Harvey Mason Jr.

29:26So after I left and I'd split from Dark Child, Damon and I connected and wrote a song together and people liked it. So that's how we started The Underdogs. That's incredible.

29:36Justin Richmond:We'll be right back with more from Harvey Mason Jr. after the break. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. You probably think of Walmart as a store that carries about everything under the sun and maybe not as a place to discover small brands. Well, Now, two things can be true at the same time, because Walmart is home to thousands of small brands founded by people who had an idea, took a chance, and built something of their own. Behind everyone is a real story and a lot of hard work. So why not take a little time to recognize all the people building small brands across the country and support everything they're creating?

30:11Walmart is proud to give those brands a place on its shelves and online. It's never been easier to find and support small brands. So, take a look at Walmart. You might come across something new, something unexpected, or a brand whose story speaks to you. You never know what you're missing until you look. Discover thousands of small brands at Walmart.com. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, ChatGPT Work can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients.

30:56Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with ChatGPT Work. Download the ChatGPT Desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built HiringPro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit.

31:38You know what this makes me think of? My beloved Boston Celtics. Three years ago, they chose a new coach, Joe Mazzula, who was like the third or fourth assistant off the bench. Never had any NBA coaching experience. Everyone was expecting him to fail. And you know what? Turns out he was one of the best coaches in the game. And without him, there's no way the team would have made the playoffs this year, let alone be contenders for the finals. Sometimes the right hire makes all the difference. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business.

32:11In fact, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24 % less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Pushkin. Terms and conditions apply.

32:35Justin Richmond:so how do you go from you know it's a it's a it's already a pretty incredible trajectory but but then to do that and then in around the year 2000 2001 and then to roughly a couple of decades later being the head of the recording academy that's like it's a that's another it's a little ways in but that's another wild left turn in your in your trajectory definitely not an expected or planned journey. But I do, maybe this is too philosophical, but I just kind of appreciate the moment and I don't try and predetermine every step. And I also believe, and I talk to my kids a lot about this, there's no wrong moves.

33:23As long as you're not doing anything illegal or hurting yourself or somebody else. It's like if something comes and it feels like a challenge or interesting to you, then I encourage people to try that, especially when you're coming through the early stages of your life. You can afford to try things and you can experiment. So once we were doing the underdogs, we had had some success there. And a woman asked me if I would be interested in getting involved with the Recording Academy. We'd had success and made some little money and built a reputation. i thought the academy was really cool because well honestly first i thought it was cool because i could vote for myself to win a grammy and so that's why i first joined yeah um it's a great reason to join by yeah i mean that was the reason valid oh i can vote a producer of the year yeah i want to join but i quickly realized that it's a really great organization that is entirely built and exists only to serve music people yeah and i was my whole life you know from our talk you know I'm a music person from the time I was nine years old.

34:27My family were music people. So being a part of the Recording Academy was instantly exciting and appealing, just as a board member, just first as a member, then an elected board member, then a national officer. And then they elected me to be the chair of the board of the Recording Academy. And I was honored and thrilled because I knew I could serve our community in that role. And then there came a time where they asked me if I would be the CEO. And that changes from a volunteer position to a real job and coming in the building and working directly with the staff. And so that was a decision that was, again, not planned.

35:02It was not something I was aspiring to do or looking forward to. But I saw it as an opportunity to give back and to serve and to make a difference in music people's lives. And that's what excited me at that point in my life.

35:14Justin Richmond:Also was a bit of a precarious time to come in. It could have felt also, I mean, And not that you seem to be a person who takes into account what could go wrong, which is based on all the moves you make in life. It's true. But like, you know, there was. I've been accused of that. But it also was like, man, they didn't come in at a very easy time to be CEO of the Recording Academy. I'll say it that way. It was a really tough time. But you remember as the chair, I'd seen what had happened and why it had gotten to where it was. And I also saw the good stuff. I saw how important and impactful the organization was.

35:53So for me, it was actually a really good time because we were depleted. We were looked down on at that point to some degree. And we had room to go. And as you said, I'm definitely the eternal optimist. And I saw exactly what needed to be done and what could be done. And so I just jumped in. And I'd say we've come a long way in the last six years.

36:13Justin Richmond:So when you did join, can you explain that dichotomy you just mentioned where it's sort of the recording academy is sort of colored this way, but you were also seeing all the great that it's done over, you know, the decade, decade and a half that you've been working with them. How did it end up sort of bifurcated that way, where it's like there's some things that need to be cleaned up and then there's also all this great stuff that, you know. Some of it was the lack of storytelling and awareness of what the recording academy actually did. Everybody really knew us for the show. and the Grammy Awards and the nominations and the wins and the snubs and who lost and who didn't get what they got and who wasn't represented accurately or equitably.

36:56And then there's all the other work that was being done. So one of the first things I realized is this is an amazing organization. They've been around 62 years when I got there and hundreds of millions of dollars into the community and way of age, philanthropy or people who needed help paying rent or bills, medical bills, education advocacy all the things that were happening every year whether or not somebody won a grammy or not these things were going on so the first order was for us to figure out how to tell that story in inside our own industry inside our own community because everybody was so focused on who was winning and who was losing and they were losing focus on why the organization existed and that's to lift up music right and to the benefit of music people so because i was from the industry and I had relationships with artists.

37:43I produced most of the artists that were angry and some of the artists that were happy. I spent a lot of time my first couple of years just talking to people and explaining why the organization's here, why I'm here, because they would say, Harvey, you're crazy. Get out of there. I said, no, this is important. This is important.

37:58Justin Richmond:I'm not the only one who thought it would be a, yeah, it could be a strange move to make. It was a strange move, but I knew how important it was. Yeah. And I'm not trying to over-inflate my own contribution to that or even the importance of the Grammy organization in the world. There's a lot of things going on in the world that are very problematic and challenging. But when it comes to the music community and doing right by music people, I'm very proud of what the organization has done and over the last six years has evolved into doing. And I think that's important. I think is important based on all the other discrepancies or challenges or politics or inequities or struggles that we have in society.

38:41Music matters. Yeah. And the magic of a musician or a creator is all powerful to me. And maybe I'm over-inflating that, but I truly believe it. And that's why the organization and serving music people and making sure there's space and a healthy ecosystem and a way for them to make a living and protections, that's important. And that's why I'm passionate about it.

39:04Justin Richmond:I don't think you're overstating it at all. I mean, you know, you think about music has been such a driver of culture, American culture for, you know, 80s, 80s. Since the phonograph, really. Yeah. If you think about it. Many decades. You know, I'm concerned about like, how do we make music fun again in a way, both for like the artist and for the consumer or the fan, you know, so much of the discussion is, is AI and streaming and sales numbers. And we kind of lose track sometimes of just that music's fun. I would imagine the young people listening to music think music is really fun. I think we might be looking at it through our lens of it used to be like this.

39:48and that's the one thing as a creator as a business leader and i'm sure you've experienced this and i know you probably subscribe to the same philosophy as soon as you get caught up in looking at it through the lens of how it used to be i think it's dangerous i think it's a little bit risky there's always the nostalgic and that's okay and that's healthy but i think music's incredibly fun and i'm sure a lot of music people who are making it now are loving it the same way I loved it when I first started. They're excited. They wake up dreaming about it. They can't wait to get in what used to be the studio.

40:20Now it's probably their laptop to make a new song. And regardless of what the technology is or the delivery mechanism or how it's consumed, music has the same power. Music has the same effect on people. You still see them dancing to it at their weddings. You see them crying to it in their car after a breakup. This music is incredible. So I think what you're saying is definitely different. How it's made is different. and the challenge that we have you and i as lovers of music and people who grew up listening to incredible artists and artistry displayed in on a record or on a cassette or cd is is the music being made now does it have the same care behind it does it have the same intention the same talent behind it and i don't think that's what's as important i think it's more important to say what is being made, what is being created.

41:10Of course, there's issues around AI, and I'm not dismissing those concerns. But I remember when I was a young kid, hip-hop music, that wasn't even looked at like music. Like, oh, that's not music. It's just a temper. That's a fad. You don't have to have any talent. They're not even singing. They're not even playing instruments. They're just spinning records. And when I was in that era, I was like, man, that's an incredible talent. These hip-hop artists are amazing. I would listen to them. I'm like, how do they do that? But the people before me didn't even think that was a talent.

41:39Justin Richmond:Yeah. So I think that's the challenge we have is to look at how music is being made now and make sure we recognize that it is a true talent to be able to create things that move people today. So I guess how, you know, some of the new technology now and some of like what we're starting to see is like a lot of Suno and, and I mean, we're, we're, we're beyond not just not going to the studio anymore, making this stuff at home. How are you guys thinking about that in terms of the Grammy? The Grammy organization? Yeah, yeah. We're always going to champion and support and celebrate human creativity.

42:15End of statement. How humans use tools is something that's going to change and we're going to continue to look at every year. We're fortunate we have a board of trustees and a chair and membership groups and awards and nominations committees that all look at this stuff every day. and they're in the weeds saying, okay, are we doing it right? Are we getting it right? And so as an organization, we'll always try and stay ahead of what's happening, especially where we are now with the bias for action and really making sure we're paying attention and seeing around corners. But we are going to celebrate human creativity, but we understand AI is a tool that's going to be used.

42:49Fact. And if we try and pretend like it's not or try and ban it and say, we can't have AI in our industry, I think we will have missed the plot and we will miss the opportunity to acknowledge how people are making music. It's going to be a choice. I'm not saying everybody's going to be using new technologies. There's going to be some people that don't want to use it, and I'm really good with that, as you can imagine. There's also going to be people that see it as an opportunity to come into the business in a time when maybe they otherwise would not be able to do so, which is very analogous to when I started.

43:21I was making records on tape, but then when Pro Tools came out, a whole group of people were able to now sing because they could do unlimited takes. They could put auto-tune on their voice. They could chop things together, whereas before they couldn't. And that created a whole new exciting influx of talented people. So where we are, again, is celebrate human creativity. We're not going to allow AI to overrun our members, our human creators, our human singers, our human songwriters. But for now, we see it as a viable tool towards creation. And there's a line that we have to decide where that is, how much can be used.

43:56Right. Do you know where that line is right now? Right now, we feel like we have an understanding of where the line is. It's a majority of human creativity, and that can be interpreted a couple of different ways. And for now, we're going to leave it a little bit, not ambiguous, but flexible because technology is changing so quickly. And while the Copyright Office also doesn't know what the threshold is for human creativity in a copyrightable moment, is it two prompts? Is it five prompts? Is it a prompt and a tempo change and a key change? There's so many uncertainties. What I want to make sure we do as an organization, what I think our board and our elected leadership want to do as an organization, is make sure we're honoring music in the way that it's being made and created while still maintaining the ultimate respect to the human creativity.

44:41Because that's important. And I've said it so many times. A computer is not going to replace what's in here. A computer's not going to have that interpersonal experience that we have and be able to regurgitate that just because they've ingested a bunch of songs. What computers can do is make some cool, algorithmic-sounding music that I think will hopefully amplify or enhance what we as humans can make and inspire us to do something new and different. what's going to be really differentiating us from generative music is going to be something that the computer hasn't ever been able to figure out it's probably never heard before and so i think there's a great opportunity for us as a creative community to take this challenge take this moment and really push the boundaries of how we're creating and what we're creating do you do

45:32Justin Richmond:you worry at all that in the interim in this time where we're sort of figuring out where the line is and exactly how this is all going to shake out legally, culturally, within the academy. I could see easily us getting in a place where people just assume things are being made, you know, like where people assume that more AI is maybe being used than is, or maybe it is, or maybe we get to a point where there is a lot of, you know, quote unquote AI slop, making it into playlists or whatever, or even onto records that might end up becoming nominated, Grammy nominated. So do you worry in the interim as we're figuring all this out, the quality control of it and the perception for fans?

46:16We worry. We don't worry about the quality control because that's really not our job. We worry about making sure that there's guardrails in place because my version of quality might not be your version of quality. I don't think we should be regulating that. But what we do want to make sure is that there are rules in place that protect human creativity. And yes, we worry about it every day. And it's something that we talk about around our awards, about submissions. How do we categorize music? How do we talk about it? Is there a language that we can attach to certain things? Are there thresholds that people need to declare before they enter?

46:51So all those things are talked about on a daily, weekly basis. And as I said, it's moving so quickly. We have to be diligent, and we have to stay on top of it. And I can tell you, we absolutely are.

47:01Justin Richmond:Okay, yeah. It's like we're getting into like a trust but verify stage of things. It's just weird. It is. And it's going to continue to be weird. There's detection tools that we're experimenting with, and I know other people are as well. There's requests that we're making on the advocacy level, federally, legislation that we'd like to see put in place. There's labeling things that we're asking from streamers or other places people get their music. So all those things are things we talk about and think about to make sure that the consumer is aware because that's a big part of it. We want to make sure there's not deception.

47:38If you're using AI, you think that's part of your process and you want to do it, I think that's okay if you can tell the consumers how it's being used. And as long as you're not infringing on somebody else's copyright or using somebody else's music and ingesting training on that or outputting it and not considering where you learn from. Also making sure if you're using an artist's voice or a likeness, is there an approval? Is there remuneration? Is there the right credit? So those are all things that we think about.

48:06Justin Richmond:After the break, the rest of my conversation with Harvey Mason Jr.

48:13This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. You probably think of Walmart as a store that carries about everything under the sun and maybe not as a place to discover small brands. Well, two things can be true at the same time because Walmart is home to thousands of small brands founded by people who had an idea, took a chance and built something of their own. Behind everyone is a real story and a lot of hard work. So why not take a little time to recognize all the people building small brands across the country and support everything they're creating? Walmart is proud to give those brands a place on its shelves and online.

48:46It's never been easier to find and support small brands. So take a look at Walmart. You might come across something new, something unexpected, or a brand whose story speaks to you. You never know what you're missing until you look. Discover thousands of small brands at Walmart.com. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT Work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, ChatGPT Work can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients.

49:27Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with ChatGPT Work. Download the ChatGPT Desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built HiringPro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit.

50:09You know what this makes me think of? My beloved Boston Celtics. Three years ago, they chose a new coach, Joe Mazzula, who was like the third or fourth assistant off the bench. Never had any NBA coaching experience. Everyone was expecting him to fail. And you know what? Turns out he was one of the best coaches in the game. And without him, there's no way the team would have made the playoffs this year, let alone be contenders for the finals. Sometimes the right hire makes all the difference. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business.

50:42In fact, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24 % less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Pushkin. Terms and conditions apply.

51:04Justin Richmond:why we're in an interesting time where i feel like a lot of the traditional gatekeepers of music and again i don't want to i don't not using gatekeeper in a bad way i'm talking about people like um clive davis who we just lost or quincey jones we've talked about or mo austin who just like people who were kind of in their taste sort of dictated what got down to the consumer level and they had a lot of success with that and certainly we're in a more decentralized era now do you view the Recording Academy as being needing to move in a more decentralized sort of way or do you sort of view it as being an arbiter for what is good in music?

51:50Justin Richmond:How do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, that's tough. What I view it as is a unique award given by your peers for excellence in any different field of recording arts and sciences. And we don't claim to say what is better than something else or try and say this is the only way you do it and this is how you make a successful record or song. We have roughly 16 ,000 voters, and those voters are all music professionals. So it's subjective, and sometimes what they like might not be what the general public likes. And that's when we get into some of these times when people think, Like, oh, the Academy snubbed something.

52:31Well, the Academy is made up of professional music people. And those people are going to have opinions and tastes. And the reason that the voting membership is important is it's got to be diverse. It's got to spread across different genres of music. It has to have different people. Because as I said, the two of us might not align on what is excellent. But if you get a big enough group and you get a group of people that have different likes and different experiences and different expertise, then you get I think a generally a good feel for a subjective outcome of what's excellent for that year and so I don't think we need to change that drastically because that's what makes us different is it's not a popularity contest it's not about how many streams you had how many journalists review your thing five stars it's about the people who make music every day writers producers engineers singers people who work in our business they listen to the music and they decide what they like in any given year.

53:25Justin Richmond:Yeah. Yeah. When you took over, you got rid of, quote unquote, like sort of secret nominating or how would you? Yeah, the nominations committees. Yeah. They called them the secret committees. The secret committee. Was that like internally? We didn't call it that. Okay. People did and they were trying to demonize those committees and those committees were really important. They served a purpose for a time. And the reason they thought they were secret is because we never disclosed who was on those committees because we were afraid of those people getting lobbied or getting you know squeezed to make sure they're giving people nominations right but those committees were made up of music professionals and so we would have a nominating committee for pop one for rock one for jazz and on that committee would be the leading jazz creators or leading pop creators and they would not decide who got the nomination but ultimately narrow down the field to some degree and it was a step that was put in place in a time when maybe the membership wasn't as diverse and it wasn't as experienced across different genres of music and at that time when i first got here you could vote anywhere on the ballot you could just you might have had a song in the 1960s and you're still voting for best hip-hop artist and you might not even know that genre but you recognize a name and so the nomination review committees would try to prevent that from happening yeah but once we started, as you were touching on, and I got in the role, we quickly realized that the nomination review committees were no longer necessary, provided that we could upgrade our membership and evolve our membership, make sure that they were all requalified.

54:56So we requalified 99 % of all of our members have been requalified. And I think the last percentage is probably done now as well, which means you have to be relevant. You have to have music in the last five years, you have to have the right amount of credits, and your application has to be re-reviewed. So all of our members got that. And then what we also changed is you can't just graze across the ballot and see who you like. Oh, I know that person. I'm going to vote for them. Because that's not what this is about. This is about, do you know the music? Listen to the music? And again, subjectively try and decide which one do you think is the best for the year?

55:29So we changed the membership. We changed the way we voted. And that allowed us to eliminate the NOMS committees.

55:33Justin Richmond:And do you feel like it's gotten to a place where the results are more pure now or the winners? Like it's where it's kind of really... I don't know if pure is the right word. And you and the listeners could probably tell me if you think we've gotten better. I think we've had more consistency and probably more realistic outcomes based around what's going on in the industry today. less like out of left field shock surprise like how in the heck did that person even get nominated or let alone win i think there's less of those but also you know some of what's cool about the grammys is a discovery and you get to see something that maybe you weren't aware of and all of a sudden there's a light shine on something new and you're like oh that's really cool i love that yeah um but i do think because of the membership's evolution and because of some of the rules that are in place, we are doing better.

56:25I want to continue to improve. And we're always looking at our membership. And the membership has to change, by the way. When new genres come in, we have to make sure we have the voters that correspond to those genres so they can evaluate it accurately. Because if we have all one type of voter, and then all of a sudden this type of music comes in, we're slipping back into how we used to be, where people didn't have the ears for that music. So we'll continue to watch that and try and evolve.

56:50Justin Richmond:And certainly the last decade or So, I mean, just with so much of, so much with sort of these regional world scenes becoming, you know, K-pop or Afro beats or it's like. Yeah. We just introduced the Asian pop performance category. And I think three years ago we did an African performance category. So if you're going to have those categories, you really got to make sure you have the right voters. Otherwise you're doing them a disservice. And the reason we put those categories in is so that we can honor the music and so we can show respect to that music because it's happening. It's popping and we want to make sure it's part of what we're doing.

57:21But if we don't have the right outcomes in those genres because we don't have the right memberships, then we're messing up.

57:28Justin Richmond:Amazing. Over the next decade or so, what are you excited about in music and what are you most concerned about? I'm really excited about people having access to creating music and listening to music and discovering music. There's more music being listened to now than ever. I think that's a cool stat because I love music and I make music. I still am in the studio making music. So the fact that more people are enjoying it, that it's affecting more people, that's exciting. The idea that my niece calls me from Dallas and says, Uncle Harvey, I just made a song. Check it out. And she sends it to me.

58:03And we can debate around whether or not you think that's healthy or OK or should even be called music making. But the fact that she's coming into the world of creating and expressing herself through music, I think that's cool. again making sure that we just take care of the legality and are you are you running the same tests on your knees yeah yeah yeah make sure you you're signing the right things you're giving credit um so i'm excited about those things and some of that is also what makes me nervous does music become commoditized does it become too easy to create does it come too easy and disposable does it become something that is overlooked and just in the background and i have faith that that's not going to be the case because i think music is too powerful and too important and people who make music are in my mind the most special and so i worry less about that but that is something that we all have to think about and you mentioned the ai slop and what does that mean for listeners and what does that mean for our community of people who make music and who spent the 10 000 or in some other cases the 40 000 hours that it takes to really refine your craft and perfect your craft and i still think there's huge value in that in that and i would hate to see that lost but we have to acknowledge things are going to change they always have our industry has seen it time and time again the way the music is made has changed the way music is consumed has changed and that is not stagnant and it's not binary it's not either this or that it's going to evolve it's going to flow it's going to grow and as long as we can be respectful to the creative process and the people that are making music um i'm looking forward to what comes next and what the new sounds are what's the new genre of music what's the new way that we're gonna listen to music and celebrate music there's so many new possibilities

1:00:00Justin Richmond:yeah well i hope you're right man i hope you're right i think you're right you know you know i'm right because music people are resilient yeah what do you think music people are gonna stop making music no no no you know all the great records you've grown up listening to those are the people those people are still out here making music and we are being threatened and we're being challenged as creators and i believe our people will rise to that challenge and i know throughout history of music i mean when i came up as i told you people said your music's not good enough it's not going to work you're not good got to be better that is how all music people came up i think yeah You can talk to pretty much any artist, and they've been kicked into the dirt a time or two early in their career.

1:00:42And this is not that dissimilar to that. So I think there's some comparisons that can be made to this. Not saying that everybody should go run out and use AI. Please don't. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's a disruption in technology that changes how people make what they make. And for us, it's jarring. And it's like, oh, my God, this is unacceptable. They said that about player pianos. player pianos came out oh it's going to ruin the industry because piano players aren't going to be able to play well we still got all the piano players said that about synthesizers and samplers they said that about djs they said that about uh hip-hop they said it about people programming on computers i sat next to a guy on a plane the other day he made a whole record on his laptop didn't even have a keyboard with black and white keys he was doing it on his laptop and so is this the next evolution of how people are going to make music provided that we can get the guardrails in place.

1:01:34I would say it probably is. And there's going to be people who like to do it the traditional way. There can be people that like to blend them together. And there's going to be some that just are in the new model. Yeah.

1:01:45Justin Richmond:Just to move away from AI for a second, I do want to ask, is there anything that the Recording Academy is not doing now that you'd like to see it doing or do better? Well, I'm the person that's very rarely, if ever, satisfied. I'm always thinking what can we do better and how can we evolve and at this point in my life and in the career of the recording academy the goal is service and so i do think that role is going to change over time based on needs of the community you're seeing a need right now around ai i know you were saying we're leaving ai but could stay there there's going to be other things that happen like that to our people to our our industry and i don't pretend to think we're like the most powerful thing in the world.

1:02:28I mean, there's such a massive business behind this with labels and publishing, but the role that we play as the Recording Academy organization and the Grammy organization, I do think it's going to be important that we keep our ears open and we're listening to our community. And that's why I'm thankful for our board and for other members that are our elected leadership, because they point us in the right direction to say, you know, Grammy organization, you got to pay attention to this. This is happening to us. And that's where we jump into action. And that could be advocacy. That could be, as you said, music cares, give back philanthropy.

1:02:59That could be education. But what I'm pleased and proud of is that we are the organization that is going to be paying really close attention and we're going to be listening to the music community to guide us towards the things that we need to pay more attention to. Cool. Well, definitely feels like

1:03:13Justin Richmond:it's been better the last couple of years since you've gotten there. Thank you. More to do. Still more to do and more to accomplish. Awesome, man. Can't wait to see what happens. Thanks, Justin. Appreciate you, man. Yeah, good to see you. Thanks to Harvey Mason Jr. for coming on and talking about his incredible career and his time remaking the Grammys. Be sure to check out youtube.com slash Broken Record Podcast to see all our interviews. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at The Broken Record Pod. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan.

1:03:44Justin Richmond:Our engineer is Ben Talliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

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