The Music Business Buddy

Episode 74: Inside Peer Music Publishing with Ralph W Peer

• Jonny Amos • Season 1 • Episode 74

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What if a 97-year family legacy held the blueprint for making songs travel further, earn more, and outlast the hype cycle? I sit with Ralph W. Peer, Managing Director at peermusic UK and Australasia and VP for Africa and the Middle East, to explore the legacy of a a century-old global publishing powerhouse. From post‑war royalty runs to today’s data firehose, Ralph opens the black box of publishing so creators can see where value is built.

We dig into the art of cross-cultural collaboration and why place still matters. Ralph shares how Australia’s first international writing camp flipped the “fly to LA” script, bringing US writers to Melbourne to capture local flavour and global polish. Expect stories that connect South African Ama piano, Brazilian funk, and drill with mainstream pop momentum, plus practical ways to curate rooms that produce export-ready songs without losing identity.

On the business side, we break down global administration and the quiet power of local expertise. Ralph explains why how some collection societies differ from common law systems, how technology accelerates matching, and why relationships still close the gaps that software can only flag. We chart the new economics of catalogue in streaming—why enduring songs appreciate as frontline hits churn faster—and show how production music and one-stop clearances help supervisors say yes when budgets and timelines shrink.

The AI conversation gets real: inputs versus outputs, transparency, opt-in licensing, and why betting on fair use is a risky business plan. Rather than waiting for courts, Ralph argues for workable licensing frameworks that protect writers and reward innovation. If you create, manage, or monetise songs, this is a field guide to making your rights travel—across borders, formats, and decades.

If this conversation helped clarify the maze, follow the show, share it with a fellow creator, and leave a review so more music creators can find it. Your questions shape future episodes, so tell us what you want to unpack next.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to you. You're listening to the music business buddy with me, Johnny Amott, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book, The Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback, ebook format. I'm a music creator with a variety of credits as a writer-producer. I'm a consultant, an artist manager, and a senior lecturer in both music business and music creation. Wherever you are and whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. Okay, so in this week's episode we return to the subject of music publishing, where I interview Ralph W. Peer, uh, one of the nicest people I have ever met in the entire music industry. I hope that you'll find him very resourceful and very useful as you listen to him in this week's episode. He's a thoroughly nice guy. He's also a key figure in the music publishing company, uh Peer Music, right? He serves as their managing director for uh for its UK and also for its Australasian uh operations. He's also the vice president of its African and Middle East operations. Uh Ralph is the grandson of the company's founder, Ralph Esapier, and his role involves overseeing the creative and administrative functions for the company in the mentioned regions, uh, and also, of course, continuing the family's legacy in the business, right? And talk about legacy. Ralph W. Pierre, as I mentioned, is the grandson of Ralph S. Pierre, who founded Peer Music in 1927. The company's remained family led for 97 years. Now, before Ralph went into working for Peer Music full-time back in 2019, he also worked in international politics and also in intellectual property law, both in the US and in the UK. He's a very knowledgeable man, he's a wonderful man, and he kindly invited me uh to the Peer Music Offices uh in Richmond in Greater London, and we sat in the boardroom um of their wonderful offices, and uh which is where we had this interview. So uh I will hand over to the interview now. Take note, everybody. I hope you uh enjoy listening to what Ralph shares and uh enjoy. Ralph, welcome to the music business, buddy. I say welcome, I'm sat in your your boardroom. Uh but it's good to be here with you and uh for you for you to be here, you know, talking to me on the podcast. I appreciate you putting aside the time. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Oh no. Um so straight in with the first question, Ralph. So Peer Music has been a commendable institution of the global landscape for almost 100 years now. Kind of like um the Lego of the music industry, right? Um, you know, and there's been the legacy, of course, of your grandfather, Ralph S. Pierre, uh, your father, Ralph Pierre II and the third generation with Mary Meghan Peer, and of course, your good self. What is it like to be part of such a special family lineage?

SPEAKER_03:

Um, well, first of all, thank you so much for for your kind words. I I I greatly appreciate it. Um, to be honest with you, I feel just incredibly lucky. Uh, there's no other way to put it. I um I I feel so blessed to be able to wake up every morning and work in the music industry and to be part of this this this thing that touches so many people's lives in so many different ways. Like it's just it's just an incredible honor. Um and then also it's an honor to you know work with the songwriters and the creators that we have with now for, as you say, over a hundred years and to be a part of their of their uh of their legacy and to work to protect it and make sure that it um it continues to be seen and heard by you know millions of people around the world. Um you know, you you mentioned my grandfather and my grandmother. Uh I actually never met them. My grandfather passed in 1960s, so that was well before I was around. And then my grandmother, I did meet her, albeit very, very briefly, because she passed when I was very young. Um But um yeah, I mean, what can I say? I'm just an incredibly lucky individual who gets to wake up every day and and be a part of this crazy thing that we call the music industry. Um I have to admit there's you know, being around for a hundred years, there's so much history in our company, and there are so many amazing people who have who have worked at our company, and I always say our biggest um asset isn't just necessarily the copyrights that we deal with, but also the people that we're lucky enough to work to have work for us. I've met so many of them over the years who have told me incredible stories about what it's like, um, or you know, music industry stories from back in the day, both good and bad. Um, I actually uh one of my more kind of like cherished possessions that I have in my office is um we had so this office here in the UK, we opened in 1933. Wow. So it was the first international office. And right after World War II, um the managing director of this office went and did kind of a a whirlwind tour of post-war Europe. So Italy, France, Spain, uh Holland for sure. Um, and he wrote kind of like a travel log about what it was like. And you know, there are these I remember for some reason he did it in January, which must have been I don't know why he chose that timing. But you know, like staying in in hotels in Rome where there hasn't been heat for a number of years and what it's like to go and talk to the societies there about what things are gonna look like, you know, post-World War II and kind of like the new economic order, so to speak, and getting royalties from them. And then uh he he literally sewed money into his coat to bring it back to the UK in order to, you know, uh deposit it, do the distribution. You can imagine what it would have been trying to calculate royalties back in the day. I mean, there are all these just amazing stories, and like I said, the people that work for us are fantastic. I cannot um compliment them and and exalt them enough. They're just all wonderful people, and we we really emphasize that um as part of our as part of our culture. Um is that you know, we are a service industry uh to our clients who are the the writers um who you know create this wonderful stuff that we then get to uh to uh to protect.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that's astonishing. Do you know I've I I've read uh so much over the years about like the history of music publishing and whatnot, but to hear something like that, it's quite moving actually, isn't it? You know, it really, really is. I mean, that's crack you, that's before you know electromagnetic tape even came in and you know that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean that's well, yeah, that I mean that was that was developed during the Second World War, actually. Oh, is it was it really? Yes, yeah, it's an it's a really interesting story. So in tapes, do you know what bias is? Yeah. So the idea is so basically you have two channels going on at the same time, and essentially uh uh German scientists were the first ones to figure out how bias actually worked and to get like a truce sort of fidelity recording. And so there are these stories about how they would record um Hitler's speeches and then broadcast them, but they would broadcast them from different areas, so the Allies didn't know they thought Hitler was moving around to all these different places, but they were able to broadcast from, I don't know, Berlin when he was really in Hamburg or something like that. Oh, wow so that the technology there is what then you know led to the tape explosion in the 1980s essentially, but it's yeah, it's a fascinating little bit of history.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, Crikey, sheesh, I didn't quite fully appreciate that before the found. Wow. Um what about the let's discuss the creative aspects, right? But because you know, you you established Peer Music Australia's first international songwriting camp to foster cross-cultural collaboration. Um it is which was amazing, by the way. I mean, I've read about that and it absorbed as much as I can. Is that a kind of an insight into you know the future vision of implementing creative strategy across such a global sector?

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, short answer for me, definitely yes. I think it's um there's a proven track record that cross-cultural collaboration leads to uh fantastic music and fantastic output. I mean, starting back in roots music in the United States, you know, that's that's African rhythms with Scottish traditional folk music mashed together, and that's kind of where you get what we would now sort of call country. And of course, blues, jazz, etc., modern pop music, it just all leads from there. But in more modern times, I mean, you can think of like um Despacito, right? Justin Bieber with reggaeton. Um, another good example is the the Ama piano, the log drum sound that then became that's so that's from South Africa, but then it became um like Nigerian producers started using it a lot and became kind of like the signature sound of the of Afro. Um, so yeah, I mean for me personally, my my AR guys are probably sick of me talking about this, but I think I'm I'm uh there's a couple countries that I really kind of follow to see what's going on. Um, one of those is South Africa, another one is Brazil. Um there's a a genre of music that's been in Brazil for gosh, probably over 20 years, Favela Funk. Um, that's now metamorphosized, so to speak. So you have Funk here in the UK is a massive genre, and then you also have a subgenre. Well, there's a couple subgenres of that, one of them is baile and brujera. Um, I personally think like one of the next big global hits will have those influences in it. Um I remember like the weekend when he did his last album in February this year, I think is when it came out. Um there was a there was a favela funk track on there, and I was like, yes, this is this is the start.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

So yeah, I'm a I'm a huge believer in cross-cultural, cross-geographical, whatever you want to call it, um, collaboration. Um, I mean, as as far as the the writing camp in Australia that you mentioned, oh yeah, my main impetus there was after you know, I was I was living in Australia, interacting a lot with with writers there, and it became pretty apparent to me that a lot of them, their one of their main goals was to fly to LA, get co-writing sessions, etc. etc. Um, and I used to joke with folks that there might as well be like a a passport line at LAX just for writers coming in trying to get co-writes. Um, and I viewed it more as like, well, okay, so I can you know take these writers, put them on a plane, that'll be 10 plane tickets or whatever, or I can bring people from the unit from um from the United States to Australia um and and uh you have how can I put it, you can bring in much more Australians then, right? It's just it's it's more economical, so to speak. But also at the same time, there is something to be said for the place where music is created. And it does have um, how can I put it? There's a a terroir for lack of a better term. Like there is something in the place where things are created. Yeah. Um, and so it was really special to bring them into this. We there's a fantastic studio in Melbourne, and um, we had a lot of Australian artists there, obviously. Like uh if you've ever heard of uh One Four, they are um a drill group from Australia. So another another example of cross uh uh cross-collaboration, right? Um so we had we had one of the members from One Four was there. Um one of my favorite writers, artists that I signed while I was there is a guy called Ziggy Ramo. Um he is an incredibly outspoken advocate for for aboriginal rights and the aboriginal cause, so to speak. Um he came in and it's interesting with Ziggy because a lot of his music or like a lot of his output at the time was you know very political. Um and we uh how can I like when he came into the writing camp, he wanted to focus more on pop, which was really interesting to kind of like see that shift. And of course we had pop writers there that we had brought from the United States, so it all it all worked out. But I mean, we also had uh dance artists come in. Um another signing that I have there is Triple One, who are a big um uh uh pop group from Australia. Uh they have a massive hit by it called Butter, uh that's sort of uh how can I put it? Seminal, I think, in the Australian catalog, the Australian songbook. They came in as well. And the whole idea was to try and bring like the US level of production and sort of like what's going on there to Australia to create these sort of like cross-cultural hits.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Interesting. Okay. Really interesting that you did it there as well. Um wow, that's so inspiring. Um so I mean, talking about the things being global, and I didn't know that the UK office was the first international office until you said there, but there's offices in over what, over 30 countries now with PM Music? Uh 32 countries, I think, is the account. And 39 offices in 32 countries. Goodness me.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, that's it. That's it. It gets higher every time I look. Yeah, well, I mean, our most recent openings were um well, Eastern Europe, Poland. We we recently opened an office there. Uh, there's one more, which you'll have to forgive me, I'm not remembering the rest of the lot to keep up with, you know. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, okay. Oh, that's good to see that you're in Poland. That's good. Okay. Um, so obviously, worldwide, you know, administrative power is one of PM Music's major strengths. Um, is there anything that springs to mind when you think of technological advances that have improved you know a deeper royalty collection in recent years?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I'm sorry, I'll I'll I'll answer the technology part in a second, but um I think obviously, yes, we we very much pride ourselves on the on on our administration capabilities globally, and there is really something to be said besides the technology of having boots on the ground and of of um having people in each territory that understand how collecting societies work and like the nuances of of them all. Um I always one of the things I that commonly comes up in conversation is, you know, yes, we are in a global world, right? In the streaming era, anyone can theoretically access anything from anywhere in the world at any given time. Um, but local jurisdictional issues are still very much there. Societies very much operate on in in different ways according to different customs. I mean, one of the biggest examples is you have uh in central in in mainland Europe, you have a lot of what's called beam societies, right? And a beam society, so that's the the biggest one, is SASEM in France, but GEMA in Germany, um, also uh in Argentina, they're they're a beam country. Um, in those societies, there is a assignment by the writer of both the performing and the mechanical right to the society directly, versus the common law uh concept where the performing society normally will take an assignment, but it may not necessarily be exclusive, especially in like the United States. Um, and then the publisher will take the mechanical. And these are all kind of like interesting, sort of like theoretical, legal, academic issues, and especially in the way that I'm talking about it now. But when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of things, it does make quite a bit of difference as to what you're able to collect, where you're able to collect it, and how much you're able to collect on what right. Um, so having that local knowledge and you know the fact that I can call up my colleague in France and say, you know, I'm talking to uh a SASA member who lives in London. What does it look like for me to collect for them? These things do still like they very much matter. Um, but to answer the tech your technology question, no, that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00:

By the way, thank you for explaining that. But of course, I I I get a lot of questions off people about that. Um I feel limited on what answers I can give here because of how easy it is to Google something and then actually even using like an AI tool like ChatGPT, and you're gonna get a lot of cross-cultural, cross-jurisdictional information that can lead to assumptions and confusion, and it's a thing, right? So boots on the ground is kind of the only solution to that by understanding the nuances, as you say. It's fascinating to hear. Sorry, you were gonna say technology, yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

No, no, I mean as far as the the technology itself goes, I mean, look, things just keep on getting better faster. You know, always blows my mind to look at my iPhone and think there's more tech in here than there was on the first rockets that went to the moon, right? Right, yeah. Um so as as it as it improves, as processing time, or sorry, processing gets cheaper as the time it takes to process all the lines of data that we now deal with gets faster. You know, we expect better collections, we expect better matching rates, all those sorts of things. Because a lot of what we do on the admin side, um, you know, I I always I I tell a lot of people that music publishing is very much like an iceberg, right? You've got 20% of it that you see above the ocean, but the 80% of what we actually do, you'll never see.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_03:

And frankly, if I do my job right, you won't see it because a lot of it takes place, I'm not going to say in the shadows, but a lot of it takes place in like, wait a minute, we received X amount of mechanical income in this territory, but we only received Y amount of performance income in the same territory. What's going on there? And then a lot of it has to do with communications with the society. And so technology can really help you find those holes, so to speak, but it's a combination of technology and then also having the personal relationships with you know the societies that are supposed to be giv that that that collect the money and pay it out to to follow up sometimes. And please don't get me wrong, I'm not um uh disparaging societies in any way. Like they they they they do they they put forth a very valiant effort, but like let's face it, I mean, in particular in this era of streaming where you know we've gone from I I think about what music publishing must have been like back in the day, and sometimes I'm really jealous, right? Because it would have been, you know, the royalty line would have been something like we pressed X amount of of CDs, you know, this is your percentage that you hold on the CD of so many songs, etc. etc. Here's the the royalty rate, run the percentage, bam, that's the amount that you're getting, right? Now compare that to the streaming era where every single time someone streams something, that's a new line of data, right? You've gone from, if you think about so with CDs, uh well, let's say there were 12 songs per CD, right? So now when someone listens to an album and that's one person, that's 12 new lines of data. Now multiply that by every single CD that was bought. You can see how it it just grows exponentially. So technology, I mean, it's been very helpful, obviously, in uh the calculations parts of things, but at the same time, we're also facing this absolute deluge and growth of data in the streaming era.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Wow. Never really thought about it in that way before. But yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, if somebody buys uh buys a CD, it's not like you know you there's any kind of need to go right. How many times are they playing track five and track six? You know, exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

But if you think about it, it's really changed the value proposition in intellectual property, well, in in in musical copyrights, right? So because it used to be when to take an example, Beatles, Rolling Stones, the the classic rock groups, right? Once they had released the albums, that's kind of like your first bite of the cherry, then you had um best of compilations, then you had reissues, and particularly, you know, we went through a very interesting time where the formats changed, yeah? So you go, I guess you can start with sheet music and then you have shellacks, right? And then you move on to vinyl, and then you have cassettes, and then you have CDs. Every single time that you had that shift, uh, or that that the the medium changed, they would reissue. So you reissue the same album five, six times over a period of 70 years, give or take, versus in streaming, where now um it's all available all the time and there is no such thing really as a reissue. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are deluxe editions and things like that, but it's not it's not the same. So those those those those copyrights, those songs that people keep going back and listening to are incredibly valuable when previously, I'm not gonna say they weren't valuable, but they were less valuable for sure, right? Um, I mean, you just look at the the the massive acquisitions that you see going on, Queen, you know, billion dollars, um th things like that. Uh I mean there were rumors about Pink Floyd selling their catalog around. Uh there were rumors around for a very long time about Pink Floyd selling their catalog. Um, you know, it's it's it's a really interesting time when you see like where where you question kind of like where the value is. And also with new hits, um they they seem to have a much shorter lifespan. You know, I there were a lot of articles going around um a couple months ago about how there wasn't really a a 2025 summer hit, like what's the song of the summer of 2025? It's an interesting question. Um, I mean, I would argue like the Charlie XX Bratt uh album, that was a fantastic marketing campaign. Oh my god, why is it? Oh my gosh, yeah, just hit hit every nail on the head. Well, well, well done. Um, yeah, credit where credit's due for that one. But it's it wasn't, you know, the song of the summer, so to speak. And so it's an in like people want to see want to quote unquote find the next Rolling Stones or something. My question is, is there a next Rolling Stones?

SPEAKER_01:

Right?

SPEAKER_03:

Is there going to be another act or band that is so seminal to become part of the fabric of so many people's lives? And I think it's I think it's an interesting question. I'm not saying that it can't happen, please don't get me wrong.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm sure Taylor Swift is a is a very good example. Yeah. Um, but it's kind of like instead of how can I put it, you know, is the quilt getting bigger, right? So that more people can can can wrap themselves in it, so to speak. Um, or uh are is it dilution? I mean, it's an interesting question.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's a that is an interesting question. In fact, that's a that's a that's a neat little segue onto something different. Um, because I really wanted to ask you about peer music accorder. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um the so there's the idea of you know hits, yeah, and then over here that you've kind of got production music, or as some people might still call it library music, or perhaps even stock music. Um, but you know, it it it is it has seen uh you know uh quite a lot of growth um you know in recent years with the boom of visual content on various platforms and whatnot. Um have you noticed that shift in the landscape which has created a maybe more sort of public interest um in in accessing music that was uh primarily composed to aid visuals, you know, kind of the the idea of Shazam and people going, Oh, how do I find that music that was in such and such? You know, is that uh is that something that you you know you've kind of um it's been interesting to witness in recent years? Oh, very much so.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, I think what it really speaks to is the power of the combination of the visual and the musical element, in that it obviously brings people back to you know where they were at the time, where they saw that or when they want to convey something through whatever the the user-generated content the UGC is that they are um putting in and creating with. Um, but I think it also, again, it has to do with streaming, not in the music sense, but in the video sense, you know, people can go back and watch um uh uh their favorite shows over and over and over again. I mean, like I know I just re-watched The Sopranos for like the second or third time, probably. Um but it's uh so when people are going back and kind of rediscovering, for lack of a better term, um uh these shows and and uh how it made them feel, particularly because you know your teenage years are always so formative, so you can definitely see kind of like a concentration on a certain period of time, yeah, you know, so to speak. Um and they want to be able to use that in these new methods of uh of um oh what's the word, like of expressing themselves, of social media, of user-generated content. But I mean as far as far as the like uh you know a quarter and and the production music uh library that we have, what's really going on there is um we so we uh a quarter works with both composers and then also production companies. And when a TV show or a film is being made, generally speaking, the model is that the production company takes more or less a full assignment of the rights. And then uh they make the show, the show goes, well, back in the day it used to go on television, then you'd have your box set releases, and then it would be up on um video on demand, you know, Sky and all of that. Now obviously a lot of it gets straight on to streaming services. But really what's happening is the sh the the music is able to get a second life, right? Because TV shows in particular, you're normally talking like a three to seven year span of when they'll when they'll be on air and when they'll be really at the forefront of culture, so to speak. Um, and so a couple years later, you know, the same music can be used again um and and given, like I said, it's sort of a second life. Um, but I think there's there's another thing going on there, which is that um uh uh budgets have gone down for productions, right? There's so much more being made. It's just a simple calculation of when the when the numerator increases and the denominator stays the same, you know, you're gonna wind up with a smaller budget. And so there isn't always the same amount of money available to score uh to to have a bespoke score made for a production.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, I was like, gosh, I I I I watch a lot of silly 90s comedies, and I was thinking, like, you know, now and if if if there was a John Candy film made nowadays, would they actually go and get a composer and a full orchestra to sit and score the entire thing?

SPEAKER_00:

Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure. No, I know, yeah. I mean, in a time where, you know, so much of the big studios like Abbey Road and places like that are are filled out with orchestras playing for multi-sampled instruments instead, so that those those composers can then go and have access to that, but in a completely different way. Things have changed, haven't they? There, you know. Um, but it is a very, very interesting thing to think about because um perhaps there's a miss opportunity there for uh for legacy recorded music, you know, um, whereby perhaps some music supervisors think, well, that's gonna be expensive, I won't touch that, I'll go in this direction over here, and they find exactly what they're looking for.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, sorry, you you actually um you raise a very interesting point in that again with this music, one of the key components to it is that it's generally pretty easy to clear. And I can't tell you how valuable uh easy clearances are just in general, whether you're talking you know, production music for um kind of score or a synchronization uh uh license for an advertisement, when we're able to go to a music supervisor and say, one stop, all the paperwork right here, done, your chances of success are much, much, much higher.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it just fits within the workflow of what that production company needs, and they haven't got the time to you know dilly-dally around and yeah, no, okay.

SPEAKER_03:

The economic term is lower transaction costs. Right, okay, yeah. To to to bring it in the academic realm, but really it's just making life easy for people. Yeah. You know, that's so much of uh so much of success, it's just making life easy for people.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and and of course, you know, that's uh well talking of um making making life easy, my final question for you is is uh is the elephant in the room, AI. Um, so you know, you have a a background working uh you know in intellectual property law in both the UK and the US. Um and it could be argued that recorded music, the recorded music industry is at times struggling to know how best to navigate or best to combat or embrace the challenges faced with recorded music, especially when it's being used as training data for you know tools for music. Music creators, etc. Um, although I have I have interviewed on this podcast a lot that are doing it very ethically and doing it and sourcing it well and training it differently and stuff. But um, how would you like to see the strategic relationships between sort of tech companies and the music industry develop um in the future?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, generally speaking, with technology and intellectual property, it's always going to be a case of intellectual property playing catch up to technology. And that's just by virtue of the fact that intellectual property is based in legislation and it takes a while for legislation to catch up with the times. It's just there's an inherent delay. So whenever a new uh technology comes around, we as an industry have to find a way to in a lot of cases it's putting square pegs in a round holes. So I remember during COVID, you know, we were all talking about NFTs. Yes. And it's a fascinating um academic question, excuse me, um, of you know, was it a mechanical, was it a synchronization, what rights exactly were getting getting exploited here? Um, but at the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to look, this technology is here, we need to figure out a way to license it. And as far as what I would like to see the industry do, we need to license. And we need to be seen as um getting ahead of the legislation, so to speak, so that when legislation does eventually come around, we have a model that works and that you know that can that can go into law. But please don't get me wrong in that I'm saying that um technology, you know, AI companies should just have uh uh the the the right to uh you know um imbibe all of all of music and not you know pay any kind of or uh and have no consequences for that, right? Yeah. Copyrights need to be protected. The writers have put their entire souls and in many cases their livelihoods is based in this. That needs to be recognized. And I think good licensing can do that. It will be a struggle to get there, as with any compromise. You know, a good compromise is when both parties are unha are unhappy, right? I don't think that's necessarily uh gonna be the way forward, but yes, we need to license. Now, when you're talking about AI, I always like to bifurcate the discussion into talking about input versus output, right? So on the input side of things, that's the obvious.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm smiling because that's how I explain it to people all the time. It's a great way of framing it because it just segregates. Sorry, I interrupted. I just find it very reassuring to you explain that. You, of all people, to be explaining it like that. I'm like, oh wait, I can't take credit for that either. It's good to simplify when something's so immensely complex, it's it's great to add simplicity to it, isn't it? Well do our best, right?

SPEAKER_03:

That's what that's what Chat GP GPT is for, right? To make something incredibly complex.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So um sorry, so on on the input side, you know, that is clearly a case for licensing, and there has been some very good um legislative moves, you know, particularly in the European Union, as to their big one is the call for transparency, right? So when a model is trained, it has to tell you what it was trained on. I think that's a that's a really, really good step. It's certainly not the whole race. We have a lot farther to to go there. Um, and I have to say, I'm very uh in favor of um not the opt-out model, but the opt-in model. Right, right. As a creator, it shouldn't just be uh taken that you know your work can then be used to train train these models. So I'm all in favor of the ones that are doing it you know ethically and within a licensed uh a licensed ecosystem, so to speak, right? Yeah. Um on the output side, I mean that's that's much more interesting. And to be honest with you, I don't think we're going to have many answers until there is eventually a court case about it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Um it's because I think even like it's impossible to legislate really on it. But I you know, I like to play kind of a little brain teaser with people about this, right? So if you're a a writer and you go to one of the AIs and say, you know, write me a song that's sort that has like a disco-ish-ish beat and sort of reminds you of a movie that had John Travolta in it, right? And then it spits out something that's obviously very similar to staying alive. Okay, that's one thing. But now you take it, you put it on streaming services, it gets, you know, it makes a whole lot of money, you eventually get an infringement suit um uh on it, and you go in front of the judge and say, It's not my fault, I used AI. The judge isn't gonna care. Right? It's actually, it's just a it's it's it I hate to say it, but it's it's a it's it's an infringement suit like so many others. Now, obviously, infringement suits are incredibly complex and um they're unwieldy, I think is a way to put it. Like you the the output the or sorry, the outcomes from it are always unpredictable, but it's that's just something I think that's that's eventually going to happen. Um, I mean the thing I will say is I've heard a lot of people talk about fair use um in the United States and that concept. And as someone who who who studied US intellectual property law, I can't tell you how frustrating it was as a student to try and kind of learn all of those cases because they're just so unpredictable.

SPEAKER_00:

Really?

SPEAKER_03:

Like you would have one case where uh, you know, on the face of it, you would say, oh, that's clearly not fair use, and then would end up being fair use, and then and then vice versa. So it really makes me nervous when people say, Oh, this clearly isn't fair use. Because I would argue, even if you went to all nine of the Supreme Court justices in the United States, I think it would be like a 5-4 decision, right? And I have no idea which way each one of them would go. It's and and and uh yeah, I j I just think it's it's very unpredictable. Yeah. Um, so it makes me nervous when people like when when when people come down so hard, you know, on one side or the other saying it's fair use or it's not. Frankly, I'd I wouldn't want to let the courts decide that. I would like us, as I said, to license and to figure this out on our own before having to rely on the courts because when it comes to litigation, I mean litigation is incredibly expensive, and there's a joke that you know in litigation only the lawyers make money.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, yeah, yeah. And it's it's perhaps down to people that are more informed to be able to make those decisions and mediate before it gets to that, right? So uh no, that's uh thank you for for for for for trying to answer that as best as possible in 2025. I'm sure the answers will will evolve and develop in due course as you know as technology changes even further and our understandings of it. Try and catch up with it all. But um uh Ralph, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having greatly, greatly appreciated. Absolute pleasure. Oh, the great Ralph WP. It was an absolute honour to sit with him and to uh to hear his perspective right on where things are at, where things are headed. Um he's an extremely informed and respected uh figure in the uh in the music industry. And uh it was an absolute pleasure to sit with him and just uh understand his perspective, his take on things and and what a just you know what's uh what's interesting everybody is when you meet that kind of really kind of upper echelon people in the music industry, they're so nice. And Ralph is a fine example of that. You know, he is uh such a kind guy. Uh it's clear to me to see that the people that work in those offices uh love him, right? And uh and it's a wonderful thing to have witnessed to go in there and talking to him and seeing their beautiful offices. So I hope you you enjoyed that episode. Uh there's been a few episodes now on the music publishing sector. I would be as bold as to say it is one of the most uh misunderstood subjects uh to many music creators as to what music publishers do uh on a day-to-day basis, the role that they play uh for songwriters and composers. Um so yeah, I hope you've enjoyed it. Um I know I certainly enjoyed uh going and visiting Ralph and his team and talking to them. Uh until next time, everybody, have a great day, and may the force be with you.

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Jonny Amos

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