouts have never been as good as anybody else's so we'll get to that we'll get to that yeah but um so you one yeah you're gonna split with Spotify it's just like how it's going now right you take a stream yep and who does that money go to goes towards some towards Spotify run in some form of fashion but then even more importantly the breakdown of the major label indie label manager like all those relationships the artists only receive a percent of a percent so in terms of if i'm a fan i want to tip an artist and the reason i'm an intent i have by tipping that artist is far better for me to do either on a better platform like your TikTok page patreon or loom or patreon right um just page tiktok takes what's 50 percent so like that or just some other individual platform or maybe just buy some that will merge or something but yeah that doesn't it's it's it sounds good because everybody's moving towards it but it just doesn't have the same need that gets met when it comes to Spotify i think they're better off not i don't want to say they're better off not doing it um because they are good they are looking at doing it don't you like you said they are interested um there's still any artists that can benefit from it though right there yeah so it'll be beneficial from the indie artist standpoint i think because yeah you're paying Spotify 30 percent cut yeah you could say it's better to do on other on other platforms but it's still using behavior if i'm on spot i might like a loom i might not like tiktok i might not want to go to your patreon right so i'm already here and even though it's seven dollars instead of ten dollars or seven dollars versus nine dollars it's still seven dollars that you might not have captured so i think they should have it but there's gonna have to be some kind of fan education piece that happens or maybe they i was going i was actually going to say maybe they provide a breakdown of where the splits go for the artists right but then that would be revealing some stuff about artist deals that a lot of people wouldn't went out there like oh you're uh i don't know said artists all he gets two percent of the money you spent so i don't you serve the indie well and the major artists well depending or well signed artists well and navigate all that it wants that's that it's a tricky it's a tricky one well i'll go through his arguments and make a few comments so the first one is that the only way it would work if his the payment goes directly to the artist which we already mentioned was a label dispute it could be like a conduit but that won't eliminate the go between you want to cut out the middle man in a way so but who's going to be accountable with it it's just going to be the artist because a lot of you know artists you know they don't they're not responsible for running their own Spotify account obviously for the indie artists it works really well but obviously the labels are going to want to get a piece of the pie in these royalties so therefore that doesn't it seems like a broken system already for us even begun um he said the concept wouldn't work unless Spotify came on board and what's their incentive what's their motive for doing it because obviously takes money away from them they can take a cut of it but is there really the amount of money it would cost to put the infrastructure in place and the time for testing it and stuff would it really be yeah i think that um spot i don't i don't think it'll be that well okay through the labels and even the idea of streaming right Spotify shouldn't be using this as a substitute for their streaming all right we shouldn't say hey well we're we're we're lowering our streaming fees at some point i mean streaming payouts at some point but hey look we are we're allowing you to do this direct direct um relationship especially when we're getting 30 percent of that right off the top right so these things should continue to be separate for one and then i don't understand how you keep the labels out of it in certain artist situations because the way some of these contracts are set up whether it's the label or the manager or whoever yeah it's hard to cut out the middle man that's that's just the reality of a lot contracts i mean again when we're talking about a sign artist situation you could call it a patreon if you want to the way some of these contracts are set up they can take some of the money out of that patreon as well yeah is that a situation is fishy so judge to completely off of that scenario i can only say it would be a positive for independent artists so more than anything hey artists who are independent all right consider being independent or consider staying independent because a lot of the benefits that are coming through these technologies are building a better world tomorrow for independent artists and there's so many of those technologies and opportunities coming you just have to be positioned to succeed as an independent artist in that that climate right now a lot of artists either they aren't positioned because they're not handling their self you know understanding and marketing all those types of situations or there's other people who you know they have a fan base and they have everything except for freedom all right and they also won't be able to benefit as well a little bit like that kid who's watching all the other kids play outside but they're in time the other thing it says on here some other very fair arguments and the point you make says about um by claiming that in a way to sort of indicates that because Spotify royalties are so low it can't suggest that you know artists should live off tips which is obviously a big problem in the states particularly the ethical problems with that like should they really be you know having to rely on that for income especially at independent level so it's a bad precedent artists should live off of tips so not at all exactly that's what it's encouraging he reckons in a way that's that's why I said those have to stay completely separate those are two completely things because there's a lot of artists that don't have the fan base psychograph right so you their money they're better off getting strings than any kind of tips from their things because they're saying is this aren't going to give that kind of money or they don't have that kind of money most of my fans are you know maybe the feroz in a underserved environment right it doesn't make sense for most people so we're not most people it doesn't make sense for a lot of people and we can't put the blanket over every artist's situation there's too many different types of fan bases thousands of music and things of that nature something like well there's a few genres that are better that could perform well and artists that I definitely think can perform well but that's a whole another conversation this is this is a danger we've been talking about before like why is the tipping culture in the west not been so prominent on you know on social media and on these music streaming platforms where it is but the problem is that if we start going down that rabbit hole of you know increasing these tips the companies are going to start thinking well actually they're making a lot of artists making money from this therefore we should you know let's save some money here and not pay out as much because they're making money this is exactly how people like this already exist I know a lot of cultures don't necessarily have like the tipping culture right but in America right where the tipping culture is is it's a true it's a real thing there's the waiters who get paid off of tips they get paid pretty much no money all right it's like hey we're not really paying you that much hourly you might pay two dollars and a second hour because you should be getting a lot of money off of tips and you got to make all that up there and then obviously there's other jobs that hey it's not tips so we'll pay you more and you have this consistent thing you don't have to worry about these ebbs and flows of business and the timing it that's definitely going to be the thought process of a lot of people yeah sad or unsaid it's going to happen there's a classic case where you know the top one percent or ten percent is making a lot of money so they're thinking oh he's got to making loads everyone's making loads that's not the reality and that's the way I think it's like the point is like this tip is for me to get more of what I deserve not to replace the little of what I deserve that you're already giving right it is oh yeah okay I'm like if I'm not if I'm barely getting what I deserve here this is another stream of income to help me as an artist be able to live get the value from my fan base that's already being messed with in so many ways and it's difficult to be connected with I built this this is more this is not supposed to be a replacement for the issues that you already had and now hey you're good now because you have that because you're only want to mess that up there's always going to be a way especially when I think of Spotify there's just it's so much label influence all right it's going to be hard for them to do well right in terms of artist initiative like things might look nice right it's just like why they have education platforms but their educational videos aren't that really in-depth right yeah exactly yeah they aren't super practical and they're more they glossy some highlights like you know yeah yeah yeah yeah like it's that type of thing why because for one it's more of a same do good type thing versus a truly you know what's the word I'm looking for they don't they don't just no true measure of success or I don't believe all intent is really about caring and wanting the artist to succeed in that fashion if it is it's not done well at the moment could change and then on top of that when you are in bed with so many labels it just makes it difficult because now there's less incentive to even reveal certain types of information all right and yeah other artists a lot of times are using artists to tell the information all right and a lot of times the artist starting to tell you know teaching your class mostly the artist especially in the more major label type game they don't want to give their secrets and some of them don't even honestly know so just an inspirational motivational glossy speech to their given yeah my take from it is that it's no rather than getting actionable steps from it it's more like I did this why can't you do it too or you can do it too yeah yeah yeah yeah the other things the other points you make which I think are very fair is that this also doesn't help non artist songwriters at all because they're not going to get the tips see well I didn't even think of it that way because that would be a part of the splits I would assume if the tip goes that way if the major label goes that um the major label gets their cut the songwriter the idea is there's not going to be this there's not going to be this potential cut system if it's going straight to the artist like the idea is that it might yeah they might not even this is where it gets dicey because what do you do and like how much time of spot by going to spend actually developing technology to split all this out and work out one needs to go what because med day is already broken anyway and we're not well actually it makes sense that the songwriter doesn't get it because you would be essentially trying to tip the artist not tip the song unless they said try to also create a feature where it's more so like the song that gets tipped on that's that you know is the filter for how the revenue was split so yeah it makes sense that the songwriter one wouldn't get it and then from that standpoint I don't think that's really that big of a deal that's not a negative thing that's what the songwriter signed up for right the songwriter doesn't get they don't get the merch from the tour like they don't get that profit they don't get the they will suffer if the royalty payments go down but if there's yes but again to me those things should stay separate in the first look yeah but if those things remain separate I don't care about the songwriter not getting the tip because they're tipping the artist that they've connected with in that fashion that's not necessarily tipping a song in that matter now the tips were some system that were based off of the music that's listening to right now or I want to like if there was more like that then you can have songwriters getting something but it was just I'm tipping Beyonce I don't care that she had 50 writers on this song yeah yeah I'd say you know yeah on the flip side I'm putting myself in Spotify shoes one way this could be good is that if you add this tipping feature it increases the reliance on the platform for artists you have you you know you become you become a bit more of a significant player in the game if you there are tips on that well that's what they're doing it now you asked me my thoughts actually that was my my very first thought the first time I read this it was just the fact that all of these people are moving towards tipping in general and people know they have to do it because the more money like there's like two things money and attention like those are going to be the two greatest incentives for people to use platforms right if I want to get my attention build my fans fast and I want to be able to make money and the more money that's on there the more incentive for people to actually stay and use that platform like oh you want to spend time on tiktok when they have and they don't have tipping but also but instagram has tipping or I'm going to be way more over here it's like oh or they have at least the benefit of getting a fan base fast but yeah like now it's we're going to get to a point where of course everybody is doing it in their own way because they realize that truth in that like why would somebody use my platform if they're making 10 times the money and they already have attention if they already have attention and they're making 10 times the money is just like why I would move from soundcloud to Spotify when I'm not really getting paid like for any of these streams you know I know SoundCloud on their back and they did create a payout system which isn't all that but like yeah I might get popping on SoundCloud for attention but once I have attention why do I care to be here when I can make money I'm now trying to monetize my attention it's always the problems in that order first I need attention then I need to monetize it if I don't have a way to monetize then why would people try to push people to my platform even if my shit stays on Spotify I might say yeah go check my stuff out on x you know like wherever that is because that's where I know I'm going to make more money so I'm going to try to push people there more often yeah it certainly opened my eyes this argument because I was thinking before you know we've ticked up doing so well and loom getting involved and thinking you know this tipping is a great idea it's an extra source of income but so literally statistically it's such a problem for Spotify to to go into it's just it's become very messy and potentially you know could have really bad consequences for everyone so yeah yeah it's a dicey thing again well you have that many stakeholders you know I wanted saying when you're dealing with just putting lipstick on the pig as they say right because it's so it became so ingrained in that old culture of industry versus pushing towards the new that it's hard to really fix that new old model incrementally or just by adding these new features or to good new projects you really do have to just be outside of it right and then to really benefit from these things so that's Spotify that's all you know that's what they're doing at the moment lots of new features and lots of things to think about I've always move on to something a bit different now because we don't really when we talked about sync a lot especially not on this podcast I was really interested in the article written by Chris Edward Sacra from Sync Tank and she said you know this Netflix are going to put 17 billion into you know into their programs this year into their into their movies in the tv series and it's going to have a massive effect on the opportunities for you know music going to tv shows and the same thing as well when we've got Disney plus launching apple tv plus is launched as well on hbo max there's a lot suddenly a lot more opportunities for us to get their music out there and get some money as well I think it's just an interesting time because there's not been this much you know opportunity for an extra source of income before so I think it's just thinking from in the eyes perspective it really might be worthwhile getting yourself sign up to put things like music gateway and stuff to get some sync coverage you know paying for someone to pitch you to these tv series and movies because the revenue looks like it's going to be there yeah man this is a benefit and just a derivative of this content landscape that we're in it's not just artists that need more content it's not just even regular entertainment that needs more content it's brands in general right the NBA needs more content and it failed the mlb the like the soccer leagues mcdonalds everybody needs more content to stay top of mind and be included in the attention and the regular mean guy at home or just like a little kid in fifth grade they might try to put your stuff on something and not pay it right like of course they're going to do it all the time with anything the technologies will find it copyrighted because of the things they're coming up with and that'll be that but it but it's there's no payment that's going to come out of it because that doesn't make sense for the consumer but coca-cola that can get sued right mcdonalds that can get sued these bigger companies that still need to create more content especially understanding that music is an integral part of consuming content so much in so many ways right they use it on the commercials and their tv shows and and and all these things before and now that we need to create more and more of it and there's going to be more people that need sync right it's as simple as that right and those people who do it that way again all right we have more people that are official you know carry their their their business out in the true proper legal fashions that means a lot more opportunities for artists and there's so many artists that i believe that well this already happened it's not even new but i think so many more artists will truly understand that hey i could just become a sync artist and make more than a lot of these other artists like there's there's a lot of bad music i was me and coli were watching tv last night and i was pointing out to him like listen to all these bad songs especially reality tv shows there's a lot of bad music that plays in the background but it does the job and it doesn't even feel that bad in that moment right because that's not the full purpose of it it's not the focus yeah yeah if you're a wack rapper you can come up on on sync deals right like you don't have to be commercial level record label sign um level to pay to win off of sync all right so there's there's so much opportunity that's i guess i have so many thoughts because i haven't really as you said we haven't really went deep into sync too much on these videos but of course this is just it's positive all right that they're investing in more content because that means more opportunity for sync but i think that's also just indicative of the landscape of today more content it means more people need to create more content just to stay yeah um you know top of mind and compete for attention and then the more people that need to do it and the more you force these official brands to do it that's going to be more opportunity as well because of course they have to handle things legally because they have a lot of other assets to protect because it got me thinking again like obviously it makes so much sense but you know a lot of us could actually write particular songs with you know with a brand in mind or with a tv series in mind say they say like the first season of a particular show maybe you could write a song for the second season you could try and pitch i was thinking i'll see what was the name of the artist you interviewed who you know pitched the spanks i've forgotten his name oh my gosh how did i forget his name because it's just it's yeah i had it in my brain i just forgot because it's gonna make the point oh my god it's uh make make the point make the point i will say his name i don't know why his name is not popping up right now you know the idea that you know he had this idea in mind he was like i'm gonna write this song about spanks i'm gonna do my research into her brand and i'm gonna pitch it to her and it all just came out from there and he made him a lot of serious amount of money for a big brand and he just had he just had the idea it's like rather than writing a song obviously i'm all for artists you know writing songs because they want to write them in whether they want it to be about but if you could write something for a particular brand or target in mind you could really be so fruitful for you so he sat out just to make this song about spanks and he got the deal and you know there's no reason why he's still gonna make your own on your own creative endeavours make your own projects but also maybe you know once in a while you should sit down and think right what would i like to let's write something i can actually particularly target to a particular brand or tv series or anything and just pitch it you know you know that was exactly exactly 100% i guess it's there and i had another artist who saw that interview maybe talking about that with him and then they decided to pitch to a big car brand a song that they had about that car brand and you know it's a more niche car brand whatever and and i don't i don't think it went anywhere and i wasn't even gonna advise the artist to do it exactly well there was a lot of back end stuff because he needed to own the song in my opinion right um yeah but but with that being said he was it actually engaged got response from one of the bigger people of the brand um some big bp or whatever which took it and continued to have conversation so the pitch actually went through right he actually got to somebody with a chance that enough interest where there's hey i want to present this idea to the team right and see what happens and that just goes to show you it's so much harder to get an executive's attention in music because they're in that domain of music but these other people outside of those spaces they don't experience music being pitched to them all the time right in cars they probably experienced people who want car help right those types of things or trying to or trying to get on that way like sarah blakley probably has all these people who want to get their clothing brands or woman driven brands that things that she sees all the time she doesn't see as much even though her husband came from the music industry back in the day right all these people in these different niches like where it seems like you're you're competing in this one space but you'll be surprised how many other places that you're actually refreshing yeah there's a big one you to mention is we haven't mentioned yet is esports 100% need to be putting some yeah but those are going don't want to integrate really fast yes you need to but those that's not the same as some of these other industries where it's just almost no music because there's already one integral because it's in a in a crown of a lot of people just playing and to twitch yeah like well twitch is almost synonymous with esports right yeah exactly but you know getting on pitching to actual you know influences on twitch playing about their show of their of their you know videos like it's it's still an underutilized market i've been pitching the artists to do so for years i've had a lot of artists that have had success doing it um whenever but i don't think there that'll be as much of a problem in like five years i think because of the gaming culture is so strong and a lot of those kids are going to also rap too they'll like it'll be natural for them to just try to do it in gaming in gaming videos that one is just so obvious in in the how acting culture Drake like the fact that Drake did that already people understand you know that how they can benefit from each other so yes definitely do that because it's still underutilized and it's still early just because of the difficulty and people it's not just in front of people's faces but think that's under boxes you say yeah but even more than that yeah go even further outside the boxes yeah um than that where like that's probably people's third step but think five and six were industries where people wouldn't even think to do anything at all another example there's a girl i know who did a remix well she has an influencer friend who did a remix to this old New Orleans song and they were able to get essentially a commercial deal doing some remixes for like a local car dealer all right and that doesn't maybe sound sexy but there's real money right like now they're writing car commercials for and then do a remix is to bring that attention on that car place attention right drop of videos so that's a real in Atlanta that happens all the time all right there's if you turn on the radio certain channels like 1-800 for going on pain good lord they they have a new remix probably every two weeks of using rapping all that stuff you know obviously targeting certain demographic but there's so many opportunities to make money um and you know sink in different ways that it's it's it's crazy like making money in music is different than hey i want to be this particular artist and go this particular path the problem is everybody's trying to go down that particular path yeah the vision of an artist that was sold to them when they were kids through their favorite artists right they wanted to be like those people versus say saying i want to make money in music and there's so many ways to make money i found his name isn't it cashmase who does spanks yes there you go yeah i'll put a link to that video in the description hundred percent perfect the other thing i was reading about in the netflix thing as well as the european commission have got this like legislation where netflix have to ensure that at least a percent of the content you know comes from the actual country where it's being filmed in so for example if there's a series being filmed in denmark at least a percent of the music it's got come from danish artists which also quite helpful that's set to rise as well so interesting interesting what do you also know i think it's a good thing because obviously especially in more developing countries in particular or you know smaller music scene countries where you know you've got you've got a much better chance of getting yourself some more for more opportunities but i'm all for it i think i think that quote will increase as well as there's more of it yeah true i will i mean i want to put some more thought into that before elaborate and the other thing i was reading about in this article as well was um the children's sector children's entertainment because it's set to be worth 1.7 billion by the end of next year spotlights go so in kids app as well and then i think it's yes so two-thirds of three to four year olds watch content online and it goes to 90 by the time they're 15 you know there's no reason why you couldn't also you know write some music for children shows if that's sort of short if that's sort of your market but then we put off by it for certain like it's a growing industry all the time yeah yeah it's an entire market for sure and i like like kids are money these days right i always say in some sense you know the industry oftentimes follows the money and back in the day right cds albums a tracks whatever there are these physical things that you have to have cash for so in some sense i want to make sure that i'm targeting somebody who can go out and pay him buy my physical product because that's the money exchange actually happens of course there's a scenario where the kids can like something and you convince parents to buy it for it but primarily adults have a huge value right because of that and then when you go to the future which is today like then you're so it's a flip scenario where money isn't is not just money directly time is now money all right because it's about streaming we're not exchanging money with fans directly oftentimes when it comes to our music we're just a lot they're consuming and giving us their time and that time is how we get paid out so who has more time to listen again and again again it's the younger people yeah all right so that part right there is a hugely beneficial part of just that kids market because all men especially if you have a kid like your stuff kid like we're not even talking about teenagers where you have a lot of time in a middle school you have a lot of time when you talk about three and four years old they will listen to one song repeatedly day after day after month that's a month you know so that could really be meaningful and I know Lil Nas X saw quite a bit of that as well he's got me thinking about it was never anything you did with the Tiktoker I don't know if it was um it might have been Jay might have been someone else but he's a teacher he's a teacher and he you know a lot of his kids people saw him on Tiktok and helped him blow him up imagine if he started writing songs yeah for the actually you know if he started writing songs at that target market as well it's a whole another avenue it is and that's again though that's something that artists have to reconcile you know with themselves because that's not often in line with that vision that artists you can separate it on yeah you can yeah you can but sometimes people can't compartmental out it is yeah it's the thing yeah yeah I think that you can truly say it's separate but it's hard for that it could be your side hustle to get some more revenue you know you earn your money on that side then you you know it could be hey you're a songwriter I mean hey like is it you can be a songwriter write songs for other people and then um you know sell it off just like so many artists are no one has to know yeah they're also main artists yeah you can do it under a different voice you can do it under a different name you could have your own little group right and you might even hire some kids right to sing and you might do them pay for hire yeah that's that's a real thing right there's so many ways to flip it you know I mean I might create me a little sweatshop to do the same one day so it's a great you know there's always opportunities to explore that's just a great time to try out these things and a few more things for us to touch upon before we finish here a few more news items I'll do the quick one first which is soundcloud now allows that stop though track straight via their iPhone remember to go online do it on desktop so finally you can just upload a track on your iPhone you can't do an android yet sorry sure not yet I know you're a user of android but um yeah yeah coming soon that's alright now so you can now so now you can upload your tracks and also change the artwork do a track title description genre everything all on the app now for the first time it's about time it's happened um it's gonna it's gonna have a lot of value so I'm sure birds should have been done about 10 years ago yeah I mean I have no words like that it's late it's a simple thing loom we know it does that right off the back pretty much I believe yeah um but yeah that's that's interesting I'm I wonder why now exactly and any other thing to finish off of is is YouTube testing a new way sort of like I guess it is a bit like tipping still it's called applause so on desktop you can maraud content creators by you know hitting the applause button you can donate money to them but there's a lot of catches of this early on in testing because you have to have more than 100,000 subscribers and you also have to opt into it you have to get invited to it as well so close but you have to get invited into it um YouTube takes 30% of the donations which is ridiculous um so the average so if someone gave you two dollars you'd get about um one but you get about $1.40 yeah take about 60 60 cents of it um and it's only been tested in a few markets right now but I'm not I'm not really I'm struggling to see the value of this over Patreon or you know the Superchats and things that I'm struggling to see whether this will you know be a big thing for YouTube or not yeah I wonder if Patreon will find a lot of trouble in this because I know from a philosophy standpoint they might go hey we love it we believe that artists should get their value creators should get their value right I'm sure they'll say that on the front end from an actual model what would that do now that could be the positive on a increased education and message in the marketplace of fans paying people all right and artists even getting used to asking for payment because at the end of the day these things are not subscriptions they're tipping their one off so then you would say hey the next step is to have a subscription so you have predictable revenue that's so that could help in the long run I don't I don't know we'll see I know I don't like the lack of control you can set your tears you can you know you you choose the content it goes out on there but if it's giving you a little donation you don't they also take 30% and you don't you you don't know what's happening but YouTube also has the um what do you call that thing I mean they asked me to be in it it's that uh it's a program where you can basically subscribe to exclusive content they have that program as well I don't I yeah but yeah the tipping in general it's us always going to have somebody take a cut all right I mean there's going to be transactions at the very least all right that's going to always be a thing and then of course why would they not take try to take a cut you're not exactly I don't expect none of the any of the companies not take some kind of cut from fees you know that's if anything the thing that's going to make it make sense for them all right I just think patreon is what's the actual value though because you're actually paying for something and getting something out of it whereas you know you're just obviously on YouTube you're paying your tipping number because you want to but YouTube are taking a cut anyway and you're not getting anything any more value from other than you're just tipping numbers on Patreon you can do the same thing but also get some more exclusive content and engage even further with the creator yes but it's a broker though all right I think we take technology for granted or technology spoils us because when we do things physically right there's all these brokers in the world all right well whether it's selling things wholesale to get or to give them to a grocery store and all these things get upcharged right so there's a percentage that everybody's taking where we don't always see it so we don't think about it just like when the government taxes yeah yeah taxes is like hey I'm just gonna put the taxes and the price and raise it or I could just tax you all right and we don't want to feel the tax so there's that there's always going to be some sense of a middle man that's collecting something and but when it's through technology sometimes we just feel like well why don't they get everything because technology just feels so easy but the technology has to be maintained I mean it's in business still so I'm not you know we can make the decisions on I'm not I don't feel anything against people taking your cut and it's just especially when there's platform options I know sometimes options aren't real as they might seem because once you have a monopoly of attention you can say oh yeah there's other options but is there really kind of not but it's kind of difficult when all the behavior in the market shares is crap I understand that aspect of it but that's yeah I don't know that's kind of a part of the game is always take do make as much as you can with as much as you have to give away right but until you can take as much as you can and give away as little as you can you know that's kind of the game is always been yeah I don't know if that means it's right but it's it's definitely not new right again we'll have to wait and see how this material doesn't develop over time obviously where it rolls out to more and more users but it's very very exclusive club right now as you'd expect yeah of course always I think it's a good place to close it out now this has been music user matters episode five now and I'll say we're now available on in podcast format on Spotify Apple Music SoundCloud wherever you get your podcast make sure you check us out on there yes yes yes sir and we'll always try to remind you because you guys need to get get our listeners up and to keep us doing it man we really hope you guys have been benefiting starting to listen on Spotify haven't checked those stats in a period and of course we only do this every month once a month this is our second episode that'll officially be on it we hope you enjoy thanks for listening thanks listening everyone bye it's the matwork