How Middle Class Songwriters Disappeared w/ Ryan Tedder & David Israelite

21:58David Israelite:I mean, don't you run out of ideas? I know that's like a, like a dumb question, but like, if I have something, I don't believe in writer's block. So fundamentally I don't, I think, I think, I think if you give power to something that is absolutely, uh, you know, a ghost and not a real thing, then it has power. And if you do not give it power and just call bullshit, then it has no power. So I don't believe in writer's block, but that's just me. I'll take it. I'll take it. That's actually really good advice for me as a journalist too. Cause sometimes I write, I sit down and I'm like, I just can't do this right now.

22:32David Israelite:If you get stuck, if you just tell yourself that writer's block is not real, it's not real. Get stuck and read an article by, by a journalist that you love, read one article and then you'll go, Oh, I know what to do. Yeah.

22:43Ryan Tedder:But a note of fairness here, that's like Michael Jordan saying, I don't miss shots. I think Ryan's experience is a little I do the shots. Ryan is one of the most successful and important songwriters of his generation. And I can't think of another superstar artist that has written as many hit songs for other artists. I think he's unique in that way. Most superstars who write want to keep their songs for themselves. and Ryan is just so unusual in that he writes so many songs for other big artists that he could record and put out himself but he's more of a songwriter to be honest is my opinion. He's a superstar artist but he is first and foremost a songwriter and what's really amazing about Ryan too is that despite the fact that he is this elite star artist producer songwriter and spends so much time still writing, he spends an enormous amount of time giving back because he cares about other songwriters.

23:47Ryan Tedder:And so the amount of effort and time that he spends behind the scenes that people don't see, where he is worried and fighting to make sure that other writers like the ones that are coming up through his publishing company have opportunities like he had, is just, I respect that so much and value that so much. And so it's just a public chance to say thank you for all you do. Yeah.

24:08David Israelite:And that is one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on, because, you know, I tried to think about like who was the right person to have this conversation. And I think there's just so many nuances to the conversation, a lot of businessy jargon stuff. And there's a lot of creatives who don't even want to get there. But being a publisher and being someone who's very involved on the, I don't know if activist is the right word side. Sure. It is helpful.

24:33Ryan Tedder:But maybe not the right person to give advice about writer's block.

24:36David Israelite:Yeah, that's true. I'm quoting, you know what? I'm quoting Craig Wiseman. I stole his quote. Craig Wiseman. Okay. I sat on a panel with him years ago for ASCAP. And someone asked him that question in the room. And he said, I don't believe in it. Wow. I sit down and I listen to a song I like. If I get stuck, I listen to a song I wish I wrote. And it works like a charm. Yes. Yeah. So one of the other things I think is really facing songwriters at this point is the growth of writers rooms. You've alluded to this already, Ryan, in the conversation that it used to be you have two, three people. Most hip hop songs are above that at this point.

25:18David Israelite:And then we're not even talking about sampling and interpolating, which also forces that. And so if you don't know what interpolating is, it's basically like sampling, but you're not like copying and pasting an actual sound recording. You're just taking a melody or a line from an older song and putting into your song. And then you have to credit the writers for that, which is good for those older writers so shout out to them that's like a boon for them but that can add like sicko mode by travis scott has 30 writers on it yeah and it's because there's like five samples in it and then a bunch of people in the room i'm wondering ryan since you've been in the game for a minute now when did you start seeing that uptick there were more and more people being invited into the sessions um it it really exploded i would say it really exploded right around covid interesting it started to increase in well let me just scale back I started my story is a little unique because I grew up under the auspices that to be a songwriter you had to write 100 % of a song top-down lyric melody music I just that's what my dad told me he was a songwriter that's what my dad told me and then one day he gave me a thing on Diane Warren like a book or a thing and I and I was like and you look at her credits and it's just all yeah her so I didn't have access to AI and all the internet back in the 90s so I just like I guess I have to I have to write everything um when I got to LA and Nashville it was like rooms of two or three that was it right and then when the uh this is called the Max and Luke era took over and you know, Max Martin, Katy Perry, Kesha, that, Tyo Cruz, I noticed every song had five people on it.

27:00David Israelite:And I remember thinking, I was in Denver at the time. I remember thinking, I remember thinking, how are these guys, how is anyone having, I love Max. Max is a dear friend. And I, I think he's the greatest of all time, but I remember thinking, how is he having this many hits? And I'd read the credits ago, there's five people on these songs, man, that's actually smart. You could scale yourself. If I could, if I could get three people that, that, that, you know, let an arm be an arm, leg be a leg. Then I wouldn't be doing all the production, all the writing. I could, I could go away quicker. So I kind of, that was the first time I noticed it was in my first session in LA when I walked in and there were four or five people in the room.

27:33David Israelite:It was like Evan Bogart, Carrie Aguardi, Benny Blanco, and, and like, uh, Bonnie McKee or something. That was the, my first big co-write room. And I was like, there's five people in here. What is one of us getting coffee? Like I didn't, I was so confused. And then, and then I had my first hits with four or five people and looked at my statements on those versus the ones where there were two people. And I was like, oh, that's a big difference. That's a big difference. It's like, you know, splitting your pizza with four or five people. So I started noticing it then more in the pop world than country.

28:03David Israelite:Country was still very much two, three people. Pop is what started that. Hip hop exploded it between just, this guy's doing the drums. Don't like those drums. I'm going to put that guy on the drums. All right, those two guys did the drums. I'm going to have another guy that does samples. I'm going to have another guy that does top line. Another guy that helps write my rap. Well, there's seven people, right? Yeah. That bled into in 2020 and 21 when COVID happened, all of a sudden I noticed the average amount of writers per top 10 just increased drastically. It became, I'm writing with my friends.

28:37David Israelite:It also became very insular. The world of pitching songs, the average successful pitch songwriter, me being one of those, dried up almost completely. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I think the pitch game. Yes, the pitch game in songwriting was the game. That in Nashville still very much is the game. But after social media happened, you would have an artist like, I'll take an example recently. Like, you know, somebody like, let's say, a Benson Boone, right, had Jack LaFrance, who's amazing, and one other guy. And did those first few songs that succeeded with that crew. well back in the day back in the day 10 years ago 10 years ago back in the day right an artist like benson uh he's on warner i think the label you know you'd get guys like me guys like maybe whoever makes sense greg kirsten stargate fill your fill in the blank we calls and say um hey we have an album and what would typically happens we have a great album we're looking for the the two or three singles now, right?

29:43David Israelite:And then you get a call and you'd pitch songs or the artist would come through and you'd get to work with him. That's disappeared tremendously. I first noticed it with like Post Malone. If you weren't Louis Bell, Billy Walsh, Charlie Hanson, if you weren't one of the three or four people that was his crew, you are not getting on that album. So here you have the biggest artist in the world. Everybody wants to work with him. He's working with nobody except those three or four guys that you come up with. So the whole, I call it like click writing, The whole click crew thing really started back again, 16, 17, 18.

30:18David Israelite:And then in COVID, everyone got, you're only writing with people that, that, you know, lived within a mile of you, you know, we're all like isolated. It only made it worse. And so the pitch game for songwriting, I think, and David might have a better idea. I genuinely think went from probably 75 % in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s to maybe 50 % in the teens to now what feels like to me, I would say 20%. One out of five, maybe one out of four artists might take an outside song. I get texts every day for Tate, like, hey, would you take from friends of mine who are hit writers, take outside songs. It's like, it's not what we do.

31:00David Israelite:It's not this project. Now, there are some K-pop, in other words, that take outside songs, but it's the amount of songwriters we partially have ourselves to blame. The economy hasn't scaled with us. Inflation has grossly beaten songwriting increase. And I'll give you just three, four numbers, then I'll shut up. The average amount of writers in an average Billboard Top 10 in 2005, three. the average amount you would make uh on a on an album cut if you had an album that sold five million copies which was frequent in 2005 and you wrote track nine to david's point not a hit not the single no radio royalties because that's a different topic right we'll get to that we'll get there um just album cut yeah like a buddy of mine who ended up on backstreet's thing back in the day five million copies sold he bought a house with it in nashville and one album cut you'd make approximately$150 ,000,$155 ,000 per writer off that one cut back then.

32:03David Israelite:But that's the equivalent now of like$200 ,000 and something, the purchasing power of 2005 versus now. What you're making now, that's three writers splitting the average top 10. In 2024, the average amount of writers across all top tens of billboards was north of six, right? North of six per average. This week's chart, very rare. If you open up Spotify top 10 right now, it's the most songs I've seen with one or two or three writers in years. It's just coincidence. You also have the police every breath you take and you have sweater weather and it's nine years old. You know, you have some random ones up there.

32:41David Israelite:Somber only writes by himself. This week is the exception of the rule, not the rule last year, six writers per song plus. So when you take, you take what we, the average song might make now, and you're looking at, you know, uh, 140 ,000, basically there's a difference of about 30 to 40 % less per songwriter today in terms of what you would make for the same amount of work for the equivalent of 5 million copies, which is 750 million streams. Then the last point I'll make is okay, but that's, that's a decrease, but like, you know, now factor in the cost of living, 2005 to 2025. In Los Angeles, where the majority of all world hits are written.

33:23David Israelite:You have to be here if you want to do pop. Rent in LA has exceeded inflation by 43 % since 2005, 43%. So it's almost half. So you're making 30 or 40 % less for the same work in 2005 and to exist it's it's costing you 43 percent more so that's like a delta of like 75 80 percent just for living in LA and writing songs man and that's where that gap is yeah so yeah yeah and and David I know you do a lot of work in Nashville as well like reaching out to Nashville publishers and songwriters what is it like there because I know Nashville is still always seen as the more traditional space in songwriting where they keep that nine to five job feel to it.

34:10David Israelite:Tell me a little bit about the state of Nashville songwriting today. Is it catching up to pop with these big, giant singles with huge rooms or is it still staying small?

34:20Ryan Tedder:Well, Nashville is a special place and there aren't many writers that are able to straddle what goes on in Nashville as a writer and in LA like Brian does and very few others. But one of the reasons why Nashville is a special place is that when you write a song, you walk into a room with the assumption that you're going to split the credit equally regardless of the contribution of any one writer. And the thought is, is that over time that works out. So in one session, one person may come in with a lot more of a developed song, do a lot more of the work, but they split it evenly. And it takes away a lot of the tension that happens over fighting over the splits.

34:55Ryan Tedder:And to Ryan's point, the more writers you have, the less money to go around and the more there's the potential of fighting over how to split up that money. The other thing about Nashville that's different is that there's such an accepted practice that a lot of the artists don't write their own songs. They come from other songwriters and they embrace that. And so the artists often won't pretend that they were a writer on a song and that they want to sell this as this was my personal story that I've written. They actually are willing to give credit to the writers behind it because they appreciate the contribution of the writer.

35:26Ryan Tedder:Those are things that are different about Nashville. Now, I think Nashville is changing because it's not just a place where you write country music anymore. It's becoming a place you can write all kinds of music. And so a lot of the practices from other places is starting to come into that as the genre expands in terms of where it's centered. But I still think it's unique as a place where it's centered around songwriting. The respect for the songwriters is the greatest. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of great writers like to go to Nashville and write. It's because of the culture of the songwriting.

35:57David Israelite:They're moving there. L.A.'s moving to Nashville. I know. I was going to say, I feel like every writer that I know in L.A. is desperate to get into a Nashville room right now. I mean, I think, for one, country is pop music right now. So that makes sense. That's where the money is. They're going to go there. It's cheaper to live, too. A lot. Oh, yeah. A lot cheaper to live. That's true. That's true. But isn't it true that the publishing deals there, the advances are smaller? So, I mean, does that correspond with the cost of living? I think it does. And I think that my first publishing deal offers were all in Nashville when I was there.

36:33David Israelite:And two of the writers that I worked with, my first co-writes, Hunter Davis, Chris Falk. I still remember their names. It's been a long time. But I remember they had small deals, lived in a beautiful house in the woods off Granny White Pike, and had a beautiful life in a little lake house in North Carolina. And I remember going there when I was 20, 21, writing with them. and I remember at the time uh I asked one of them what their their advance was and I remember thinking that's my goal like if I can make whatever it was 50 60 grand and live and have a place like this in Nashville and make a good living be able to afford getting married at some point and have a house and whatever um beautiful life and if my artist career takes off so be it if it doesn't this is phenomenal and Nashville still offers it's more expensive now but it still offers in some part that original dream that I saw in the early 2000s before it was Nashville yeah and you know there's two or three guys in Nashville that had any kind of pop success everything else was still country and CCM but yeah the advances do correspond I think with that but to David's point there's a level of respect to the songwriter for the songwriter and the songs in Nashville that has never existed in Los Angeles or in pop I was with an artist yesterday Tucker Wetmore who's phenomenal uh on uh on Republic on Mercury and he then played me just so I could get in the vibe of what he was doing he played me two or three songs um two of them he wrote one of them he didn't and then i was with jesse joe dylan shane mcinelli and shane was like hey did you cut that one song something something at the bar he goes yeah i did cut that and i think shane published it he's like man i was hoping you were going to cut that see that song's incredible that doesn't happen i can't remember the last time in la with a with any pop artist i've ever worked with or indie artist or urban or rap or whatever where they've been equally excited and open to open to play you a song they didn't write back to back with one they did and offer you no distinguish no there's no there's just a difference um i hate to say it's ego but there's a difference with ego yeah and in in pop in the pop world the only artist i since i get that same temperature from this isn't me throwing pop artists under the under the whatever the bridge by the way because um you know i technically i'm in a band that doesn't really take outside songs so i'm like I'm calling the kettle black, but DJs, the DJ world is very open and fluid.

39:10David Israelite:And you send them a great song and they're like, thank you, man. Thank you for sending this to me. So I feel like the DJ culture is similar to Nashville. Yeah. Yeah. And I think y 'all have both touched on now at this point, the fact, you know, some artists don't write their own songs and, you know, that's always historically been true. I think one of the other things that's often cited in this conversation about why it's tough to be a songwriter is that there is like, you know, publishing royalties are designed to be for the songwriters of the song. And increasingly, you could argue that artists and producers are now also getting cuts of that publishing.

39:43David Israelite:So even though these people didn't traditionally participate in that way, whether they're getting a courtesy credit or something, you know, there are more players in the publishing royalties than even just, you know, the songwriters themselves. but there's like history to that though. I mean, wasn't it that like Elvis or Frank Sinatra? The Elvis tax. The Elvis tax. Yeah. Explain the Elvis tax to me.

40:07Ryan Tedder:The Elvis tax was a concept that if you wanted Elvis to record one of your songs, you had to let him pretend that he wrote part of the song and that was the tax for it. And it's a huge problem and you have to understand the source of it because I think there are two different issues in play. The first is artists always want to be thought of as songwriters. Some of them are great songwriters. Some of them are not, but they want to be thought of as great songwriters. And so there is a pressure for artists to take credit for songwriting, even if they didn't do that, in part because of their own ego or because they think it helps with their connection with fans.

40:43Ryan Tedder:But there's a completely separate reason, which is that the economics of the music industry has put a greater focus on trying to get some of that publishing money because of the nature of the things we've been talking about, which is that streaming pays less. There are more people now sharing in the money, including streaming services themselves, which didn't used to be part of the equation when you sold albums. And so artists often will look to publishing as a way to supplement the revenue that they would make by taking some credit for it. And if you're a writer, it's a really tough place to be because you're given a choice of, you can have maybe a very famous artist record your song.

41:21Ryan Tedder:That's a pretty good guarantee that you'll make some money from your song if a more famous artist records it. But do you want to give up ownership of that, especially if it wasn't earned? And it's very difficult to speak out about the practice, because if you complain about it, you'll never write with that artist again. And maybe other artists won't want to write with you because they'll be afraid that, you know, they're going

41:42David Israelite:to be demanding.

41:44Ryan Tedder:Exactly. And so writers are put in a terrible position about this. And many of them make the choice to just let it go and let the artist take a piece of credit they didn't deserve. Sometimes the artist had nothing to do with it and wants to take credit. Other times the artist may tinker, change a few things, and then they want to take more of the credit. And it's a really tough place for writers to be.

42:07David Israelite:Yeah. Ryan, has that ever happened? And you laugh because it's probably happened many times. I haven't had a year where it hasn't happened wow we're an artist i've shut it down i've also had times where i've realized this is even if i lose 10 or 15 percent of this uh song it's such a massive thing that i you know i'd rather have 80 of something than 100 or nothing um it is something and i'll just go on record is saying this it's happened to me more times than I can count it is when artists do that the whole writing community finds out it that is nothing spreads quicker than that tea when an artist yo here they're coming for publishing now right that becomes a very very well-known thing um and what I'll say is this with one republic in 18 19 years you know and lots of records lots of streams lots of everything around the world um the thing that bothers me the most about it is and i understand that touring economics also are not what they used to be it costs so much more to tour now a lot of artists are breaking even or quitting touring right yeah the middle class getting squeezed out the ones who are you know the tail strips of the world obviously crushing it and yeah we're lucky to have built enough of a career prior to this that we do great in a million years I would never ask for publishing on a song that I did not write on if you handed me the biggest hit of all time and we have cut outside songs and had hits with them and if I changed 5 % I think anyone that's ever worked with me in history could be like I am fair to a detriment on how I handle splits because I'd rather be take 5 % less and have no contest if I put out records where I've, I, you know, cut, I wrote 5 % of it.

44:01David Israelite:I get 5%. We've had it. We had a hit. I had it probably 12 years ago that, um, was sent to me. It was perfectly intact. I absolutely could have taken publishing off the table, especially we were like three or four hits in a row in. And I didn't, I didn't take a nickel. They came to me. How much do you want? I was like, nothing. They're like, why? And I was like, because I didn't write a damn thing. like that's it why it's to me the principle the idea of it makes me nauseous and so whatever everybody has their own ethics and understand he's experiencing this as ryan tedder

44:38Ryan Tedder:imagine you are an unknown songwriter that's just starting out and you don't have the the name id and the credibility and the connections that someone like ryan does so it's it's a serious problem in the industry.

44:49David Israelite:Yeah, it's pretty shameless. Yeah. And I mean, there are a lot of solutions that people have talked about for all of the issues that songwriters are facing and the fact that it is harder to make a living now. One of the solutions that I've heard is the idea of a per diem rate. That's something that has been pushed in the UK in particular and has gotten some traction there. I know the Ivers Academy worked with some of the labels to try to implement that. I'm wondering, what do you think of some of these solutions that have been proposed, whether it's per diems or whether it's paying for gas and food for the songwriter or I've heard of songwriters getting master points.

45:29David Israelite:I'm wondering what you guys think of that. Are these just stop gaps? Are these effective? David, I'll throw it to you.

45:37Ryan Tedder:Well, first of all, understand that these issues are coming up largely because of the economic pressure on songwriters. And so when it becomes very hard to make a living as a songwriter, you look for solutions of what might help. One of the things being discussed is the idea that writers should participate more in the recording pool of money, whether that's points on the record, a per diem fee, or some kind of flat upfront fee. Because remember, as a songwriter, you may give your song to an artist, but you don't necessarily know they're going to release it as the single or put a lot of marketing behind it.

46:11Ryan Tedder:And yet you're tying up that song with that one artist that could go to someone else. And so these are a lot of things that are being discussed that we're supportive of. But it's something that is going to have to be decided by the record label and artist community. And quite honestly, the expectation is, is that if record labels were to do it, they would probably just charge their artists and it wouldn't necessarily come out of the record label side. And the writers don't have a lot of leverage unless they are the absolute superstar writers. If you are Ryan Tedder, you can put whatever condition you want on letting some other artist record your song because they know what they're getting with that.

46:48Ryan Tedder:Writers that don't have that kind of power are not in a position to really demand that much. There's been this theory in the industry that the first record label that decides to really embrace this and start saying, we'll give points, we'll give fees. Would that record label then get the writers to want to bring their top songs to that? label and those artists. And the idea is that instead of asking the label to do this as some kind of charity or gift, is there a label that sees this as an economic opportunity for themselves to get ahead of their competitors by attracting the better songs by offering these types of benefits?

47:27Ryan Tedder:And I think that might be a route that you might see some record labels decide to embrace. And I can tell you, I think that the hit writers would absolutely do that. They would try to steer songs to an environment where those conditions existed. But as much as that's talked about, and I think it's a really important issue and a big deal, I think that a bigger issue is just how much writers get paid for their songs by the exploitation of them by streaming services. So I think we're a little bit nibbling around the edges talking about these issues about what the label should do. The economics for songwriters are now almost entirely about digital services.

48:04Ryan Tedder:When I started 20 years ago, 65 % of what a writer would make was paid by the record labels. Today, it's 2%. Because the money isn't flowing through the record label to the writer, it's mostly flowing directly from companies like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, social media companies like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, to the writer. and they're not getting paid fair rates. And so while I am supportive of all these efforts to get record labels to help pay more for what the writers do, I think the bigger economic priority is writers just getting paid fairly for their work from the services that are exploiting their song.

48:44David Israelite:I wanted to throw in like one more question about kind of more future facing stuff with songwriters. There's so many more things that we could dive into when it comes to radio, streaming, all of that. but I wanted to ask you, Ryan, about generative AI. I've heard from a lot of professional songwriters that they're starting to use Suno in the studio. I also heard from you earlier in this conversation talking about how the volume of songs that you're writing has increased and AI certainly would speed that up. What are your thoughts on that and what that means for songwriters to use AI in the studio?

49:19David Israelite:Yeah, just like any new technology, new technology can be used for good or for bad, right? Um, so AI right now is primarily focused on the creative side of things, which obviously feels like encroachment and, oh no, another thing coming to eat off our table. I initially saw it as that. And like everybody, the first, at first glance, I was like, oh, this is scary. And then it occurred to me as I've now used it a lot. I've used Suno in tons of sessions, um, for different reasons. I use it as a tool. It's no different than when Splice came along and I was like, oh great. Now anybody with a computer can, can make a record, but you still have to have taste.

49:54David Israelite:You still have to curate it. You still have to edit it. All these other things. Like Spresso, Sabrina. There is a splice, yeah, loop in there. All of her loop, right? The whole song is based off that one loop. But whether it was Sabrina or one of the producers, the writers, there's a billion sounds. You had to go through, pick that one and be like, that sounds like a hit. So there's still a level of curation and A &Ring and producing in that, right? With AI, I think that what it actually will do is this gate crashed influx of all the, one of the biggest issues in songwriting today and why it's diminished returns is because let's just use for analogous.

50:38David Israelite:There were a thousand professional songwriters 15 years ago that could make a living. There's now a hundred thousand trying to make a living. That's the difference. It's like, oh, on TikTok, music's big. I want to be a producer. I downloaded the software. It's kind of everything's getting cheaper, right? It's a race to zero. Now I have AI. Now I can generate music. So when everyone's an artist, like what's the distinguishing characteristics and how do you monetize that? Well, what I think might actually happen and what I keep saying, because I'm manifesting it, what will happen is all these guys or girls, but mostly guys who are in the room as one of the nine credited writers or 15 credited writers on a record who you can't quite figure out what they really do.

51:24They did the beat, oh, their drums are crazy.

51:26David Israelite:You know, or they just kind of added some chords or they're a vibe guy and there's tons of those. They're cooked. Like their days are numbered. And what AI is going to, because I'll tell you what I will do is absolutely with Suno, I now can do whatever that person's role was going to be in this session. I can do that in 10 seconds because I can scale myself and I'm not, I'm using AI as a tool. I'm not using it to copy and to do all that stuff. I'm using it similar to the way that people use splice. Like I added, I'm not going to say who the artist was the other day, but I added this like session level tremolo, Chris Isaac style guitar to a record that made the second verse and like added this incredible, I heard it in my head.

52:11David Israelite:I made it in three seconds using, you know, prompts, dropped it into the session. They turn around and they're like, oh my God, that's incredible. That's that literally just the vibe. That's insane. And I was like, well, there goes the vibe guy because I just did it. You know what I mean? And so the people that I think are eating off that plate, right? If everybody got what they want when it comes to music and songs and publishing and record labels, 100 % pie would add up to 175%. It's never going to happen. There's a lot of different podcasts. We can get into all the crumbs that are left over every year, which is north of a billion dollars every year in black box money and all this other stuff.

52:50David Israelite:Right. But the one thing that songwriters can do is to bolster the middle class is to not have. If a house has three bedrooms, there should be three people living in it. Our houses right now have seven people living in a three bedroom. So get better at your job. like perfect your craft um like learn more skill sets i think within the room be irreplaceable indisposable i'm not wildly talented i'm just wildly crazy at work i work my it's all about the work ethic do the work be obsessed with being great another thing play an instrument like as crazy as that sounds we're in the music industry and the amount of people who just literally don't know the first thing about an instrument learn a freaking instrument be irreplaceable.

53:36David Israelite:Your computer crashes. What are you going to do in the room? You know, like, Hey Siri, call chat GPT. You know what I mean? Like call Suno. So I think it's a tool. You feel like Suno is going to be helpful. Too much of a good thing is too much. So if you over rely on it, if you, it's just like over relying on chat GPT to answer questions and you stop using your brain, which is a real thing that's happening. But if you use Suno as a tool, similar to, I see it very much in the same way is I saw Splice, which I was like, oh my God, thank God. Finally I have access to all the sound. I'm not just combing through my folders all the time.

54:10David Israelite:And Splice was used in every room and there was a faux pas for a minute. Now there's no faux pas. Soon it was being used quietly, people don't know. I think when it's being used to replace artists, that's a problem. That's a problem. I think when it's being used to like pull a fast one and fake people out and like all of a sudden with 100 ,000 songs, 120 being uploaded every day to Spotify, we're now competing with non-humans. That troubles me, tremendously troubles me. And so that's when I say too much, you can take it too far, but I think to the extent it can be used as a tool, that's amazing.

54:45David Israelite:And then the last thing I'll say in AI is I think AI should be focused on picks and shovels and streamlining and making the back office and collections and royalty collections way more efficient. Humans make errors all the time with my own statements. We catch them all the time. And I would point that AI laser beam towards the back office. Let's find some more crumbs. Let's find some more money that already exists and find it for cheaper and pay that out to the songwriters. That's a mic drop. Well, Ryan, I know you have to run to a session, but David, I'm going to keep you for a couple more minutes so we can get to some of the points that we haven't gotten to quite yet with radio and stuff.

55:22David Israelite:So Ryan, thank you so much for coming to On The Record. I'm so grateful that you came by. Thank you. And long live radio. Long live radio. We'll get there. I love my radio people. iHeart, Odyssey. I mean, come on, Cumulus. You guys. That's why I'm not renting. This episode is brought to you by the National Music Publishers Association, or the NMPA. You know that song you can't get out of your head? Someone wrote that. And behind every hit song is a songwriter who deserves to be paid fairly for their work. That's where the NMPA comes in. The National Music Publishers Association is the trade organization representing all American music publishers and their songwriting partners.

55:57David Israelite:and every day the NMPA's mission is to protect and increase the value of songs. Based in Washington, D.C., the NMPA works on the front lines, shaping legislation, handling litigation, and navigating regulations, all to ensure that publishers and songwriters are paid fairly for every use of their work, and they're not afraid to go up against big tech to do it. The NMPA also celebrates songwriters through certifying gold and platinum hits through their official program and hosting events honoring the creators behind the music we love all year long. To learn more about this organization, head to NMPA.org.

56:35David Israelite:That's NMPA.org. David, thank you so much for sticking around. I know Ryan had to go, but there were a few other things that I think are really important to this conversation that we can't leave out. One of them is radio. Can you talk to me about the importance of radio for a songwriter's income?

56:52Ryan Tedder:Sure. And I think it's important to distinguish between what traditionally was radio, which meant terrestrial radio, AM, FM stations playing radio, and today an entirely other concept of digital radio. Places like XM Sirius, Pandora Radio, iHeart Radio. And the reason why that distinction matters so much is that in this country, songwriters have always been paid when their songs are played on radio. But for recording artists, they did not have the same performance right that songwriters did, and they don't get paid from terrestrial or AM, FM radio.

57:31David Israelite:Yeah, I think that's shocking to a lot of people. It's wrong. But that is how it is.

57:34Ryan Tedder:But there's an angle to that conversation that almost no one understands, which is that in 1995, Congress changed the law so that artists and record labels did get paid from digital radio, only digital radio. So while songwriters enjoy a broad right from all radio, artists and record labels have a narrow right for digital radio. And it was always assumed that radio models would split money about 50-50 between the two different copyrights, one for the song, one for the recording. That's how it works in almost every other country in the world. And so while in this country, artists and record labels don't get paid from terrestrial radio, which is wrong, they have done so well in collecting off of digital radio that in this country, even though artists and labels only have digital radio, they are collecting twice as much money in radio money than the songwriters and publishers are from all radio.

58:36Ryan Tedder:And so you have two different issues going on. One issue is the injustice that artists don't get paid from AM, FM radio. They should. It's a fight that's been going on for many, many years. It will continue to go on. But what people don't focus on is that the digital radio issue, which is going to be the future of radio as it grows and grows and grows and terrestrial radio shrinks. We've created this imbalance where songwriters are not getting their fair share from radio. It's about a two to one split right now. So I think we have an enormous problem because radio used to be one of the most important revenue streams for a songwriter.

59:16Ryan Tedder:And it's still very important. In fact, it's probably the second biggest category of how songwriters get paid after streaming services. But we are looking at a future that is not so bright if the divisions in the money continue to be split the way that they are for digital radio. And so at some point when we talk about radio, it's just going to mean digital radio. And if we're looking at a situation where the artist side is getting significantly more money than the songwriting side from digital radio, then that problem is just going to be exacerbated. So two things can be true. They should get paid from AMFM radio.

59:51Ryan Tedder:We support that. But there should be more balance in how digital radio is treated. And this is a crisis. And the performing rights organizations, the PROs that are responsible for licensing and collecting money from radio and paying songwriters and publishers, this is a call to arms. We really have to go and fight for a fair share of the digital radio market because there are billions of dollars at stake. And as terrestrial radio starts to decline more and more, it's just that much more important that we start getting a fair share from digital radio.

1:00:24David Israelite:And I wanted to end us off on more of a bright spot because it's not all doom and gloom, believe it or not. There's still great songs being made, great songwriters who are still making a living, although it is harder. One of the bright spots that I see is K-pop. It feels like every songwriter in America wants to work in K-pop. There are good commercial opportunities there. Can you kind of describe why K-pop has become one of the hottest genres for songwriters to work in?

1:00:53Ryan Tedder:You're absolutely right. I'm not sure that I'm the best person to explain why this has happened. There's an interesting thing about K-pop in that for the trainees that go through the process to become K-pop stars, They focus on so many things, such as singing and dancing and choreography and all the things that go into it, but very little focuses on songwriting. K-pop is still a genre where the songs are mostly written by other songwriters than the stars themselves. And you're starting to see some really interesting developments from some of the newer K-pop groups, like Blackpink, for example, where the women in Blackpink are starting to express themselves as artists where they're getting more involved in writing.

1:01:35Ryan Tedder:which is a really interesting thing. And then obviously we've talked about the example from the movie, K-pop demon hunters. And so I think that you'll see genres come in different phases of being popular or not popular, but with K-pop, you have such a focus on the story behind the artist and the image. And it's almost, I don't mean this in a bad way, but it's almost like a professional wrestling narrative about all the fans want to know about the story and the positioning. and it's not just about the music itself. There's so much more focus on the artists, sometimes to a point of it being a little scary.

1:02:13Ryan Tedder:But that's why you see a lot of songwriters wanting to write in the genre because there's an openness to outside songs, as Ryan was talking about. That's not always the case. And it started to become very popular with a lot of American fans, more so than in the past because of the success of bands like Blackpink and BTS and obviously now Huntrix from the movie K-pop Demon Hunters.

1:02:33David Israelite:Yeah, yeah. And the sales are incredible because kind of like you were talking about, there's so much emphasis on these artists themselves. So the fans get so attached to it. They'll buy like five copies of the same album as collectibles because they want to have the one with their favorite on the cover of this variant and that variant.

1:02:52Ryan Tedder:There's so much talk about super fans.

1:02:54David Israelite:Yeah.

1:02:54Ryan Tedder:This is the original super fan economy.

1:02:56David Israelite:Well, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that this is this is what Americans have been chasing ever since is how can we get fans to be as obsessed with our artists and spend as much money as K-pop fans do sometimes.

1:03:11Ryan Tedder:You know, some American artists have figured this out. I mean, Taylor Swift obviously is brilliant at this. Yeah. But but she's unique and not everyone can do what she's doing with the ability to have her fans be so invested in multiple versions of what she's putting out and obviously the tour and things like that. But that's what a lot of artists aspire to, is to develop a deeper relationship with the fans that can, yes, also lead to more monetization. And you do see that in K-pop.

1:03:36David Israelite:Well, David, thank you so much for sticking around just a little bit longer. I know there's we still could go on for another hour. We know the streaming conversation could be a whole other episode and maybe it will have to be someday. But before I let you go, I do want to do what we do at the end of every episode of On the Record, which is make me a playlist where I ask you to pick songs based on three prompts. And it's the same prompts every time. So the first one is, what is a song you would no longer gatekeep? So a lesser known song, a deep cut, something like that.

1:04:09Ryan Tedder:That I would no longer gatekeep. this is a song that that had a lot of popularity but I don't know that everyone's familiar with it David Draymond did a cover of a song by Simon and Garfunkel sounds of silence and they did a recorded version of the band disturbed but then he did that version live on the Conan O 'Brien show it was about 10 years ago and I think it was one of the most powerful recordings that I've ever heard in my life and one of the most incredible live performances of a song. And so for anyone who hasn't seen it, go to your favorite social media site, type in David Draymond Sound of Silence and listen to this.

1:04:51Ryan Tedder:And one of the really interesting things about it is that there's an explosion now of these voice critics that will do postings where they listen to songs and then comment on it. And you can go down a rabbit hole for hours of listening to these vocal critics, many of whom end up crying listening to this version of Sound of Silence. And so, you know, that's one that did get a lot of attention, but there may be a lot of people that haven't gone and listened to it, especially younger fans.

1:05:18David Israelite:I haven't.

1:05:19Ryan Tedder:And so, well, you know what? I want to record you listening to it and we'll see if we can, we'll get some tears out of you from this performance. Yeah, that's incredible.

1:05:27David Israelite:Sound of Silence is one of my all-time faves. So I'm definitely going to have to look that up. So the second song that I'd like you to pick is A Favorite Throwback. So I usually describe this as a song over 10 years old, leaving most of the catalog of the world's music. So just to narrow it down a little bit.

1:05:45Ryan Tedder:Well, I probably would go to the song that I remember from my childhood as being my favorite song, which was by Boston, More Than a Feeling. And it's a song that I never get sick of and I can't listen to too many times.

1:05:57David Israelite:That's perfect. And then finally, what is a guilty pleasure for you?

1:06:01Ryan Tedder:Well, we've talked about it so much already, but I will say the song Golden from K-pop Demon Hunters. The movie came out in June of last year. I have two daughters, nine and 12. I watched the movie very early and absolutely fell in love with the music and in particular that song. That's how I learned the story about EJ, the songwriter. It's why Billboard and NMPA presented her with the Breakthrough Songwriter Award at our Grammy party. that is a guilty pleasure that I think my staff is getting very sick of me pulling up different versions different covers of and of course they perform that at our joint Grammy party in an acoustic version that they've never done before and I'm looking forward to seeing that released as a single because I just think it's a fabulous song from a fabulous songwriter that's a great pick can I add one other thing before we close I just I want to say thank you to you this podcast is important.

1:06:53Ryan Tedder:The music industry is a confusing place. You are one of the absolute best reporters who understands it and can explain it to your readers. And for you to dedicate and Billboard to dedicate the time and resources for you to do this podcast to help explain things that are going on in the music industry, it is so needed, not just for industry professionals, but also fans of music that want to understand what's going on. And so I just appreciate what you're doing with this and I want to thank you.

1:07:20David Israelite:Thank you, David. That's so nice. Okay, well, that's a perfect end to our season one. Thank you so much for coming, David Israelite. We'll have to have you back. All right. Thank you so much to Ryan Tedder and David Israelite for joining me on the show to talk about the plight of songwriters. Now it's time to dive into our charts roundup so we can figure out this week's biggest movers and shakers. Here is the Hot 100 Top 10 for the week dated February 14th. Coming in at number 10, it's DTMF by Bad Bunny. Number nine is Folded by Kehlani. Eight is Back to Friends by Somber. The Fate of Ophelia by Taylor Swift comes in seventh.

1:08:08David Israelite:Debuting at number six, it's The Great Divide by Noah Kahn. Golden by Huntrix comes in fifth. Number four is I Just Might by Bruno Mars. Number three is Ordinary by Alex Warren.

1:08:31David Israelite:Number two this week is Man I Need by Olivia Dean. And finally, in its first week at number one, it's Choose in Texas by Ella Langley.

1:08:44David Israelite:Okay, that's a wrap on season one of On the Record. I couldn't be more proud of how this show has developed, and I am so grateful to all of my guests who came on a brand new show and gave me their time. From Elliot Grange, Amy Allen, Imogen Heap, Harvey Mason Jr., Charlie Puth, all of them, I truly had a blast talking to everyone. And most of all, thank you to all of you listeners who tuned in each week, excited to keep up with the crazy, ridiculous music industry, which I care so much about. But this is not goodbye. I'm coming back next month to kick off our new and improved season two. Our lineup is already shaping up, and I can't wait to share it with you guys.

1:09:24David Israelite:But until then, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and tune in next season for another peek behind the curtain of the music business. I'll see you then.

1:09:46Thank you.