Rick's Rant Ep. 3 - Is It Worth It To Go To Music School?

[Music] what's up everybody invite your friends hit the thumbs up move my camera over here a little bit there you go we got one one thumbs up that's it okay that's 3:10 beat Milan what's up everybody tell me where you are cuz I'm always curious because I'm going on a little bit different time than I normally do I want to see how many people in Europe I hit how far over Serbia okay that's good Germany what time is it Germany it's not that late it's actually good a good time night Sweden it's never late New Zealand is it the morning East London Poland Brazil Long Island there we go invite your friends you're here for a rant you're here for some fun you know what can happen in my rants Korea there we go my wife's a home country I have a new moderator here my new assistant Michelle's moderating you must say hi Michelle say hi so Michelle has been working here for a few days Michelle is an Erin are both working here now but so you got a hi Michelle Michelle can you type in there to see if it works you'll see Michelle come up with our moderator wrench next to it there it is yeah okay so Michelle has perfect pitch I'll just put it right out there I found that out when she started and she's added her whole life right Michelle Michelle can people can adults develop perfect pitch you have to talk she doesn't think so she knows that they can't yeah have you ever met anyone that developed perfect pitches an adult they tried right and it didn't work yeah and you you've had it since you can remember right and you started taking piano lessons at what age four or four there you go I don't need to send any more relative pitches where it said anyways okay yeah she's from Indonesia yeah from Indo as she calls it hey okay so I wanna OH before I go on and if you guess your elephants my kids and my my two nephews and niece are upstairs going crazy here they sound like a bunch of elephants and I'm gonna freak out I'm bringing I'm gonna bring this upstairs and scare them anyway so I'm putting the Beato book on sale as I do many times here during my live stream for those of you who got $10 off coupon to go to my Rikki edicom and you can enter in the coupon code Michelle will paste it in there right right there do I know David Burgess method I do know his method and its total baloney sorry David and also my PDF bundles on sale and Michelle put that in there too so it's bundle 251 and and our our whatever it is to 6a is it right for the piano book $10 off in each Charles how are you well I'm old no I think you're maybe responding to someone else Joe Bonamassa last night entirely over 50 audience yeah there you go right okay so we're gonna talk about 220 watching my rant you got to get it up you got to share it with people right now okay so here's one of my rants that I'd like to talk about and it has to do with music education okay I have a I have a beef and this has been going on for years and years this isn't anything that's new it's it's happened the first time I became aware of it was was in the year 2000 so my most of you don't know my full-time assistant can or as he's known to most people GL I'm not echoing Jeff Berlin though this is a totally different kind of thing and I'm very Pro education but can or GL who's been engineering for me for 17 years and he works for neural my other company when I met him I was working in a studio in town here and I'm not gonna mention the name of it but it's biggest studio in Atlanta and he was working there so when I started my producing career I had been using an engineer friend of mine Billy Hume who's a great great mix engineer and recording engineer and a producer as well so Billy was engineering for me and then he started doing all these big rap records but Little John and and all these people around Atlanta that were you know all the big crunk rappers back at the time so Billy's like said that you should really do your own thing and engineer the stuff yourself so I was I went to this place I rented a room at this big studio in town and I started working and I start working six days a week producing bands this is in nineteen is in 2000 so I'd be working you know six 12 hour days a week so they assigned me with an engineer to work with a guy would you know assist me and that was Ken his name is Ken Lanyon like I said 17 years of new work of Omri still working for me working with me I should say so Ken went to Full Sail at the time and graduated he was like you know the valedictorian or salutatory or whatever of they're super smart guy and he starts he comes into the first session and I said you're a bike up a guitar amp he goes he a couple times and I said what do you mean a couple times don't think what do they teach you there and do they they don't teach you about my guitar well not really and I said what kind of stuff they teach you well they teach us how to make coffee how to go get coffee your how you're supposed to act in the studio how you're not supposed to talk in sessions I said well where's your skills with this can you run Pro Tools well I'm not very good at Pro Tools so I said well I don't get this what do you mean they teach you how to make coffee yeah and what about can you run Pro Tools so I haven't sat down at Pro Tools he doesn't know any key commands he's really doesn't know anything this is just before Pro Tools you could buy a digi or one or just right at the same time so people didn't really have him to to to work on at the time at home so you couldn't really practice so anyways he ended a start you started working for me six days a week and I said have you ever worked on a session before he said only a couple well how long have you been working at this place he said over a year year and a half or so and I said how much do they paying you he said nothing and I said nothing what said yeah they don't pay any of the interns here I said none of them and and I'm not reacting in Ken I'm saying great things about him so he says nothing I said no one hears getting paid he said no you'll get paid if you're on a session but nobody really gets to work sessions and so he would tell me that you know people would work on sessions for two years and then just quit and never make any money and never they are they work at the studio and never work on one session in two years getting getting no no experience at all and they would have why is there only 47 likes a Jason is right what is up with this come on guys 275 people 52 likes come on hit that like button how hard is that anyways so Michelle what the show I'm just I'm in the middle of something you can ask me questions type down the questions there so me asked a question people are asking questions I didn't even see that now I am Steve Allen usually for the I usually keep it up for about an hour after the live stream I might keep it up till tomorrow yeah I'll keep it up till tomorrow how's that um okay so so anyways Michelle's getting the hang of this and everything I didn't tell her when she should interrupt me or anything who's Michelle Michelle is my new my second new assistant along with Erin and then Ken who I'm talking about is my engineer so like I said he's more working working with me for 17 years that's a long time so anyway so he says no we don't get paid so so this is really was the first sessions he's working and he had worked on a few before but so I start working with him six days a week so a few weeks go by and I drive up to the studio on a Sunday and he's at there mowing the lawn and we had just worked five days in a row and I said what are you doing he goes I'm they called me in today and I said are they paying you know well how long you have to how long do you have to do this for and earn and he says twelve hours and I said this is baloney and he goes no this is this is standard this is what what assistants are expected when they do internships at studios this still goes on today okay I mean I I don't want to say but there's somebody in this room that just had a similar experience and it's not me so studios will hire you and never pay you for years until you quit basically they'll keep using it's slave labor keep using you and they basically depend on these places like you know like Full Sail or Berkeley or wherever they go to take people that have gone and spent a ton of money as we one of our last livestreams 375 thousand dollars for an undergrad degree at Berkeley and I don't know how much it is a full sales probably about the same a ridiculous amount of money but what they don't tell you is that there are really no jobs out there that pay anything okay so there's no real budgets for studios everybody is is theirs there used to be people that got budgets to do records okay so a typical record budget for a new band I've said this before in the past back in the late 90s early 2000s would be about a hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for a to make a record no matter what genre was country record rock record a pop record unless you were assigned to a big production company let's match Max Martin signed you or someone like that then they would make the record themselves they would take you know at least 50% of everything you own they would own you essentially which is really what happened with the dr. Luke and Ke$ha thing where he bases she signed this deal and he owns her essentially she can't do anything it's the same thing that happen with American Idol where they made people they had a company called 19 which was the management company that managed all the American Idol artists so those artists signed this thing you couldn't be in the show unless you signed it and anyone that won like Kelly Clarkson or anybody in everyone that that was in the show signed this thing so what would happen is that for example I'll give you a Kelly Clarkson show she made her first record they had massive ten million records or so and she was giving half of her money to nineteen which is which is the management company that Simon Cowell and the other Simon that owned American Idol so they got 50% of everything she made and then she had a manager at the time that got 20% so right off the top 70% of everything she made went to these people okay the rest of the 30% well she didn't write any of her own songs Clive Davis she was signed to and Clive was running RCA and ariston and Jay records and that's what all the American Idol people were going through so no one got paid back then she never got paid any record royalties or any um she never got paid any royalties from songwriting because they never let her write her own songs and then when she did write her own songs when she got hip to the fact that hey I'm not making any money so you see these people that you think are super rich millionaires massively big stars that basically make no money well it's the same thing that the same thing with education they don't tell you at the schools unfortunately that there's no money in these jobs and there's very very few jobs like this out there I had an assistant a few years ago they came in here and he worked here for a while and went out to LA and I got him a job as an assistant and I got him a job he was an intern that came in for an internship now this is something that's a little different and internships like what Erin came in for from Berkeley and Erin came in and the internship was eight weeks long okay so so they would be they'd come in and this kid told me he was moving out to LA could I make a phone call for him and see if I'd get him a gig in a studio so I got him a gig working for this guy Ben gross who has a place called the mix room that I worked at Ben is a great producer and a mixer does done a lot of really really big rock records and Ben hired him he took him on as an intern and then hired him full-time okay that's because of the connection because I know Ben but the ability to get an internship but he still had to go out there and work for nothing for a while until he until he actually proved himself because Ben didn't really know him so they don't tell you any of this stuff that there are no paying jobs if you think about it so I've had the same assistant for 17 years who's worked on every single record that I've done in 17 years okay there's no room there's a budget for anyone else and as the record budgets kept going down I would egg can GL is his nickname Wisconsin GL always worked for me and that wasn't an option not having him I mean he was part of the whole thing so he would literally engineer every single record so but during all this time during these 17 years people have been graduating over and over and over all these people have been graduating from from these recording these recording programs everywhere and there's no job and how do you pay back a three hundred and some odd thousand dollar loan what you can't so basically what you do and what we saw these people do in this hard work somebody just said the engineers work as hard work is incredibly hard work what you do is you go intern in a place and your parents help you out for as long as they can well you work for free and then and then you finally can't take it anymore it's actually almost Tomas it's almost $400,000 so I've so I've heard somebody said last time is three hundred seventy three thousand dollars so um and I've got nothing against recording programs I think that they're great but people need to know and parents need to know that there are no jobs in that industry really and the ones that are there are so few of them it's kind of like trying to play in an orchestra you need someone you know one of the big orchestras Philadelphia Chicago Cleveland New York you know someone needs to die to get into one of the sections you know if you only have three trumpet players you know you only have six French horns you know whatever and these people will play till they're 70 years old so the the none of these positions open up so you have your choice so you're either a music professor if you're good enough and to be a music professor at a really good school you have to be one of the best players so you have to be good enough to get an orchestra gig but then you get a but then you get a gig as a teacher and many of the teachers like peak teachers that taught at New England Conservatory where I did my master's degree most of the people on the faculty played in the Boston Symphony okay so that was kind of their home base for the teachers in Boston for the people that played in the Boston Symphony would teach at New England Conservatory okay not the concert master because they made a lot of money they didn't need to do it so um so what do you do then with a degree that's really the question and as a parent if you have if you have kids that are considering going into this you have to know what the real choices are so the real choices are that you have to either make it on your own okay by being incredibly good and you become the chainsmokers or become you know some huge EDM artists or something or become you know Rick Rubin who started out in his in his college dorm room at NYU even though his parents friended him the money to start his label and NYU is not a cheap school to go to so Rick Rubin had probably had a bit of a trust fund I'm sure so he didn't he didn't have to worry about you know about not eating or anything and if you saw early pictures of him he's big as I am not just kidding anyways I need you I need to lose about 30 pounds maybe 40 anyway so um so this is so it's incredibly incredibly difficult just like it is if you're a composer and doing film scoring and whatever it is your ability or your child's ability to get out there and make a name for yourself is extremely extremely important and your ability to network I mean I told Michelle she was working interning in another studio and I said listen I want I hope you don't mind telling me telling this Michelle I'm not gonna mention where you were working or anything but I told her that listen no I'm gonna pay you I'm gonna pay you no no you're not gonna work for free here I'm gonna pay you to work here okay I don't do that I don't do this make people work for free thing that's ridiculous that's slave labor people need to get paid for work that do okay it's like it costs money to live so once again this is one of my reasons to do my channel here is to actually get information out there whether it's information on you know what to play over a mixolydian scale you know how to use a mixolydian scale or you know how to get film scoring gigs or how to get or how to build a YouTube channel okay so these are extremely important skills now for me I'm 55 years old to make a living if I were to try and make a living in any other thing other than the music business let's say if I wanted to start a career from scratch at 55 let's say I got laid off by my job that I've been working for 30 years it happens to many many people what what are my options well one of my biggest options are are starting my own business starting a YouTube channel for example and in order to do this in order to be successful anything it takes a tremendous amount of energy and you need to be an entrepreneur as Jerry just said that is really the key and that is the thing that needs to be taught that really needs to be taught to people is how to be an entrepreneur that's the most important thing in today's music economy because that's what this is it's not enough to be the best at what you do you can be the best film score you can be the best improvised or anything but if you can't make a living if you can't communicate with people you can't make a living and communicating with people means you have to convince them that you're the producer to do their gig otherwise you're just working for free all the time because essentially in the production field since most production now most people that get signed to record deals are people that already have a massive amount of social media so social proof as we call it social proof would be I have a song that that has 100 50 million views on YouTube okay that would be social proof about 20 million views on YouTube if you had an original song with 20 million views you'll get signed by record label what you don't even need to look at this cache me outside girl okay that did the you know did that tune and she got signed to Atlantic Records because of some stupid thing that she said on and dr. Phil I mean she made this thing that became a meme and all of a sudden she became huge and got she became a huge meme and then got a deal with Atlantic Records well you know I would bash her song but I actually liked her song I think that she I love the production of her song I'm not afraid to admit that I want to hate it but the vocal sound great on it because I think they're using like as they're using some type of distortion I talked about this the other day but it's it's really really holding I got a plug my flight I gotta plug my thing in here because it's not going to uh I'm gonna go it's gonna go dark here in a second but I love the cash me outside production I think it's fantastic so I want to complain about the people that are doing it I want to complain like um are all my friends complain about how they yeah the lyrics are trash but I can't understand the lyrics so it really doesn't bother it does not bother me that much but the the vocal presentation is the distortion on the vocal is really really well done anyways but this is a person that because of a meme that was started from something she said on a TV show and she became this I was she's not a huge star or anything and the and the song has not done that well okay but but you know it's an example of what gets signed by record labels now okay so that gets signed and I know the guy that signed her he's a he's an A&R guy at Atlantic Records and I've done projects with him in the past wait way long ago in the past and he signs these things one of the projects I did the thing that he signed with it was a group way back in the early 2000s and I think I did it with I I want to say it was with Warren Huard Warren who's who produced like a pro who I actually interviewed for a sounding off coming up Warren's been a friend of mine for years but I want to say that this was the project we worked on together but it was Lou Adler son it was Dickey Betts his son and Roy Orbison's son were all in this band okay so this is a thing that got signed that had no nothing going on but because they had famous dads they signed the band okay this is pre-internet pre-youtube and everything but nowadays it's things that are successful already those are the only things that get record deals period for the most part nobody goes out and says you know what this band really has nothing to go on it used to be that people would get signed people would get signed just on a rumor that they might have great songs or somebody would go out and see them and I think you know I'm gonna jump on this before someone else does you used to be able to get people record deals I can get bands that I produced record deals back you know in the early 2000s by telling somebody that so-and-so was interested in something and and all of a sudden there'd be a massive bidding war over it so um somebody asked what how old was I when I started producing I was 37 when I started producing and I learned it from scratch okay there's four hundred seventy-one people on here and 200 likes where's the rest of those likes anyway so records so since there are no since there's no people that are really having records made and for the records that are made for the Bands are successful let's say you're Adele or Katy Perry or somebody like that there are already people the top people in the business are writing your songs like Max Martin or Greg Wells they're producing the tracks they're doing all the backing tracks and basically you basically you have the tracks produced for you so there's no one making the money essentially and when there was the A&R guys would hire their guy or girl who ever was and they would just always give all their gigs to them and that's kind of how the music business became now somebody made a complaint about my Tom Petty video and they said they why am I talking about Tom Petty I should be talking about Joe Zawinul and this is really interesting because this kind of goes to this core of how the music business used to be when Tom Petty came up and and why am I talking about Tom Petty and that's Joe Zawinul well I love Tom Petty's music number one number two Tom Petty made an artist like him made all the money it used to be four percent of the acts on a major label paid for the entire major label that means if you're on Columbia Records okay and you have a huge hit and you're wondering that four percent you're paying for all the jazz records you're paying for all the classical records you're playing for all the all the failed and our decisions you're paying for everything you're paying everyone salary that is a fact Tom Petty because of guys like him and the Beatles this is why we have John the John Coltrane sir I should say Led Zeppelin because John Coltrane was on Atlantic but John Coltrane's records really weren't making money Led Zeppelin was making money for Atlantic Records okay so you know when people want wanna bash these incredibly great artists like that that they don't have any clue on because they can't they're they they don't know what a good melody is and what a great melody writer tom felony Tom Petty was not only a great melody writer but a phenomenal lyricist too but they want to complain about this but all these jazz people that they like and don't get me wrong I love jazz right I'm a jazz guy all these jazz musicians never would have gotten a chance to put out a record if it wasn't for Tom Petty's making all the money for the label so that they had all this extra cash to take a chance on artists I have friends that got record deals back in the late 80s early 90s that were jazz artists that would have a budget my friend iDEN for example they have budget over 100 thousand dollars for jazz record never would happen now now people are you know get signed for nothing country artists things like that because there's so much production cost and so much cost to promote a record nowadays to promote a hit song in Nashville for example it costs five hundred thousand dollars to make a song a hit to know not to make a song a hit because you can't make it ahead it still has to do it on its own but you have to push it along until it gets into the top five all songs and pop music and rock charts that are in the top five make the same amount of money really okay on radio airplay and that's where all the money comes in so but in order to do that you need to push it along and that means nighttime spins if you're an unknown band so Parmalee the band I had a number one song with their record gets stuck and they told the story when we had our number one party all number one songs no matter what they are have a party with them I know I'm like a rambling in different areas here but anyway so they have a number one party so at the party the head of the label got up there and talked and I never heard didn't either stuff I never paid attention to it except when it got in the top 20 and a buddy of mine said you know why the signs gonna be a number-one song so I what no way he says I'm telling you it's gonna be number one so the the heavy label got up there and said that the song Carolina was stuck at number 40 on the charts for eight weeks and he said and he went through and chronicled it he says he hit 40 jumped up to 42 came back to 40 next week and went down to 39 went back to 40 went up to 43 went back to 40 went down to 37 went up to 39 went back to 48 weeks it was at number 40 got down to 35 lost its bullet meaning it got less spins once a song loses its bullet it's gone radio people drop it even if it loses if it gets one spin less so you get 1500 and one spins one week and then the next week you get 1500 spins they drop your song okay so this is took a Herculean effort to to spend enough money to get the sign I'm not proud this is just a fact I'm not saying anything that isn't true this is how the music business works how it's always worked for the most part so they artificially push it push it push it and skidding night-time spins this is with any unknown any unknown band until it hits the top 30 when it's a top 30 it starts getting played on Clear Channel or team I think humulus stations and then when hits the top 20 it gets played on Clear Channel stations once you at the top 20 that's when you have the chance of having a hit song ok then they start playing it and they start playing at daytime spins and somebody just said that's why they like YouTube because it's democratic it is democratic kind of okay YouTube's thing is that you all see ads that play unless you pay for YouTube's bread you guys all see does everybody see ads that play before my videos and before all their YouTube videos that's the monetization well they put ads that are based on what whatever you're you know I'm a music person so they put music things on you they put like Herbie Hancock's master class or deadmau5 or hans zimmer or you've seen all these things tessitura pro or whatever it is that they come on before this now those ads when people if you ever see them drop off videos that means that those companies decided well they're not making enough money or they've reached their spend limit with google adsense and they're dropping off so everyone's music channels drop in subscriptions and views okay because youtube when there's money coming in to pay for those things okay and you see those big name ads those master class ads are really high dollar ads so when they when you see those things disappear off they're you know that they're not spending money and youtubers I don't think you even realize this like you have to actually see you have to think about this so all the youtubers all my friends like Adam Neely Aimee Nolte people like that we all start losing we don't get as many subscribers we don't get as many views when those people aren't aren't musician is another one right aren't advertising if they decided that they've used up their budget or their taking a break for a couple weeks all companies do this they regroup they've see if ads are working or not because usually their mother they're promoting things on multiple platforms so it does happen with YouTube as well it's not strictly Democratic yes you can share with your friends yes there's five hundred and twenty nine people on here right now this is democratic you can you can share your video this live stream with people right now that's democratic but in order for me to get subscribers and get my channel out in front of people that don't know who I am it has to be suggested in the side column and that's and what decides that is how much ad revenue is available to put ads in front of whatever things are our music related content like my channel and Adam daily and Jeff Schneider and people like that or Amy Nolte all these people that are friends of mine piano around the world music is when all these people that I know that are youtubers that that do music related channels they have music ads in front of them so you don't get in that side column if if tessitura Pro or master class is not advertising right then they're now putting our videos in there they're putting other people's videos that they're getting paid for so it's really not it's really not completely democratic but YouTube is as Democratic as you can possibly have Facebook is not democratic at all Facebook has an algorithm that decides if you have a if you have a band channel and you pay once you've been identified I never use my artist channel everything music I always use my private channel when you pay and are identified as a payer Facebook will not push your videos out to anyone and it's a complete waste of time if you're in a band and you're watching this don't waste your money I hate to say it on Facebook ads just don't they're not accurate there they don't accurately send them out to the right people you really there's no way just to know and I have friends that have actually followed traffic using Google Analytics that have paid for Facebook ads and they've argued and they've actually gotten their money back from Facebook on this because they could prove it and one of my friends is gonna send me a and he's gonna send me one of the emails you get back from Facebook and I'm gonna make a video on it so anyways so so Facebook does not promote things in a democratic way and of course they don't pay anyone for it they have their new Chan their new Channel play that they developed content for but they don't they haven't opened it up to for people to make a living on it now what does this all have to do with making a living well these are all ways that people make a living in today's economy and these are the things that need to be taught in college is how to make a living how to be an entrepreneur how to get out there and get your message out to as many people as possible which is what I'm doing right now I'm getting my message out and my message is for you to get your message out use social media make videos if you do the thing about YouTube that's great is that it's all video content whereas Facebook they don't tell you if you put out a static post with no video attached to it it has no juice it goes out to no one they want to reserve their their timeline for people that are payers and once they've identified payers they'll make you pay and they'll though actually I guarantee you that their algorithm will take your cut and will take your money and then it'll get to a point where it's like okay this person is a consistent payer so we're not going to push it out to as many people and there's really no way it there's really no way to to know what's going on with it unless you follow the analytics with it so these are things that need to get taught in college though like how do you actually get out of college and make a living one of the ways to not make a living is to go work for free at a studio there are no studio jobs the only way you're going to get a make a living in the studio business is to go out on your own and become a producer become an engineer find people to work with fine artists to work with make your own music and and get it out there and I tell people if you're an artist you need to be making if you're a pop artist aren't be artists EDM artist you need to be making video content for every single video lyrics video lyric videos for every was song that's a single there that you think is a single you need to be making video content constantly in interfacing with with people this is really understanding social media it's the same thing with Instagram with any type of social media because there is money to be made and I have people that came in here that I just did this TV show called step up that's coming out on YouTube bread it's a it's like a music oriented show that Lionsgate is doing and we had all the people come in that are on the cast and they came in and sang songs I didn't write in these signs or anything all we did is track the vocals and go out to the to the live the shootings and make sure that all the tracks were playing properly and the people were lip-syncing right and everything like that and they came in the artists that were the actors in the show came in and did their own vocals so there wasn't anything like that but anyway so these people that one of the girls has these dance videos that she has an Instagram she had millions of followers she had amazing dance routines and she dances in the video and people pay her to post things in her Instagram because it has power those subscribers are equal to money for them okay so this is this is really a you know she's an entrepreneur she went out there and developed this herself she went out made the dance routines I asked her about it say how did you do this she hired people to come in and film it to edit it she did the choreography she had friends come in do dances it was amazing they had original tunes that people friends at verse row and she did dance routines form and it was great that is being an entrepreneur there that is how you make it in the music business today that needs to be taught in music schools if you're gonna pay three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for a gig they better damn well teach you how to make a living when you get out so your pair parents aren't on the hook for it or you're not on the hook for it for you know three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars when you can't pay it back at all anyways questions uh Beato book is on sale right now during the during this live broadcast what is the thing Michelle paste it in there Michelle's my new assistant here she's sitting over your basement patiently somebody said who gets that $375,000 that's the school gets it at the paper they pay for the faculty they're sitting in some of the most expensive property at Berkeley they're sitting on some of those expensive property that there is but you know at Berkeley full sale I mean they're they're you know Middle Tennessee State they're all over the place it's not just Berkeley it's there there are there are schools all over the country that are putting out recording engineering majors and production majors where there are no no jobs somebody said what does the Beato book it's a book I wrote three hundred and some odd pages it's basically teaches all the stuff that I all the concepts that I talk about in my videos it's not all of them I don't do I don't get into orchestration and things like that but you know it's all the theoretical and improvisation concepts that are that I talk about in all my videos okay so here's Nelson says what about in the jazz world and it's related genres okay so Nelson are you saying what what are you saying what do you do about that well it's the same thing in the jazz world there's no difference between the jazz world and the classical world and the pop world okay rock world whatever it's still about how you interface with the community and somebody just said there's no money in jazz well there's money in jazz for only a few people those few people are Brad Mehldau or wouldn't Marsalis you know it's like however you you know the people that were either famous before in the 80s like wenton or Pat Metheny or whoever people that are out there that still command Chick Corea Keith Jarrett Herbie Hancock the still command a following and still command audit big audiences when they tore those people are worth money okay but to break in as a new artist you know you got Jacob Kyle URI of Joey Alexander young kids like that and I saw some in the head those are the people I saw the think about student loans right how do you get out of paying student loans three times okay somebody's asked how do you pay how do you get out of paying student loans well you know one way you could do it is you can actually negotiate your debt with a student loan company a lot of people don't realize that that you can actually do that if you can get somebody to lend you the money I have plenty of friends have done as a matter of fact I did it with my student loan I had I bear at $8,000 because I went to school back in the Stone Age and I borrowed $8,000 total form I'm an undergrad and masters this is you know 30 years ago 35 years ago and I remember when it was done I I got out and I got a college teaching gig and I saved up money and I and I had heard this is before there's you know I don't think there were fax machines back then somebody told me one of my friend said you know you can negotiate your student loan payoff I said what yeah yeah you can if you can get sometimes they'll take 80% of what you owe so so what I would do so what I did is I wrote to them I said listen I want to pay off my loan but I'm not gonna pay the and I don't want to pay the entire amount how much were you taking to pay off if I pay you $6,500 will you take it it was something like that and they wrote me back and they said yes we'll take it or I called them and they they waited a week they sent me a letter and they said yes we'll take it and I wrote him a check and I paid it ended up being about I think it was 85 percent of what my loan was was worth at the time if you can get people to if you can get somebody to loan you money you can actually get a tremendous reduction otherwise you'll be paying on these loans forever okay I have plenty of friends that are 40 years old that are still paying student loans it's unbelievable okay this is what I want people to avoid that are going to these schools and getting and getting out there where there's just no work for them and what you don't want to do when you get out of school because that all student loans have a grace period usually about nine months after you get out of school too you have to start paying back well the last thing you want to do is you don't want to be out there being an intern for some and making no money because really you should have the knowledge to do it on your own that's what going to school is about it's not to make coffee for people and go and or go get coffee at Starbucks and go get their meals for them for free for a year and pay out of your own pocket for all your gas money and everything that's ridiculous you go to school to get the skills to do this yourself and go into business for yourself okay this is really what it means to be an entrepreneur and grow a business and that's what you're doing it's no different than starting Home Depot or starting Amazon or anything like that you're starting your own brand and and developing your own stream of income and hopefully you hire people and improve the economy that way now somebody just asked do I think pop song rate is still worth pursuing and pitching to artists it's difficult to pitch things to artists I'll tell you why okay i-i've had a publishing deal on and off since 1991 I signed my first publishing deal with pop Pollock Polygram in 1991 and and when I was had my country hat I decided well my publishing company Sony I'm as signed with Sony now said would you you know we want you to come up here and write country songs with people now I had only written one country song and it went number one so I didn't really know about writing country song so I went up to Nashville and they put me together with all the top songwriters I've talked about this I was writing about three songs a month because I had production work here that actually paid all songwriting is speculation and you need to either have money you either getting a draw from your publishing company you have a publishing deal in Nashville they give you what they call as a draw it's all recoupable money for a new artist signing a publishing deal in Nashville you get twenty thousand dollars roughly okay and what that is is that it will pay you two grand a month or so and you'll pay your expenses with that or whatever you can't work a job and then they'll hook you up with songwriting sessions in the building you literally go to the sony/atv building we're in a chapel building or any of the places that are music publishers and they'll say they'll hook you up with with other writers to do co-writes and so usually it always was three people they're trying to get out of that now because they're realizing that splitting money between three people doesn't go very far for the publishers so you get together and typically a writer a Nashville that I worked with and everyone I worked with had number-one songs multiple number-one signs the biggest people out there they would write 30 songs a month I was able to write three songs a month because I only went up there for three days a month and I'm not gonna move to Nashville and I couldn't compete with them so it was completely pointless for me to do that now I may not be as good a songwriter as you so I can't say is it I can't say is it worth it to do that or not because I don't know how good you are you may be max Martin you know you may be the next max Martin so so that's that's a question I can't answer for me and my own personal thing it wasn't worth the money to go up there and spend the time when I had production work that was paying that's the one thing about being a producer is that producing actually pays like a job where you do the job and you get paid at you know half up front and then half when you complete when you would complete there before you send the Masters out is typically how any of my friends that are producers would do it so anyways that is that's pretty much the the my answer - is it worth it it could be incredibly worth it it depends on how good you are any other questions Michelle that you've seen okay give me give me some give me some here all right first we broke our what are your thoughts I'm not getting paid enough for your work I play with a huge huge sooner and barely get 1% of what he's making I cannot quit because he that's a tough thing if you don't have another gig it's hard to quit your gig though that's the first thing I'd say is like don't look for another gig and don't quit your gig and try and look for another gig look for another gig before you quit okay because somebody's always gonna be interested in a person that it has a big gig beforehand it's not easy they're never gonna pay you what what you're worth because they have their managers and all these people that have their hand in their pockets the artist if it's a big artist you're working for typically unless they've been around for years and years and they didn't sign a 360 deal they're already giving 50% of their publishing away that they did for a cash advance five years ago or whatever you know whenever they re up there deal they're giving away merch or giving me all this stuff so the salaries for the for the sidemen you know are pretty much set and they're only gonna pay xml and unless you become somebody that has a lot of fame I'll give you an example Pat Metheny was touring with Antonio Sanchez who was his drummer with a Pat Metheny group for years I saw him play at Symphony Hall here Antonio wrote the music to Birdman which was a any won the Academy Award for the best score well he's not gonna work I guarantee you I don't know Antonio I don't know Pat Antonio is not gonna work for what he worked for when he was playing in the Metheny group or what he worked for before he had an Academy Award no way so would it Pat have when when I saw him Pat had to know name Seidman aside woman he had a female bass player and a and a and a No Name pianist that we're getting paid very little money I guarantee you because Pat was having to pay Antonio twice as much as he paid him before because he had name recognition so how do you get how do you make yourself more valuable to these things because every side man needs to negotiate their own deal with the artist that they work for and typically unless you're the MD which stands for music director those are the people that get paid more money and if you can make yourself more valuable and do that that's incredibly important if you can win awards if you have a massive social network following and I don't mean Facebook I'm talking like on YouTube Instagram any place that you have a massively big following that can make you worth more money period it can because essentially you're bringing in notoriety with you if you have you know whatever five hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube or something and that's worth something you being a known entity well it's hard to get five hundred thousand subscribers if you're touring with somebody so that's the that's the other you know that that is the other other part of this so anyways that's it's tough it's really hard to get paid more because it's hard to make yourself because you basically have to convince the artist management to think that you're worth more money and worth paying more Michele yes what else no but actually I I heard from Brian and I'm going to be doing one with him that's a sinister Gates is dad getting out of federal loans well you can always default now I'm not saying that I would not never default but I wouldn't say I would recommend getting a job that can pay you enough money that you can pay your loans that's what I say somebody has state a question here what about classical music conservatory taking from Europe I just deleted some his message by accident sorry about that you just re re re s that gabrielle whatever you asked or something okay go ahead what is that from Chris Mitchell what's your opinion of someone like mr. Steve Albini well okay so Steve Albini he refused royalties the only time that there there were millions on the table was when he breached Nirvana that was the only time and there's not millions anymore so that's really kind of a false argument there when Nirvana put out in utero that sold probably you know I don't know if it sold 10 million records worldwide typically a so back then a producers he didn't he mix the record so he would have gotten but he I don't think he took a mixers point he got three points on it or he would have gotten three points on it three points at the time basically his 300th out was $300,000 per million so let's say it's sold can you look up what in-utero sold worldwide Nirvana in utero it's waiting before your time there was a band called Nirvana michelle's 21 right you're 21 in utero oh okay so depending on how many it's sold so it's three okay it's sold 13,250 already somebody beat you to it okay 13 million I mean 13 million so what's 13 what's 13 times 300,000 how much money is that does millions of dollars 13 times 300,000 anybody going once going twice come on Michelle 13 times 3 well ten times three hundred thousands three million so he left three you know almost for almost four million bucks right he left almost four million dollars on the table he did leave millions of dollars on the table then though but in utero doesn't really sell anymore so what do I think about that I think it's ridiculous why did he do it I mean what is it what is there does anyone care that he did that though and I love Steve Albini and everything I respect I respect his ethic and I love listening to him talk about music I think he's got a great great mind for it I'd love to interview him but what do I think about somebody that gave away four million dollars I don't know doesn't sound very smart to me but you know that's up to him I love Nirvana nirvana is absolutely one of my favorite bands somebody said that they love Nirvana people don't believe people can't believe because I talk about modern classical music jazz and all these things that I love rock music I've been a rack producer for 25 years I grew up with the Beatles and the stones and oh and Zeppelin and you know that's you know and I love grunge okay Allison chains Nirvana Pearl Jam Soundgarden just don't apply I mean you know you know the Smashing Pumpkins I love all that Screaming Trees that that was some of the greatest time period ever so but Nirvana is literally one of my favorite favorite groups ever joe says two point three after taxes Joe knows that okay so Joe huh two points now Joe would you give away two point three million dollars does that sound like a smart business decision I mean it's ridiculous right I know you wouldn't Joe I know Joe but so anyway Steve Albini it seems kind of crazy to me why is Nirvana one of my favorite bands because I love Kurt Cobain's melodies they're incredibly sophisticated who gave waiting four million dollars Steve Albini gave away 3.9 million dollars we figured out with his three percentage points you have to recoup the cost of the record which and that record probably weren't massively big costs anyways but I mean it long recouped I mean what it recouped at probably 500,000 albums sold and then you get they keep your money in escrow and then they pay you out after so he just basically gave away money the money that money that he didn't take in production went back to the label what's what you know that makes no sense at all so um says I have a bad connection here can you see me on there is it working again okay um anyways it says very bad connection let's see if I work move over here so I would say that I would say that okay we poured atonal music yes quarter tone music quarter tone amee's of ever experiment that of course I have I play the guitar I experiment with it every single time I pick up the guitar and I bend the string kinda halfway up I did a little video I'm gonna talk more about microtonal music in some future videos anyway so so this was my rant this is my rant on the music business and on getting paid what you're worth okay this is incredibly incredibly important don't sell yourself short okay that's my one thing that I know I pronounce my last name wrong Beato is how I pronounce it but that's how my parents pronounced it so they didn't speak Italian well my mom kind of did anyways I've got my book on sale I'll keep it up overnight you guys are awesome thank you for hanging in there tell all your friends to subscribe I only see 385 likes hit that like button here leave me questions for things that you want me to talk about in my future videos coming up I have the Beato Academy of Music is live I've got my mastering modes of the major scale I have one more video that goes with that any of you that have signed up for that I've got one more video to put put up there that I've had problems with the video and I'm fixing it right now should have it up there tomorrow but it's it's the it's the kind of the some summary video or actually go over the you know how to use this stuff so you guys Rock I love it Joe you're the man let's we'll see you know leave me leave me topics that you want me to talk about in here - all right and tell everybody about my channel and those of you that are not subscribed to my channels hit the subscription button right now thank you so much bye

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 169,467

Keywords: rickbeato, royalties, berklee, graduation, songwriters, musicians, rant, music, theory, everything music, rick beato, music business, music industry, studio internships, music school, student loan, live video, rants, full sail, rick's rants, youtube, facebook, facebook promoted posts, steve albini, nirvana, tom petty, music biz, youtube monetization, vimeo, entrepreneurship, session player, sideman, How to get a job in music

Id: YWt_VYXN4Dw

Length: 58min 36sec (3516 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2017