The parent company of Cash App, After Pay and Square laid off nearly half its staff this week. Wall Street cheered, sending the stock up nearly 20%. Get used to headlines like this.
Owner Jack Dorsey — the founder of Twitter — claims AI enabled the workforce slashing. My hunch is the reverse is true. I read a persuasive article recently suggesting that big firms like Amazon are laying people off to justify their gigantic investments in artificial intelligence and placate investors. So far, some studies seem to show AI implementations don’t lead to big productivity gains. They sure do provide cover for massive layoffs, however. Either way, it’s clear Wall Street loves to hear about AI-driven cost-cutting.
But will music fans love AI-created songs? Enough to win a Grammy Award within two years? And what will that do to professional musicians? And why is the looming fight over AI music a great proxy for the coming robot vs. human fight?
I’m in the middle of a four-part series called “Sugar High,” at Duke University’s Debugger podcast, which I host. We’re looking at the role of Big Tech and AI in the future of music. For the series, we are following Grammy-nominated folk singer Tift Merritt as she makes her first new album in about a decade after a self-imposed hiatus to be a mom. You can listen to the setup with Tift here.
This week, my guest is Reid Wick, who works for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences — the folks who give out the Grammy Awards. He’s also a working R&B musician from New Orleans, so our far-ranging conversation is really entertaining. We talked about the importance of mistakes in music and how Deepfakes that are too perfect are unnerving. We talked about Muzak and its similarity to fully AI-generated songs. We talked about what music fans can do to support real-life musicians, and what lawmakers can do.
Among my favorite moments — a discussion about the ways AI tools might be co-creators in new music, as opposed to job killers. I try to keep an open mind.
“When I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago … I actually heard a half-written song that one of my friends and another songwriter had started writing,” Reid said to me. “The other songwriter took it home, put it in Suno, and sent him a finished version, fully demoed, full production, and we were all dumbfounded how good it sounded.
“But then you stop and think, okay, so you just put five to 10 musicians outta work … the studio that you would’ve gone into to make that … demo tape, the recording engineer, probably the crew at the studio. So while you would’ve saved a few dollars, you put a whole bunch of people outta work. And I think that’s the balance we have to figure out in the industry … how far do we want to go with that, you know?”
Just as we sat down, a fully AI-generated tune topped one of the country music song lists, which Reid says caused a bit of a freakout in Nashville. Between that and Wall Street’s bloodthirsty taste for layoffs…well, it’s easy to be nervous.
You can hear part two by clicking the play button below, by clicking here for Spotify, or by finding Debugger on your favorite podcast platform. If podcasts aren’t your thing, you can find a machine-created, lightly-human-edited transcript below.
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Reid Wick: [00:00:00] What we say in New Orleans is that you’re born to music, you’re married to music, all your major milestones in life have some sort of music attached to it. And of course, in New Orleans, we’re famous for burying people to music too, you know? And so it’s easy to take it for granted because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s everywhere, right?
And I think the danger right now is that some of these big tech companies find ways to almost trick the listener into not realizing that what they’re listening to might not be as authentic as you think it is… it’s a way for them to save money, cut costs at the expense of people who deserve to make a good living at the art that they create. And so I think that we’re in a timeframe of a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknown, a lot of scared composers and songwriters out there, and performers.[00:01:00]
Bob: Welcome back to Debugger, and this special four part debugger series on the future of music called Sugar High. Debugger is brought to you by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. I’m your host, Bob Sullivan. We’re following Grammy nominated folk singer Tiff Merrit as she heads back into the studio after an eight year hiatus and how she’s digesting the dramatic changes to the music industry.
They begin with a change in economics brought on by the shift to streaming services. But many artists are worried storm clouds are quickly gathering, and an even bigger shift is imminent, A shift away from human created music to a world where AI music edges out people like Tiff Merrit. We left Tift just as she was about to walk into a studio and record her new album which will be called “Sugar.” So while we wait for that, we’re going to talk to a couple of other experts. You were just listening to Reed Wick, who works with the National Academy of [00:02:00] Recording Arts and Sciences, better known as the organization that hands out the Grammy Awards. Reed is also a New Orleans based r and d musician, so he’s got a broad perspective on what’s happening in the world of music.
Here’s my conversation with Reid.
Reid Wick: So the Recording Academy is the membership organization for professionals in the music industry, both from the creator side and from the sort of industry side. The full name of the organization is the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. We’re best known for the, our annual Grammy Awards, but we work year round on all kinds of issues in the advocacy space.
Uh, we work in professional development and networking for our members, and so I work primarily as an interface between our advocacy department in Washington, DC. And our chapter system, which we have 12 chapters around the country that covers every state in the country. And I work more so at the state and local level with regard to [00:03:00] public policy and advocacy.
Bob: So you work on music policy, but you are also a working musician, right?
Reid Wick: I am. I have been pretty much my entire life, yes. So, uh, I’m very much an active working musician. Played twice this past weekend and kind of still tired from it.
Bob: I think people who have heard your voice could already tell probably that you’re from New Orleans.Is that right?
Reid Wick: That’s true. I am sitting in New Orleans as we speak, finally after being on the road for several weeks. So,
Bob: What kind of music do you make?
Reid Wick: I’m primarily playing a rhythm and blues band. We play a whole variety of things depending on what the gig is, but it’s a a nine piece R&B band and it’s a lot of fun. Get a lot of big corporate events and festivals and weddings and the whole gamut of kind of things that a working musician would do.
Bob: So I’m gonna guess that there aren’t too many working musicians who also work on the policy side of the music business. So that gives you [00:04:00] kind of a unique perspective, isn’t it?
Reid Wick: I think so. I know of a few others that do, but probably not as working as a working musician to the same degree that I am. But I am familiar with a number of the people around the country and in Washington DC that work in the public policy space related to music. But I’m probably pretty unique in that way.
Bob: So we’re gonna talk about artificial intelligence and the impact that may or may not have on music, on people who work in music and in lots of forms. But before I get there, I wanna step back a little bit because I don’t think the average person knows a lot about how musicians get paid and how an entity like Spotify can impact the way that musicians get paid. So can you just talk to me about your experience with that issue first?
Reid Wick: The way musicians get paid is just such a mystery to so many people and even to many musicians. You know, the interesting thing about taking advantage of the intellectual property that [00:05:00] a musician creates is that there’s…45 different potential income streams.
Most people are familiar with the live music setting where a band, an artist, whoever plays a particular show. Whether it’s a festival or a club date or a corporate gig or whatever it is, and you get paid for that particular performance, but the intellectual property that you create also has a variety of income stream possibilities.
But probably the one that most people know about is when your music is performed. We use that word intentionally because a performance right is in the copyright law in some ways, and in some other ways it’s not. But as music is played over the air or it’s played through a Spotify or a digital service provider, DSPs, as we call ’em, or if your music is played in a restaurant or if it’s played live even, those are all considered performances and they all have different ways of [00:06:00] deriving income from those different performances.
And so additionally, there’s ways that music can be monetized by having your music used in a TV show or a commercial or a music, a movie soundtrack, or a video game, or any number of uses like that. You know, ringtones was a popular thing for a while. So there’s all kind of ways that your intellectual property can earn income for a creator.
Obviously, we’ve seen large paradigm shifts in the way people get paid with regard to how music is distributed going back to people who go back to vinyl records. And even though we’re seeing a resurgence in vinyl, but also, you know, CD sales and things like that, and as streaming or originally digital downloads kind of took over there was a definite shift in the way creators got paid, as people consume their music. And today with the [00:07:00] streaming platforms having taken over, it’s a, another huge shift in the way that artists get paid.. It’s a mystery to a lot of folks because I often describe it as … you could be riding in your car and you could be listening to the same song in any number of formats, whether you’re listening on terrestrial radio, on satellite radio, on a Spotify, or a digital download, and the average consumer doesn’t realize that under one set of circumstances an artist and the songwriters might be getting paid a certain amount and under another, it might be a completely different amount … if they get paid at all. And so there’s just so much ambiguity in the way that the money actually flows from the people who are, um, sending that music out into people’s ears and the way that the creators who created that music get paid.
Bob: This is all very confusing, just right off the top, right. I imagine if I buy a book the author gets, a couple of bucks when I buy a book. [00:08:00] When I bought an album, I would hope the band would buy, get a dollar or two from the album. But now, I don’t quite know how to support an artist who I like.
Reid Wick: Yeah. And you know, that’s one of the biggest issues that we’re facing in the industry ’cause fans still do wanna support their artists. When you pay a monthly subscription, you have no control over how that money is divvied up as the individual subscriber and I know a lot of folks talk about a user-centric model, meaning that if I listen, I pay my 10 bucks a month to be a member of a, or to be a subscriber of a particular service, and I listen to these five artists, ideally I would love my money to go to those five artists, but I have no control over how that money is divvied up.
And so if I really wanted to just support those artists, I would go buy their vinyl or still go digital download. If I can do that or find some other way that I can ensure that the money hopefully gets directly to the artist and not through third party tech companies that kind of stand [00:09:00] between the consumer’s money and the artists that they hope to support.
Bob: You’ve given me a kind of neutral description of the landscape so far. I can tell you other musicians haven’t been quite so neutral, and I wonder if you think the, the opaqueness of the entire situation carries with a very serious risk for the creation of music.
Reid Wick: I’m not sure if I would characterize it as a risk. Being a musician myself and being surrounded by musicians on a daily basis…you know, on one hand I feel like… to create as part of being. And so those who create music, just like somebody who writes a book or somebody who … any kind of creative endeavor… you’re called to do that as part of your persona of who you are. You know, it’s part of your identity. The hard part is that, how do you monetize that? [00:10:00] Right? And so they used to be way more of a defined methodology, if you will, I think in the older models, if you will. But now there are so many different ways that music can be distributed. And look, I feel like in these situations the DSPs need the musicians just as much as the musicians need the DSPs and, and it’s kind of been like that with every technological revolution that’s impacted the music industry.
And I mean, if you think about it, it goes all the way back to the ability to travel and electricity, where the first. Real disruptors in the music industry.
When people were able to start traveling from town to town, that gave rise to the professional musician where somebody who was more talented than the family sitting around piano who used to, you know, read sheet music and play songs together as a family. It turned, it on its head and all the different technological advances since then have created some sort of disrupt disruption [00:11:00] in the industry. And I mean, I think we’re at one of the biggest points of disruption we’ve ever seen with artificial intelligence and streaming as well. But you know, it’s kind of where we’ve gone and we have to, as an industry, figure out where do we land in that and how do we try to create, whether it’s legislation or best practices or whatever those are, to try and make sure that we don’t get ourselves shut out completely.
Bob: It’s very hard to put ourselves into other timeframes. But I read a book not too long ago about music, which reminded me that …in my grandfather’s lifetime, there was no recorded music and there was no radio. And so if you wanted music, someone had to play it.
Reid Wick: Yeah, exactly.
Bob: Which is why there were pianos everywhere. I was reading this book about the Dust Bowl and people draging their belongings across the Midwest. They would drag their pianos.
Reid Wick: Yeah, I mean, to me that just goes to show how important music is to people. You know? I [00:12:00] feel like, you know, in a city like New Orleans where American music was literally born, it’s easy to take music for granted. Right? And I think that’s kind of where we are right now. What we say in New Orleans is that, you know, you’re born to music, you’re married to music, all your major milestones in life have some sort of music, attached to it. And of course, in New Orleans, we’re famous for burying people to music too, you know? And so it’s easy to take it for granted because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s everywhere, right?
And I think what’s happened in the streaming world, and you know, I just read. Mood Machine as you probably did. And I know Liz Pelley just spoke at Duke recently. It’s easy to take a lot of things for granted, and I think the danger right now is that when some of these big tech companies find ways to almost trick the listener into not realizing that what they’re listening to might not be as authentic as you think it is, and it’s a way for them to save money, cut costs at [00:13:00] the expense of people who deserve to make a good living at the art that they create. And so I think that we’re in a, a timeframe of a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknown, a lot of scared composers and songwriters up there, and performers.
Bob: Okay, so let’s talk about AI. It sounds to me like maybe you think the leap from, say, digital downloads to streaming pales in comparison to the leap we’re on the cusp of where a lot of the music we might listen to could be entirely artificially generated.
Reid Wick: Yes, I am very concerned about it. You know, I mean, it’s here, there’s no, it’s coming, it’s definitely here. I was in Nashville last month and the day I got there was the first time that a completely artificial intelligence [00:14:00] based artist was at the top of the country charts and people in Nashville were freaking out. We’re seeing complete AI artists get major record label deals. So that you know when a real human is… should be in that spot and not somebody, some entity, if you wanna call it that, I don’t even know what we call it, right?
I think that …. like a lot of technology … there’s gonna be aspects of AI that can be useful in the music industry, but this right now, you don’t know what to believe right now,ight? It’s this kind of.. we’re on the cusp of the unknown of.. what’s real and what’s not real and or you know, how do we create mechanisms that protect the authentic real humans who create music?
It’s been a huge topic for a lot of us. I just spoke on a panel in Memphis last week about this topic, about how, um, there are pieces of legislation currently filed and soon to be [00:15:00] filed that will hopefully offer some protections and ways that our artists can get compensated fairly. But right now it’s still the Wild West.
Bob: Well, let’s talk about the legislation in a moment, but just for folks who haven’t thought about this… I’m not old enough to remember this, but I’m old enough to have talked to people who do remember this. You know, when Bob Dylan first grabbed an electric guitar, it was scandalous in the folk world, right?
So how is this different from that?
Reid Wick: I mean, it’s totally different. I mean, Bob Dylan was just expressing himself and at that point, and you know, I’ve read, I didn’t see the movie, but I know a lot about the story at Newport and you know, he was just … we’ve seen so many musicians go through changes in the way that they want to express themselves.
I mean, you think about a lot of other musicians that have gone through changes that people didn’t expect, You know, I mean, the one that comes to mind a lot because I’m a huge [00:16:00] fan, but I know Esperanza Spalding
put out a record that was kind of a rock record, but it was expressing where she was in her life and a lot of the…one of my friends played in her band at the time. And she wound up losing a lot of the gigs that she had booked because the people booked them at the time when she was doing a straight up jazz thing and they wanted her to play that repertoire. And she’s like, no, I’m playing my new record my life as an artist, and if you can’t book me for being me, then, you know.
So to me that’s a whole different ballgame than then a technology company absorbing copyrighted works that’s been out there for, you know, in some cases 50, 60 years. And then a person being able to go in and type in some prompts and be able to call on all of these things that have been fed into a machine to build something fake, that kind of emulates things that it’s [00:17:00] learned.
You know, they can’t pull this stuff out of thin air. They have to train it some kind of way. Right. So I think that’s where it’s a huge difference. It’s not the same by any means in my opinion.
Bob: There’s a great podcast that Tift was on where they, I’m gonna use this word loosely, confronted her with a recording of herself and then a recording where the podcaster generated a song in a style of Tift Merrirr, which of course was saccharine and boring, but nevertheless awful for poor Tift to have to listen to this and respond to it on the spot. This soulless music is a terrifying concept, I think, to most people.
Reid Wick: Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting ’cause at this panel I was at last week that I spoke at on artificial intelligence, we played a couple of different videos just to give the audience a sense of the topic that we were talking about. And one of ’em was a, a video that Charlie Puth put out and the video talked about how the art [00:18:00] is in the imperfections of what humans put out, right?
Bob: Mm-hmm.
Reid Wick: It’s the little mistakes that wind up in there that make it unique and it make it. Uniquely human and emotion comes from a true, you know, to me, great music is about emotion. It’s about how do you connect from one human being to another? And as you mentioned, you know, if Tift is here in a soulless version of herself created by AI, that’s soullessness, if that’s the right word, is what’s lacking from that human connection. And I think, you know, right now it’s a novelty. I think over time … and it’s interesting, another friend of mine who told me that her son can pick out AI fakes instantly because he can tell that it’s way too perfect, you know?
Music: Mm-hmm.
Reid Wick: And, um, Charlie also talked about how, um, September by Earth Wind and Fire, the whole [00:19:00] connection of a group of musicians playing together. You know how the emotion of the song started at one tempo, but by the end of the song, it built up so much emotion that the actual tempo of the song had increased. But you don’t notice it as when you’re listening to it on its own unless you’re sitting there counting along, look and working with the metronome. To get that technical with it, but you’re caught up in the emotion of the song that you don’t realize that the song sped up from, you know, minute one to minute four.
So to me, that’s the pieces of art that makes it human. And when you take the humanity out and put the perfection in it generally is gonna render, you know, render a piece of music or whatever, a piece of art, soulless, you know.
Bob: I love that example. There’s this concept in digital video, deep fakes. Basically, if a video is too good, it creates this unnerving reaction in humans, you know? Yeah. It’s, it’s okay if it’s okay if it’s obviously a video fake, but if it’s [00:20:00] almost but not quite human, then it’s like revolting in some strange way.
Reid Wick: You know? I was thinking about that a little bit. ’cause I read, I didn’t read the whole article. I read a headline actually this morning about … it made me think of like a cartoon versus someone trying to make something look like a real human right. And to the effect that you just mentioned, that you can totally recognize or relate to our cartoonish rendering of a person that’s real and you get the sense that it’s kind of got this little, uh, maybe it’s joking, you know, maybe it’s comedy or whatever. But when they try so hard to make something look totally real and it just misses the mark because it’s too perfect. And I’ve seen some of those things where, you know, there’s not a hair out of place. There’s, you know, not a blemish in the skin. There’s, you know, the eyes never blink or whatever it is.
It’s like. I find that I reject that too. Like it’s a [00:21:00] gut feeling, you know, like, you know, I don’t connect with this. So I think when you think about removing the humanness from communication, whether it’s through a song or through a movie or, or any kind of communication at all, that’s where the soullessness comes in. You know, until you can find a way to actually have that heart to heart or gut to gut, uh, vibe happen. I think that’s, um. That’s where technology gets in the way.
Bob: And how much more do you enjoy songs by your favorite bands when you’ve seen the band perform at once?
Reid Wick: Yeah.
Bob: You know, and then forever you remember that feeling from that moment and all that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Reid Wick: And being a musician, right. I also enjoyed it. They might take it up diff, they might play it different than the record and it adds a whole nother, you know… and to me, music being a musician is about interpreting the song. And you know, I talk about this a lot when I’m play. I was like, you know, I’m projecting what I feel today into a song that I’m playing.
And if I’m mad, [00:22:00] I feel like you’re gonna hear a little bit of my anger in the way I play. If I’m happy, you’re gonna hear a little bit of that. If I’m feeling blues, you’re gonna hear a little blues, you know, if I’m, and so to me that’s, those are those elements that no computer can add in there. Right. You know, and, and sometimes it might not be the notes that you play, but it’s the way that you phrase things.
It’s the way that you attack a note and let go of a note. All of those little aspects, that’s the minutia of humanness that a computer …If we let this keep going, I’m sure it can…it’ll emulate human qualities to the nth degree. For the most part. I don’t know if we’ll ever really get to the point where a machine has soul.
Bob: I can tell you, a computer will never be as good at making mistakes as I am,
Reid Wick: But that’s where the beauty is, right? Same here. The beauty is in the mistakes. And um, who was it? Not everyone always would agree with that. It’s not the wrong note that you play. It’s the next note that you play. How do you recover?
Bob: It’s how you fix it. Yeah, sure.[00:23:00]
You mentioned the word outrage a little while ago, and I wanna get back to this question, which is, I’m dying to ask. When Millie Vanilli happened, everyone flipped out and felt cheated, wanted refunds, right? All that sort of stuff. And these things happen from time to time in the music business. Why do you think…the public hasn’t reacted with that kind of emotion about … wait, fake music. What, what is this? Where is that reaction coming do you think?
Reid Wick: You know, that’s a great question and honestly I don’t have an answer ’cause I think about that kind of stuff from time to time. And I almost wonder if the day and age that we live in of, of short attention span. You know, one of the things that Mood machine talks a lot about is passive listening. You know, and I think we as most humans are in a spot where they’re listening to music passively, which I think is why some of these things that these streaming [00:24:00] services put out there, like these chill playlists that are all, you know, meant to be almost like emotionless so that it doesn’t interrupt your life, that you could just put something on in the background and you can go about your day and not have to think about the music and you know, I guess there’s a place for that for some people. I mean, I go back to the days of walking through grocery stores and hearing Muzak, which is kind of where all this came from, right? You hear these bland versions of, oh, I recognize that melody. You know, it’s another steely dance song or something.
But it’s, you know, really bland and yeah, I can notice, and I’m probably not the right person to ask that kind of question too, ’cause I always be like … man, that’s really cheesy way to play that song. You know, they, they could have at least kept the major nine chord in there and they didn’t even use that.
But I’m, you know, I’m analyzing too much as I go along, but I think that, uh, that I, I don’t think, I wonder if that’s where we are today, is that like we get bombarded with so much information that a lot of people don’t have the time to [00:25:00] waste their energy on that when there are so many other things going on in this world that are time consuming, energy consuming, draining of your emotion? Honestly, from watching, I had to basically stop watching the news ’cause I’m worn out just watching the news. And I can imagine that there’s a lot of people who are in the same place. It’s like, this isn’t the fight. I’m gonna fight a, you know, I’m a raise a stink about. I just don’t know. I wish I had that answer, honestly, Bob,
Bob: On the list of things to be outraged about. It wouldn’t crack the top 25 or so. Yeah.
Reid Wick: Yeah. I’m not sure for a lot of people. Right. So I kind of wonder when it’s gonna come to a head. If it’s gonna come to a head. I mean, I would like to see a little more vociferous, a proposition to fake music from a lot of people. Maybe it’ll happen one day soon and you know, maybe we will be the ones who drive that eventually.
Bob: So I know you’ve worked with things in the Louisiana State legislature, right? And you have also supported some of the federal laws. So can you just talk about, you know, what kind of things you hope might work either at the state or the federal level?
Reid Wick: Sure. Obviously, you know, one of the issues, I do work in a lot of states and, and a couple of ’em have already passed some AI protections. For instance, last year in Tennessee, we passed the Elvis Act, which, um, does protect likeness and image and things like that. And, and we have a version of that here in Louisiana called the Allen Toussaint Legacy Act. I’m actually working to put a version of the Elvis Act together for Missouri next year in 2026.
And that’ll be, uh. We are gonna brand it … the Chuck Berry Legacy Act, ’cause it’s the hundredth anniversary, Chuck Berry’s birthday, the founding fathers of rock and roll. And, um, but, you know, ultimately federal level protections is where we need to be. And [00:27:00] so back in April we introduced the No Fakes Act, um, during our annual Grammys on the Hill, which would offer name, likeness and voice protections from, you know misuse of artificial intelligence in that space. A little later in the year, in the fall, the train act was introduced. The real short version of the Train Act is that we’re looking for what we kind of refer to as the three Cs. First being that if a tech company is interested in using my music, for instance, I hope that they would, we would like them to require that I give consent, that they use my music as the first C.
The second C would be that they, um, compensate me appropriately for training their ai, um, robot on my music. And then third, that I would get the credit that I would deserve, so that if you wanted to make a song in the likeness of one of the songs that I created that you would know that it was my song that you were basing it off of, you know that.[00:28:00]
And that the other two Cs were put in place that I gave consent and that I was compensated appropriately. So those are two of the pieces of legislation that are already been introduced. We are working with, um, representative Deborah Ross there in North Carolina as well as. Trying to get a, um, a prominent Senate Republican to sign on to the Protecting Working Musicians Act, which would allow independent artists to come together and sort of … I don’t know the best way to describe it. Kind of do you know, collective bargaining class action work together as independent artists so that we can work together and have a say in how our music is used or not used when it comes to these AI robots coming out. So we are hoping that that bill will get introduced early in the, um, in 2026, so that we can sort of work those as a three-legged stool that could approach.
AI legislation from three different angles at the federal level and hopefully, [00:29:00] you know, at least put the brakes on a little bit so that we can maybe work with the legislature to make sure that our artists are protected and, and, uh, ’cause it’s not only we’re focused on the music side of things, but you know, when it comes to artificial intelligence, you know, it’s looking at, it’s you, it’s looking to use intellectual property, right.
And a lot of people don’t, you know, might think that’s just a buzzword. But I mean, intellectual property is pretty much, it’s the largest export the United States has, right? It’s our songs, it’s our movies, but it’s also the software that we create. It’s the books we write. I mean, when you think about it, anything that a creator creates, it’s their intellectual property, right?
And it’s, it’s amorphous for a lot of folks. ’cause you can’t really hold intellectual property in your hand as a concept, you know? It’s, it’s something that’s created outta thin air. And so you can hold the CD that a song is recorded on, but you’re not actually holding the intellectual property. You’re holding the sound recording, which is a whole separate copyright.[00:30:00]
And so to me, it’s an ongoing educational process every single day. That’s what I do every day. It’s our job to educate. Legislators, the general public, even our fellow musicians and creators, that the crux of it all is intellectual property. And how do we protect that? How do we keep companies that don’t feel like they have to pay or ask or, you know, consent with us and just use it because it’s out there in the world?
Bob: Hmm, I, is there anything that a fan, a listener, uh, can do or should do right now in, in this time?
Reid Wick: You know, I think one thing that we would do is really take the time to pay attention to these points they’re talking about, because, you know, if they truly do care about music and do care about supporting an artist that they may be a fan of … then thinking through these kind of things, which the average person doesn’t think about. [00:31:00] And that’s why organizations like the Recording Academy and others who work in this space think is such a service that we do to not only the musicians that we support, but fans that, that support them. Is that they need to understand that maybe, uh, utilizing that service is not really gonna pay the artist well or, or …. maybe they should go to a show, buy a piece of merchandise, you know, buy the actual album or a vinyl or something that you do know that that money is going to support that artist. It goes a long way, but I mean, it’s easy as we talked about in this world of distractions and so much information coming to you that to not even take the time to think about it.
And I would like to call on people to actually think through some of these things and when they see these buzzwords out there, maybe take a few minutes and actually research what it means and how it affects your favorite artist or, or things like that. So, um, you know, it’s a time of change. It’s a time of a lot [00:32:00] of new things coming at us from every direction. But to me this is really important that if we want to see the survival of creativity, I think if fans really wanna see the survival of creativity, then they really need to be paying attention to what’s happening in this artificial intelligence space.
You know, I saw a pundit this morning on a video talk about … Will an AI artist be winning a Grammy award anytime soon? And he predicted that within two years as of right now. Last year, Harvey Mason, Jr. Our CEO, made a public statement that AI will never win a Grammy. And I will tell you that for years if somebody is submitting their recording for consideration in the Grammy awards process, you have to indicate whether this song was built on samples has been around for a long time, and you have to acknowledge that. But now you also have to [00:33:00] acknowledge that if AI was in the creation of music at all, because we will still .. even if the human did use some elements of artificial intelligence, I believe. But they have to declare what those elements are and we won’t be seeing, uh, any of these AI artists that are out there actually getting a Grammy anytime soon, and I hope that never happens.
Bob: You know what, what I think what we will see though … I mean a lot of writers now are using AI to sort of overcome blank page syndrome, right? So I mean, I could see as someone writing song lyrics and using chat GPT to, to get ’em started on, on a verse or something like that, you know?
Reid Wick: Yeah, I’ve heard that. And um, heard, I’ve also heard. When I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, or a month ago when I was mentioned earlier, I actually heard a half written song that one of my friends and another songwriter had started writing the other songwriter, took it home, put it in Sumo, [00:34:00] and sent him a finished version, fully demoed, full production, and we were all dumbfounded how good it sounded. But then you stop and think, okay, so you just put. Five to 10 musicians outta work. The studio that you would’ve gone into to make that demonstration. You know that demo tape, the recording engineer, probably the crew at the studio. So while you would’ve saved a few dollars, you put a whole bunch of people outta work.
And I think that’s the balance we have to figure out in the industry is like, how far do we want to go with that, you know?
Bob: Forgive me if I are putting my thoughts into the middle of this conversation, but I have a strong feeling, especially when it comes to writing, which is AI is very good at generating B plus work for someone who’s sort of lazy and doesn’t wanna do it. But the thing you didn’t mention about the collaboration of finishing that song is how much better it would be when the five or 10 people who are all professionals kicked in their point of view. Right. [00:35:00]
Reid Wick: Well, and you know, and that’s the secret to. You know, one of my very best friends is a, a music row songwriter. And he is, I mean, he’s had several number one hits and several, many, many, many cuts on not only country, but pop and rock and the jazz, uh, over the years and. He swears to the collaborative effort between three or four human beings in a room actually bouncing ideas off of each other and editing their work. And, you know, writing a part of a song today and going home and thinking about it and coming back tomorrow and finishing it up and, and, you know, putting the time and effort into making something as good as it could possibly be, and not just being satisfied with C plus or b plus, you know, but going for A+
In this world of everybody can write a song, everybody can get it out into the [00:36:00] world. How do you still cut through the clutter and get to the top of the heap? And I still believe that, you know, the really, really great music is gonna eventually find its way to the top and get to people’s ears. A lot of people talk about how, oh, there’s just no more great artists anymore, and I would beg to differ it. You just gotta take the time to push past the clutter that’s out there and you can find great music. I find it every day.
Bob: Next on debugger. Not everyone is quite as optimistic as Reid that will be able to push past all this digital clutter and find great music. Getting great musicians every day. So while TIF is still working in the studio, we’ll hear from Jen Jacobson of the Artist Rights [00:37:00] Alliance.
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