The Music Business Buddy
A podcast that aims to educate and inspire music creators in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. A new episode is released each Wednesday and aims to offer clarity and insight into a range of subjects across the music industry, all through the lens of a music creator for the benefit of other music creators. The series includes soundbites and interviews with guests from all over the world together with commentary and clarity on a range of topics. The podcast is hosted by award winning music industry professional Jonny Amos.
Jonny Amos is a music producer with credits on a range of major and independent labels, a songwriter with chart success in Europe and Asia, a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business at BIMM University UK, director of The SongLab Ltd and the author of The Music Business for Music Creators.
www.jonnyamos.com
The Music Business Buddy
Episode 44: The Unclaimed Royalties Revolution with Monetunes CEO and Tech Entrepreneur Antonio Di Puorto
What if I told you billions of dollars in music royalties go unclaimed every year? That's the reality that Antonio Di Puorto discovered during his remarkable journey from frustrated small-town DJ to successful artist manager who sold his agency to Live Nation.
After witnessing talented artists missing substantial royalty payments throughout his career, Antonio founded MoneTunes to revolutionize how independent musicians collect what they're rightfully owed. His platform elegantly solves a complex problem: even music creators registered with performing rights organizations typically don't collect all of their total publishing royalties, with the rest scattered across hundreds of global collection societies.
Many creators face an impossible choice - navigate this labyrinth alone or sign with traditional publishers who often ask for 50% commission, 5-20 year contracts, and control over decisions like sync licensing opportunities. Antonio shares a frustrating personal experience when a major music publisher rejected a modest $2,000 sync deal for his then-emerging artist simply because it was too small for their business model.
MoneTunes offers a refreshing alternative - collecting mechanical, performance, and neighboring rights royalties through a single dashboard while charging just 15% commission with no long-term contracts or signup fees. The platform also maintains artists' control over sync opportunities and has forged strategic partnerships with services like SubmitHub, Groover, and Fiverr to create a comprehensive ecosystem supporting independent creators.
Our conversation explores Antonio's inspiring career trajectory and examines the impact of AI on music creation. Rather than fearing technological change, Antonio advocates for frameworks ensuring artists benefit from rather than are replaced by these innovations. His journey exemplifies the entrepreneurial spirit that drives positive disruption in the music industry.
Ready to discover if you have unclaimed royalties waiting? Listeners get an exclusive MoneTunes discount when collecting what's rightfully their by using the following code on sign up:
https://app.monetunes.com/signup/952724
https://www.monetunes.com
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The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy Hello, hello everybody, and a warm welcome to you. You're listening to the Music Business Buddy with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, which is available in hardback, paperback and ebook format. I am a music creator with a variety of credits I'm a consultant, an artist manager and a senior lecturer in music business and music creation. Wherever you are, whatever you do, please consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of the community. My goal is to be here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieve their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music.
Speaker 1:Okay, in today's episode, I am talking to Antonio Di Puerto. Now, antonio is somebody that impresses me so much. He has a background as an artist manager. He knows what it's like to kind of take an artist from absolutely nothing on SoundCloud and build them up into something really big. In fact, he ended up building the management agency, which he then sold to Live Nation. From then, he went on to become a tech innovator as a project manager at Universal Music Group and since then he's now started up his own company, money Tunes. That's M-O-N-E Tunes so money without the Y, money Tunes, which is a very, very exciting and positive disruptor in the music publishing space.
Speaker 1:Antonio will explain the company in detail in far more detail than I could, but in a nutshell it's about unclaimed royalties. He, throughout his time from kind of transition from artist manager into tech entrepreneur in the music industry, he has seen millions and millions of pounds go unclaimed and he wants to do something to fix that. So instead of you know, moaning about it, he's just gone ahead and done his best to fix it and I think he's doing a fine job. So I'm going to hand over to the interview and I hope that you listen and learn from a truly exceptional example of a music industry professional. Here we go, antonio. Welcome to the music business, buddy. It is good to have you here. How are you?
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, john, it's great to be here. I'm good.
Speaker 1:How are you? I'm very well. Thank you. You're a well-travelled guy. Antonio. You're in, is it the Philippines?
Speaker 2:right now. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I'm in the Philippines right now, at the moment.
Speaker 1:Wow, so nice weather.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah. I actually came here in September with the idea of staying here for a month. Then it became two months and, yeah, now it's been seven or eight months that I'm here and just the idea of going back to Europe and, you know, experiencing the hard cold where I'm from, I thought, you know, let's just stay here and enjoy the tropical weather.
Speaker 1:Good for you. Well, it's very difficult to argue with that. I think anybody could understand why. Good for you? Well, it's very difficult to argue with that.
Speaker 2:I think anybody could understand why. Good for you, sort of working remotely much before the pandemic, since I was managing Bose and the guys were in LA. I was in the Netherlands, so I'm relatively accustomed to the idea of smart working much before it became a trend. But yeah, definitely, if you have the chance to work anywhere you can, then why not move to an island somewhere in the Pacific, right? But yeah, definitely, if you have the chance to work anywhere you can, then why not move to an island somewhere in the Pacific?
Speaker 1:right yeah, why not? Good for you. Smart working, I like it. Can we start by exploring the role that Money Tunes plays in the music industry, by looking at what you do and what the team looks like.
Speaker 2:Sure, 100%. So in order to understand what we do at Monitunes, we need to take a step back and understand that every year in the music industry, there are billions of dollars that are left unclaimed and just being forgotten by the industry or left behind, whether because record labels don't collect everything, or because independent artists just distribute their music with a distributor and that's their only setup. So, for a number of reasons, there are billions that every year are left behind by the industry, and so the reason why we built Monitunes is to give a way to artists to go and collect those royalties in the most efficient and the easiest way possible for them as well.
Speaker 1:Interesting, okay, and it's predominantly on the music publishing side. So, on the copyright of the songs more so than the recordings, or do you kind of get involved with neighbouring rights as well?
Speaker 2:We do neighbouring rights as well. So, as of now, it's something that we're launching in the next couple of weeks, but you can already see a preview in the platform as well, and the overall idea is that, as uh as I experienced many years ago as a manager when I had to collect all the royalties for my clients, I had to juggle between multiple platforms to collect different type of royalties. For example, there's the MLC in the US to collect mechanical, there's ASCAP, bmi, you know, to collect performance and other type of publishing royalties. Then obviously there's SoundExchange in the US as well to collect neighboring rights, and you can see how that can be complicated, especially for independent artists.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a clear idea of what, what is the purpose for each of these platforms, it can get very tricky, very quick. So we decided to build something that has everything in one place, so, from within the same place, you can collect mechanical royalties, publishing royalties, neighboring rights and much more that will reveal in the next few months. As, within the same place, you can collect mechanical royalties, publishing royalties, neighbouring rights and much more that we'll reveal in the next few months as well. But yeah, that's the main idea.
Speaker 1:I love it. Can I just say congratulations on this, because somebody has needed to do this for quite a long time and it's you right, and I'm really, really pleased that I've got you on the podcast and I'm talking to you about this. I did an episode recently on rights management and collectible rights, which is an episode that you had listened to, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100% I did, and you saw the well, you are well aware of this, but there is a huge increase now and step up on rights management, especially when it comes to NR and the huge amount of royalties that just go uncollected for so long and they can be very, very difficult to backdate. So what is your kind of? I'm just trying to work out the kind of music creators that come to you.
Speaker 2:Is it quite varied and what is your offer to them?
Speaker 2:Artist who makes music in his bedroom and perhaps he had a viral song, a song going viral on tiktok, for example and he has no idea that he can collect more royalties than what he is currently receiving by his regular label or his distributor.
Speaker 2:So we have those type of artists as well. We have more experienced and seasoned artists who perhaps are a bit intimidated by the fact of filling paperworks and signing up on multiple platforms, so they have never done it and so they know they are aware they have all this backlog of royalties to recover, but they don't know where to start because it's been so many years. Then we've got established artists that are just looking for the right partners because, you know, they've had bad experiences with labels, with distributors, and so they're just waiting to find the best partner they could find in order to collect those royalties. Then we also work with record labels and give them an option to collect publishing royalties for their catalog and give them an option to collect publishing royalties for their catalogue. And obviously there is a lot of artists in between, but those, I would say, are the biggest sort of ICP or persona that we are working with.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Ok, what about the mechanical side? You mentioned it earlier because it's very under-collected right. Well, what about the mechanical side? You mentioned it earlier because it's very under-collected right? Because in streaming, for example, or in any kind of form of fixed digital social media streams, for example, people need mechanical devices in order to stream that music, and I think is there perhaps a misunderstanding amongst many music creators that they are entitled to a percentage of that when it comes to their songwriting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what many artists don't understand is that they are not collecting when their music is being streamed on Spotify. They're not collecting 100%, and I'm talking about Spotify, but obviously that includes YouTube, apple Music and all the other digital platforms. So what really happens is that when someone streams your music in the US, for example, you are being paid a portion of those royalties through your label, through your distributor, but another portion of those goes to the PRO of the country where the listener listens to your song, the PRO of the country where the listener listens to your song. So that means if someone streams your music in the US, then those royalties go to BMI and or ASCAP. If someone streams your music in Germany, they go to GEMA, and there are 200 plus different PROs and territories worldwide, and if an artist doesn't have the proper infrastructure in place, those royalties just go missing. And the reason is that many artists think, oh, I'll just sign up to BMI, I'll just sign up to AskUp as an author and that's it, then I'll collect everything that I can. Even then, though, many artists don't realise that publishing royalties are not just one big bucket. They are, in turn, divided in further between songwriter share and publisher share, so the songwriter share accounts, from what we've seen, around 20%, 25% if you're lucky, up to 50% of the total publishing share of the royalties that you've generated. And that means that even if you sign up with BMI or AskUp, you are still missing at least 50%, up to 80% of your total publishing royalties. And so nowadays the way that artists collect these royalties is through a publisher.
Speaker 2:Now, I've worked with many publishers before and there are many issues and downsides and headaches that derive from working with a publisher. One of these is that publishers, on average, ask you a commission of 50%, which can adapt really quickly depending on the scenario. Another downside is that publishers ask you to sign agreements with them for many, many years On minimum five years, 10 years, it could be up to 20 years, 50 years. And that could be a problem if in three, four, five years, you make a viral hit but you gave your rights away to a partner many years ago, but you gave your rights away to a partner many years ago but you're still subject to that agreement. And another, one of the biggest headaches that artists realize way too late is that they give away the control and some of the ownership of their catalog, especially when it comes down to sync placement opportunities, ownership of their catalog, especially when it comes down to sync placement opportunities.
Speaker 2:What me myself experienced many years ago is that while we were working on a song with, and that song was signed with, universal Music Publishing, what happened is that we received the sync placement opportunities with a sync fee of $2,000. Now for for us back then we were still an emerging talent and it was big money for us because we're still, you know, up and coming and we would have reinvested all that money in promotion and you know everything that, uh, that could come from that. But the thing was that for our publisher at the time, universal Music Publishing, $2,000 for a sync fee is relatively pennies if you compare to all their bigger roster, like the Weeknd or Drake, and the type of sync fees that they receive for those artists. So eventually they ended up rejecting the sync fee because it wasn't feasible, economically feasible, for them to pursue a sync placement fee with that sort of fee. And they told us, you know we should try to focus on the higher end of the fees and sync placement opportunities. But in reality those could be not necessarily life-changing money but they could really help an artist that's still in the up-and-coming phase, and so that's another big issue.
Speaker 2:Essentially, these three issues were the main ones for which we decided to build Monitunes. And then it was high commission many, many years, transfer of ownership and sometimes rejecting sync fees because of the of the fee itself. So money tunes was really born for that. We decided to be an alternative to music publishers so that independent artists could number one, collect royalties, number to receive sync placement opportunities and even collaborate, find collaborations with top liners or other producers, without having to go through a publisher. And so that's sort of the everything and where Monitunes was born, and that's what we're doing right now. We are, we see ourselves as the modern alternative to traditional publishing deals so that you can still get access to publishing royalties, 100% of publishing royalties. You can still get access to sync placement opportunities and collaborations, find top lines or instrumentals, without necessarily having to sign your rights away for many years or give away 50% of your royalties. And that's what we do in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:Good for you. Wow, I love that Awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I'm just thinking do you know, just last week I was teaching the music publishing class and I said to a bunch of students I said what do you expect from a music publisher, what is your expectation of them? And so you know, some of the answers came in, but they loosely were all around the things that you just said, right, so the ability to be able to collaborate with other writer, producers, artists, et cetera, that kind of introduction that was, out of everything, the most common denominator amongst that particular group of people that I asked, everything the the most common denominator amongst that particular group of people that I asked, and I think that's quite reflective of many, many songwriters. The trouble with that, of course, is that when we go through social media channels where people don't necessarily know each other, it can become a little bit rogue and um and sometimes, uh, you know, it's difficult to be able to go. What should that person work with that other person? If there is a level of solicitation between them, then it changes, you know. And so just even being aware of other creators and oh, we both use this platform and you know. So that's absolutely superb and I love that you do that. I also like the way that you know that publisher that had control kind of said no to that deal and you're making it possible for music creators to have their own control of those situations. I congratulate you for that as well.
Speaker 1:Let's come on to the writers and publishers shares, because this is a very, very confusing subject for many people. Um so I'm sure you're aware of this, antonio. We don't really do that in the UK, right? We just kind of have like the song and it's just like one pie. And you know, when you register stuff with PRS, if there's no publishers, then it's just the writers that are in on that and there's no automatic kind of split between writer's share and publisher's share. But of course, you know, in some countries, such as the US, it's an automatic split between writer's share and publisher's share. But of course, you know, in some countries, such as the US, it's an automatic split between writer's share and publisher's share. And so when a writer has all of the writer's share and a little bit of the publishing share, they generally call it like a co-publishing deal, which is wonderful and it works. But it's terribly confusing for many other people around the world that don't understand the difference between those two things.
Speaker 1:Is that something that you battle with? Because it's a thing right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. I get how that is confusing, especially for some artists when they see 200% on their profile and they're like, wait, what does this mean? And so a lot of it is also explaining how everything works. But you know, it's not only about registering songs and collecting royalties. It's also about asking questions and having someone at every step of the journey alongside you to which you can ask questions and get support from, which is also one of the things that we advocate for at Monitunes.
Speaker 2:We really want to have that sort of one-to-one relationship with every one of the things that we advocate for at Monitunes. We really want to have that sort of one-to-one relationship with every one of our users and our artists that we work with, because, sure you know, everyone can register songs and figure out a way to collect everything, but having someone alongside you that can help you and can support you, for example, when you have a collaboration, someone that can help you put together a split sheet, or when you have a sync opportunity, someone that can help you put together a queue sheet, which is something that a publisher does but, again, you would have to give away a lot in order to have that kind of support with traditional methods, and that is something that we are literally trying to bring back in the hands of the artists. So to have that kind of support, to have that kind of power and control, without having to give away neither of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You've also created a number of partnerships. Can you tell us a little bit about that, because I really love some of the partners I talk about Groover and SubmitHub and their importance to independent music creators, and you partner with them. Could you tell us a little bit about that partnership work? Yes, 100%.
Speaker 2:We again, as in the bigger context of us wanting to be there at every step of the journey, we just didn't want to have as much control as possible over their career. So we realized why not partner with complementary services that don't necessarily conflict with what we do but could be of an added value to artists? And so we started building and right now we've got more than 10 partners that we work with. But essentially we are partnering with complementary services that can enhance an artist's career, whether that is on promotion In fact we partnered with Groover and SubmitUp or on data analytics we partnered with Songstats, or productivity tools like Fiverr we partnered with and a lot of other companies in between, like plug-in companies, recording studios, where you can get discounts wherever you go if you're part of Monitunes. So we're essentially trying to build as much value as possible and, again, give as much value in the sense of complementary services to artists so that they don't only use to.
Speaker 2:If you're a monitoons user for example, on submit up or groover that you mentioned you have access to a special discount on their promotions, on their credits, on their packages, which you get for free if you're a Monitunes user. And, again, joining Monitunes is completely free. Again for the same reason of we don't want to add any, we don't want to be a liability for an artist's career, we don't want to charge any costs. We just work on a commission basis. So you sign up for free, you register songs and if we find any unclaimed royalties for you, then we only get a commission which is relatively small to what a publisher will charge you and you get 100% of free perks like exclusive discounts to SubmitHub, groover and all the other partners that we work with.
Speaker 1:Very good, I love it. Do you know? I looked at your commission rates and they're really good, like if you compare. So let's take, for example, another mover in the market, let's say a company like TuneCore, for example, who have always been pretty productive when it comes to distribution and delivery, but they've kind of started to build in that like let us collect your extra 20%, right, because they know what you know, right, which is that there's a lot of music creators that aren't doing that. But then I noticed that if you look at their TuneCore sync, I think it's like $75 sign up fee and they take 50 commission, which falls in line with like what many publishers or sync agents would do. However, you offer 25 commission and no sign up fee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, good and, yeah, that is also due to the fact that, for how we have structured and built the business and the platform, we've managed to keep operations very, very lean so that we don't need expensive offices or a team of 100 people.
Speaker 2:And it's worth mentioning that TuneCore's technology also runs on Centrix, so it's not something proprietary to them, but they also run on someone else's service.
Speaker 2:So what we did was for Sync specifically is that when an artist registers a song, they can opt in for receiving Sync placement opportunities and they can upload the MP3, the WAV file and all the metadata around the recording and the composition of the song. And essentially we have a separate platform that is only available to sync agencies and music supervisors that works similar to Spotify, but only for that only has our catalog songs on it. So if you're a music supervisor or if you're a sync agency, you can simply get access to our sync platform and then you can browse all the Monotune's catalog and sort it out through certain criteria like mode, genre and a bunch of other filters as well, and then if you like any of those songs for your TV shows, movies, advertisements, advertisements or anything in between, then you can make an offer and it will be sent directly to the artist. So then it will be a negotiation between the artist and the sync agency directly. And yeah, that's, I think, the magic of of monotunes as well that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank thank you. It's so funny because I'm kind of sat in I'm thinking why haven't people done this before? You know? Um, it's really interesting like you've. You've built something that's like such a positive disruption.
Speaker 2:I love it Well done sir.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, johnny. And, to be honest, it started to solve a problem that I myself had as an artist manager, because I had to deal with publishers and I had to deal with artist managers and record labels and it felt like swimming in a pool of sharks at times. You know, felt like swimming in a pool of sharks at times, you know, where everyone tried to take advantage of your song or your splits or your commissions and it just Monitunes. Just started out of frustration for how the industry was built and how everything used to be. So, yeah, I literally built something that would have been helpful to myself of the past, but now it's helpful for hundreds and hundreds of artists and I couldn't be happier about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think maybe thousands and thousands going forward, perhaps as well. I think it's interesting what made you want to start Monitunes? Because there's obviously a need for it. You see that, especially when it comes to music creators needing to sort of communicate with multiple different collection societies, multiple different partners, you know, a kind of simplified, one-stop solution that can kind of conglomerate all of that into one platform-led experience is superb. Tell us a little bit about your background, because it'd be great to understand. You know we've heard a little bit about what led you into Money Tunes, but tell us a little bit about your background, antonio.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So my journey in the music industry began around 10 years ago when I wanted to be a DJ in my small town, but unfortunately, for a bit of the same reasons, if you wanted to be a DJ at our local clubs, you need to have connections to either the promoters or the owners, which, unfortunately, I didn't have. Which, unfortunately, I didn't have. So, although I started practicing and I considered myself ready to perform as a DJ, I lacked of any relationship or connections to play at those clubs or perform those DJ sets. So, again out of frustration, I decided to launch a record label where I could help artists who, like me, didn't have any connection, to promote their music and promote their brand, promote their artist persona worldwide. And yeah, so we started this record label together with a friend of mine. And yeah, so in a couple of years, we again got such a huge positive feedback than what we had anticipated. Our songs were played on main stages, at festivals worldwide, they were playing at radios and radio shows, podcasts, so we were getting some traction in that sense. And a couple of years in, we received a demo from this artist duo from LA who was called Bose, and back then they didn't even have a song, any song, on Spotify. They were just active on SoundCloud, releasing bootlegs and remixes. However, something, something spoke to me when I listened to their songs and I heard their sounds and I was extremely fascinated by their vibe, their sound. Still, they weren't well known at all, they were just active on SoundCloud. So we did a release with them on our record label. They liked it a lot. It was one of their most popular songs back then and, I think, their first ever release on Spotify as well, and so they really liked the type of effort that we put into their brand and their artists. So they asked us to be their manager, me and my co-founder back then.
Speaker 2:So you know me myself, I didn't really know what an artist manager was back then, but I just knew that I wanted to go to shows with artists. I wanted to go. You know my dream was to go backstage and on tour and network with artists, although I didn't really know what an artist manager was. But you know, I said let's do it. So we started being their manager and for the first year, year and a half we didn't really get much traction, although right when I started managing them, I started university in the Netherlands. So my days were during the day I would go to class and when I came back from classes they would wake up because they were in LA, I was in Europe. And then we would start working together. I would email literally everyone in the music industry. I think I reached out to everyone journalists, blogs, youtube channels, record labels, bigger artists Just because every day my goal was how do I get Bose to blow up? So every day I tried to reach out to someone and put our name out there Again.
Speaker 2:For the first year, year and a half, we didn't get much response, much traction. And for this reason my co-founder back then, who was managing Bose with me then, who was managing Bose with me he he called me one day and he told me look, I don't think that we are going to go anywhere with with Bose. I think I want to focus on my, my masters and furthering my, my studying career. And back then we decided to put the record label on pause so that we could just focus on Bose. So we were just focusing on Bose day and night, not seeing much results.
Speaker 2:And then one day my co-manager calls me and says look, I don't think that Bose is going to get anywhere. We should just focus on something else. However, there was something that was still calling me to, let's say, keep moving forward with them, right? So you know? I told him I understand that's not something, you want to continue, but I really believe in the guys. I really think we can get somewhere one day.
Speaker 2:So I just do it alone, and so did I. He left and then I continued the journey alone as a manager of Bose, and from from that moment onward, we started getting the first answers, we started getting the first releases signed by bigger labels, and then we started getting the first booking shows and, yeah, so it was a journey. I wouldn't say it was one moment that led to everything, but the journey ended a couple of years ago when I sold my management agency to Live Nation, along with their agreement, and, yeah, back then they were the number 50 artist in the world on DJ Mag. So I guess we found a way to make it there. But, yeah, it's been a journey of working hard every day and grinding and hustling every day for four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wow, antonio, that is so impressive. I congratulate you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, Seriously impressive. I congratulate you. Thank you so much. That's amazing, Seriously mate, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:You are a fine example of what this business is all about, and a fine example for those listening right now and going, okay, how do I be the next music business guy that just does stuff and makes things? You're a hard worker, right? Oh yeah, that's how you've made things happen, you know, and you've got to be fearless, right 100%.
Speaker 2:I didn't have a formal music education. I didn't study music business. I didn't go to a music business school, I was just studying international business as a super generalistic path of study, which eventually ended up dropping out from in my third year of university. I just didn't see myself handing out resumes and just working a regular job. I just loved helping artists and I think that's what has been driving me all these years. I just genuinely want to help artists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's well and that's why you're doing well. That's a really really inspiring story. It makes me think, you know, I think Money Tunes is going to do really well, right, fingers crossed, acquired, you know, and somebody comes in with a big offer like what you've seen before. Right, and you know, if that happens, that happens because you're the kind of guy that's probably going to go and start something else anyway. But you know, you're just an impressive guy and and I really, really, really admire you thank you so much, john.
Speaker 2:It really means a lot coming from you. You know I've been a big fan of yours and, yeah, definitely means a lot to me oh well, I'm a big fan of yours too.
Speaker 1:Well, let's look ahead to the future, antonio, right? What changes do you see in the music industry and what should music creators be aware of?
Speaker 2:well, uh, first thing on top of mind is definitely AI. We cannot not talk about the elephant in the room, right, and it's something that, every time that we talk about AI with an artist or with a musician, we are met with a lot of pushback as no, I don't want to hear about this, or no, I don't think it's going to go anywhere, but the truth is that it's already disrupting hundreds of industries and it's going to come for the music industry, whether we like it or not. Now the question is how do we make sure that we work alongside AI and there is the right framework in place so that we can get the most as an artist and not be replaced by them, because just dismissing it at the beginning is not right either. It feels like when the internet came many, many years ago and then, oh no, the internet is useless. We don't need emails'm good with regular letters, but unfortunately, that's not how it works. The world evolves, technology comes, and then we need to adapt. So I've been seeing many new tools that haven't even been released yet. So, behind the scenes, from friends that have been working on tools and projects that will be released in the future, and you have no idea what's coming.
Speaker 2:Literally, I'm talking about daw's, where you can make music with a prompt and you can make melodies by just typing one key and then having an ai writing the rest of the of the melody, right so? Or mixing, mastering, of course. Of course I've been talking with engineers who are like ai will never be as good as a, as a human engineer. But I don't think the purpose of ai is to replace humans, but it should be equip humans with as many tools as possible so that you don't need a Grammy producer or a Grammy like engineer. You can still get the same job done with home equipment. And that's what's happened also in the in the past years. You know, we back then, you, you needed to go to a studio to record your song. Now there's Ableton, there's Logic Pro, there's FL Studio. You can make hits in your bedroom. So that's just the natural step forward, and just dismissing it at a first glance doesn't seem right to me. That's all. What do you think? What do you think is coming for the music industry?
Speaker 1:That's a very interesting one. I kind of find myself nodding along with you, because I fully agree with you, antonia. I think AI I don't worry about it, to be honest, I think we can coexist with it. You know, there's certain. You know, I was talking to an animator the other day and she was saying well, you know, there's a lot of my work now is kind of, you know, being taken away from me. And I said but what about if you work with it? What if you flow with it? What if you kind of, you know, work out the patterns of what you do and then kind of work with an AI developer to provide that on an ethically sourced level, so that you're actually inputting into the AI, because it doesn't just scrape everything that's out there? If every kind of ML platform just scraped everything else out there, everything would end up the same, which is kind of what's happening a little bit. So those that will get ahead are those that actually use creators to input on an ML level. So you know, there's where the human part of it kicks in and, yeah, it's not like it's ahead of us, it's already here, you know. So, yeah, I also think that it would be a shame for people to kind of dismiss it early on, because it's not a fight that we'll win. It's just it's here now and we have to coexist with it and we can and we'll make it work.
Speaker 1:There's been plenty of panics over the years in music. I remember when Napster first came out in the late 90s and just being absolutely shell-shocked by it. I was trying to cut an EP at the time and working really, really, really hard on the early days of sort of digital recording and just finding out about Napster and feeling really demoralised and thinking, well, what are we doing here if that can just be acquired for free? And I was really young and you know I kind of found it a little bit daunting, which is why I think many young people find AI daunting. But I think in time they'll realise that it's okay. Things change, things evolve and we're a pretty advanced species, aren't we? We're pretty civilised, we're pretty good at what we do in terms of coming up with ideas and also our ability to evolve. I think that's another hallmark. I'm being philosophical here.
Speaker 1:Antonio but one of our hallmarks perhaps as people is that we don't like change, but we're really good at it yeah, so yeah, we'll be okay. That's my view yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:Again, it has to be noted that we need the right framework in place so that the technology doesn't take advantage of the art either, because that's also not right.
Speaker 2:So I've been seeing a lot of debate right now on whether AI training should be should fall under copyright law or not, and then a lot of requests for for this missing IP law for AI training. I'm interested in seeing how that plays out, because that's going to be very important moving forward in terms of AI and how training is sort of regulated. But one thing is for sure even when Spotify came out, all the majors were against it, but as long as they got some equity of these digital platforms, all of a sudden the debate stopped. So I wonder what would happen if majors will get some share of profit of AI training. Will the debate end? Because right now I see a lot of majors leading the charge against. Oh, ai training is wrong, ai is bad for artists. But what happens when these majors and not just the majors, but every label in general or every rights holder gets paid for training and ai on their music? Does the debate stop there? What do you think?
Speaker 1:well, I think we can split that into two categories, right one on the publishing side and one on the recording side. One of the many things I like about your model, your business model, money tunes is that you actually blend those two things together and collect on them, and I think that more people need to do that. The reason I say that is because let's split this into two right, we've got the song and we've got the recording of the song. So if you, you and I, write a song right now, it's intangible until we record it. Once we record it, the world can learn from it. Ai can learn from it.
Speaker 1:When it's intangible, it can't. Or if it can, then there's no way of regulating it. So, in other words, if we were to kind of go, yes, if the record company's worked with, let's say, suno or or whoever, and we go, right, yeah, that piece of that recording there can be tracked inside of what it created. We can do that with recordings. The technology is there and the the gray area is how we actually remunerate the songs inside of those recordings, and that's the bit that I'm sure I'm unsure about and that's the bit that I worry about a little bit yeah, I've been seeing some companies trying to do that as well as we speak.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's something super early on and we'll probably have to catch up for another episode in probably a few months to a year or so, and then we'll see. We look back at this interview and then compare to how's the industry played out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah well, that's the thing. It's like the wild west at times at the moment isn't it and it's like, yeah, which way is the wind gonna blow? Can we make it change that way, or do we just go with it? Who knows? Um, I'm not sure that anybody has all of the answers right now, but it's certainly exciting, um? And so, yeah, let's let's check back in again in a few months, shall we? And let's talk more.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being here today, antonio. I think you're a really inspirational guy and I really congratulate you for all that you are doing thank you for having me, john.
Speaker 2:It was a pleasure sharing a piece of our journey with you and I look forward to speaking with you again soon ah, what a top dude.
Speaker 1:Um, I apologise for the noise there everybody. It almost kind of sounded quite jarring at times, like Antonio and I weren't actually talking to each other. I can assure you we were. So I've tried my best on the edit there to try and make it sound as good as it can. But anyway, hopefully you got past that and you were able to absorb some of the views and insights that Antonio has.
Speaker 1:He is a fine example of a music industry professional. He's young as well. I didn't ask him how old he is, but he's young and to have achieved so much already at this point, it's just he makes so many sacrifices, he works and hustles so hard. You know he's not scared of kind of going cold and reaching out to people to try and make things happen. It's remarkable what he does and how he looks at things and how he sees things and how he makes things happen. So anyway, I hope that you enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:Also, antonio has offered a 10 discount on commission to all of the listeners of this show, so I'm going to drop that link in the description underneath this episode. So Money Tunes only take a 15% commission. So 10% of that is yours, right? So the code for that is underneath in this description of this episode. Okay, that's enough from me. By the way, it sounds like I'm selling something there. I'm not. It's a discount that Antonio wanted to offer to people that listen to this show. So there you go. There's a little discount from Antonio. I thank him for his time. I thank you for your time for tuning in, for listening to this episode and to all the episodes. I really appreciate the support and the kindness, the warmth, the love that I get from you all. And you know, keep tuning in. Right, I'm trying to be as helpful as I can with this and I hope that you're finding some use out of this series. Okay, that really is enough from me for today, but until next time. Have a great day and may the force be with you.
