VP at Pandora / SiriusXM Reveals How to Get Playlisted & Get Paid (ft. J1)

On this episode of the One More Time Podcast, we are joined by Jay One, who is the VP of programming at SiriusXM slash Pandora. If you've ever wondered how songs make it onto playlists or onto radio stations, Jay One is one of the guys behind the curtain making it all happen. In our conversation, he breaks down the entire process step by step, and he even revealed a royalty that most musicians are not collecting. You're gonna want to pay attention to this one. Let's jump right in. Why would they call it LA Fitness if it didn't originate in LA? But it did. It did. Thank God. Yeah, thank God, right? Oh my god, I was about to just quit life. It just means something totally different. For sure, man. Well, yeah, welcome Jay One to the podcast. Jay one VP of programming at SiriusXM and Pandora. So we were we were debating this and we didn't actually even fucking Google it. Like worst researchers ever.

So like they're obviously owned by the same parent. SiriusXM acquired Pandora in 2019. Like right when I got hired at Pandora, they came. You got bought up. We got bought up. Oh shit, that's always a fun time. MA, MA activity. It was a little scary, but I actually was encouraged by it because I came from radio. That's right, because you were an on-air like personality. I was on air, I was a program director. I worked at Urban One Media, so I got recruited by Pandora to be their head of hip hop. And then right when I got in is when Sirius acquired the company, and I said, you know what? This could actually work out because I know radio and I'm learning the streaming side, so I can kind of do the best of both worlds. But like people think of Pandora still. I mean, they were like the first internet radio, they were like a super early mover, right? Yeah. So did you not feel like you were doing radio when working for Pandora because it wasn't traditional radio? Or like it was probably the easiest transition into a streaming platform as if I went to like another one because like you said, it's it's very similar to radio as far as the laid back experience, but it's still streaming at the end of the day.

It's different types of streams. So you have the radio streaming where you can't control what's coming up, or you can't do like on-demand albums and stuff like that. But we do have an on-demand service where you can get songs on demand and all that stuff. I knew that. I think you pay you pay for that though. You do pay for that. That's the difference. Okay, okay, okay. That's the paid service. Yeah. All right, but it's still free 99 for the the like radio with ads, et cetera, right? Yeah, we're not getting rid of that. That's our bread and butter. Okay, so it was a logical transition then for you when like they, you know, they bought you up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I didn't have much of a choice. But I mean, you could have you could have said some shit. I'm going to work at Walmart. I'm going to Spotify. Fuck you, SiriusXM. Call me Danny Lick. So just to like set the stage for the rest of the conversation, um, you know, VP of programming. Yes. A lot of people probably, including us. I always love to throw our audience under the bus. It's us. It's always us. what does it mean? Yeah.

Our audience probably doesn't know what it means. Still for them. Yeah, for the audience out there. No, but like what what does your role entail, right? As VP of programming. And it seems like you support both. I oversee music programming, primarily hip-hop and black music on both Pandora and SiriusXM. Most of the contemporary stuff. I mean hip-hop all over on Pandora. But yeah, so I oversee like the programming as far as like the station and playlisting and the editorial support, putting together events with different artists, working with the labels as far as album releases, trying to get the story on new artists and stuff, figuring out which artists we're gonna support, all that. Yeah. No, it's interesting. So I I feel like you know, our audience is a lot of aspiring, you know, artists that are trying to like basically figure out how to navigate the music industry and kind of elevate their careers. So for those that think radio and or like Pandora is only for big artists, like is that true?

No, not at all. I mean, here's the thing Pandora is actually a good platform for music discovery. What'd I say? Yeah, is that there? I thought that's the whole shtick. I thought that's your the biggest strength of Pandora is discovering new shit because they'll put you, you know, you start on something you like, and then you kind of you know, you zone out. We have short attention spans these days. Right. 15 minutes goes by and you're like, that's what is this? What is this? This is fucking hard. I gotta even see what's what I'm playing right now. And it's my new single. Yeah. Me. Well, you love being the rapper in this series. I'm always like the example aspiring rapper. So yeah. So in this case, like that's my song that came up after Drake. They have a great algorithm, it seems. It does. I mean, it was the original algorithm, right? It was the blueprint. So we have a great platform for music discovery. We just haven't done the best job of communicating that. In what way? Well, you know how like people will go to uh other DSPs because they feel like, okay, I'll find a newer artist or I'll I'll do some music discovery. Pandora is like, oh, that's an older streaming platform.

Yeah, it's older, but because of the algorithm to your crypto your point, it's still very good for music discovery because all you have to do is like, I like this artist, and then just go down the rabbit hole. Yeah, so so is your demographic like way different than the people that do use like the competitors like Spotify and Apple Music, for example, or are you guys competing for that same type of listener? I I mean we're all competing for listeners and stuff, you know, we're competing against Netflix and all types of streaming platforms because you only have Competing for attention. Right, you only have so many hours and minutes in the day. Facts. Podcasts, right? If I'm watching a podcast, yeah, exactly. Yeah, get him out of here. I didn't realize what I was doing by signing this guy up for an interview. We brought in the ops. This is good, this is good. Keep your enemies close. It's true. Yeah, man. So I mean, um we do skew a little bit older because we're an older platform and people grew up with us. 30s kind of people. yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that that the millennial sweet spot, uh, you know, early 30s, uh early 40s and stuff, but we do have a very strong younger demographic, they do tap in with us. A lot of like Uber drivers use us and business owners, the businesses seem like the cheat code. Yeah, exactly. Because if I go into a store, right? It's gotta be Pandora, but like a lot of the times just in the background, right? Yeah, most of the time it is. Exactly. So is there like a team that's responsible for developing those relationships and making sure that like businesses use Pandora, or is it just it's it's kind of been organic? It's okay. Yeah, it's just like no, to be honest with you. we're the one. They fucking know. Yeah, you go to Pandora for that lit ass playlist at journeys, yeah, yeah, fuck target, I don't know, wherever. Why not? Yeah, so you know, you're responsible for programming across, you know, primarily urban genre. Yes, but like, how involved then are you in like algorithmic types of decisions, right?

Like, how does our algorithm work? How involved are you in like what the DJs are playing, right? Like, you know, how hands-on do you get versus how much do you let others kind of like dictate you know what's happening on the air? It's a great question. So we have two different types of listening experiences when it comes to algorithms or algorithmic and non-algorithmic. So we have like stations and destinations that are completely controlled by the algorithm, and then we have destinations that are controlled by the curator. So both of them are great listening experiences. It just depends on like what you're going for and stuff. So, you know, of course, I'm very hands-on with the stations that are non-algorithmic that we control or my team controls, but even the algorithmic stations, even though we don't directly control them, if there is like uh something that we want to try to like get on there or influence the algorithm and we want to kind of push the algorithm to a certain song, we have the ability to do that. Yeah.

Interesting, man. So our community was on our live stream earlier. We were asking them for like questions that they want to ask you. And so I think one thing that got brought up is like, are there certain types of songs that you know make most sense for radio, for example? Like we, you know, whether it's the way that they're mixed and mastered, like certain technical things, or whether it's certain arrangement things as far as how the songs are structured, right? Like, do you see like super commonalities between the majority of the songs that make it on like XM radio, for example? XM's a little bit different because it's you know, satellite radio and they're kind of aggressive and they don't have a lot of the restrictions, like terrestrial radio, but like from my radio days, the thing that that really helps a song, um, and what I tell like a lot of artists to do is make sure that that that hook is right, right? Because yes. And and this goes, and you can even say this about like TikTok and the algorithm today, right? You're only hearing a clip at uh a snippet of the song.

You're hearing the hottest part, usually the hook or something like that. And when songs are being tested in radio, and this is like what I learned in my urban one days, basically, you know, they're testing the hooks of the song. So like when people are listening and they're taking the surveys, they're listening to the hooks. And however they grade those songs is how well the song performs. So, how do the surveys and the tests actually happen? So, like when I think of it being tested, is it actually on the air? Or are you having people like come in? Like, yeah, like how does a radio test work? So now it's it's all on the phone. So like we have we we had subscribers and stuff like that. They'll send out a link and you take the test. Really? Yeah, and you grade the song. You grade the song and you could sign up for it and stuff. I mean, we do we advertise that on Sirius XM all the time. Um on Hip Hop Nation, one of the channels that oversee, we say, hey, if you want to become like a VIP member, follow us or click the link in our bio. I've heard that.

Yep, you've heard that. I was in the hip hop nation all the time. And so, and so we can test songs like that. You can test songs like that. Oh shit. Yeah, yeah. We we have the power. We have the power. Yeah on what makes it on Sirius XM. Yeah. Hip hop nation. Yeah. That's fire. Okay. Well, so then I was gonna ask about like how much is data-driven decision making, right? So it's like, okay, yeah, we you know, we test a song with with these users that are clicking the link in the bio, you know, they're getting the the song early, they're they're testing it, whatever. But then once it makes it on air, sure, right? Or on uh Pandora, you know, streaming and and you know, internet radio, what you know, what sort of data are y'all collecting to then make decisions on how much we continue to play this song or push it in front of listeners? Like, what what metrics are we using? Yeah, I mean, we're looking at we're looking at skip rates, we're looking at completion rates, we're looking at um how many people are thumbing up the song on Pandora. We're looking at the big thing on Pandora, yeah, thumb up, thumb down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all about those thumbs. Those thumbs. That's our thing, man. That's the thing. Let's go. Y'all could have a mascot that's just like a giant thumb. Or it could be this. Consider that. I'll you can have that for free. I appreciate that. Sure. What if he actually runs away with that idea? Like, sum me the thumb. A big thumb. Like, should they have eyes and stuff? That'd be a little scary though. Throw me some eyes. Oh God, this got real creepy. But No, so okay, and and then so how much of it is I mean, it's gotta be all data at this point, right? It's not all data. I mean, we definitely look at the data to make decisions, but we also have to listen to our guts because sometimes a song will come out and the data might not be great at first, but then we just give the song a chance. It has to marinate. People have to get familiar with it. A lot of times people say they want to hear new music, but they really don't. They want to hear the same stuff that they're used to and the stuff that they know and that they could sing along to.

And it's it it's funny because they always say, Oh, you guys play the same songs over and over again. It's like, yeah, because that's what you motherfuckers want. You guys like the same song. But um, but yeah, so we look at the data, but if we feel like, no, you know, the data might not be there, but we still feel like this is we know this is a good song. Let's just stick with it for a while and we'll give it a chance. So why do you think people do go back to like you know, the same old, same old music? Um like why are we afraid of new new music? Nostalgia is it's a new crack, bro. I'm telling you. I mean, I think um, I think it's it's twofold. I think people were just naturally comfortable with what we're familiar with, right? Like you go to a good restaurant, you like the food, you like the same dish. Chances are you go back and you order the same thing over and over again. I mean, there's some people that are like, oh, I'm gonna try something new. Then you try something new, it's like, no, I should have got my, you know, my same go-to. Um, should I have a should I have a guaranteed seven out of ten, eight, eight out of ten experience, or should I risk having a 10 or a two out of ten experience?

It's the same reason that like every movie that comes out now is a remake of something that was successful, it's a sequel. Yep, it's it was based on a book that was popular. It's it's it kind of sucks. It's like but we're like that at the time. Yeah, so it's kind of like us as the humans and like the consumers, we're creating like the lack of innovation that we then complain about. Yeah, I mean it's like we're like, there's no news, but it's like because to your point, like you wouldn't buy the fucking ticket to the movie that was new. Like you're listening to the same fucking outcast as me. When I like when I'm cooking a meal over here in the kitchen, like I I would put on a show that I've like already seen because I how many times you watch Breaking Bad? How many times? More than one. There you go. Because like I know that I can like, if I'm like, you know, doing this over here, if I miss a part, I at least know what's going on. I can't, it's harder for us to give our full attention to something new these days. We love be we love being comfortable. Yeah. We do. We do. We don't like the uncomfortable. Comfort's the worst.

You know, you you have to be intentional when you're looking for new music. So we have destinations where there is like an abundance of new music, but I I always equate like playlisting to a restaurant, right? So if you went to McDonald's and they offered you pizza, you would look at them crazy because you go to McDonald's for something else. You go for fries, nuggets, or whatever, right? Breakfast and my breakfast. There you go. Breakfast. I had it today, swear to God. There you go. Same thing, same thing with with playlisting or or stations, right? If I want to hear Drake or Taylor Swift or whoever, I'm gonna go to like today's hit or today's R&B hits because I want to hear the biggest songs by the biggest artists. But if I hear something new, it might be a good song, but that's not what I came there for. I didn't go to that experience. I'll go to new hip hop or something that caters to that particular listening experience. So so even if the song is good, people get caught off guard by it if it's curated in a in a way that isn't. I mean, well, that's that that's that's the the the tricky part, right?

That's the balance that you gotta have. It's like you want to introduce certain new music, but you have to do it in a way that it's not too intrusive, or it's like, okay, I think this one will work based off of how it sounds, and this is where like your gut and your just knowledge of music and knowing your audience, like will kind of determine where you place these songs at, or you test them out on smaller curation, uh curated experiences, and if they do well, you move them up. I hope you guys are enjoying the conversation. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about our pals at DistroKid. You can't get your music onto streaming platforms without a distributor, and DistroKid is an excellent choice to handle that for you. For the ridiculously low price of $23, you can upload unlimited music for an entire year. That is less than $2 a month. I tripped on $2 walking down the street earlier. They have countless features to help you out on your musical journey. One of my favorites is splits. Instead of my collaborators hitting me up all the time saying, Where's my fing money? I can input everyone's percentage when I upload the music, and DistroKid will handle it.

I've personally used DistroKid for many years and can genuinely recommend them as a great tool to get your music out into the world. And if you sign up at omtdistro.com, you'll get 30% off an already insanely low price. This is absolute peanuts for unlimited uploads yearly. We wish you the best with your creating. Let's get back to it. How much music do you listen to personally talking about like a week or a day? I don't know. I I don't even know. Like, just I guess how much of your job is like listening to all the music. Because I mean, I see you doing the posts of like the new music Friday shit, and you're kind of like spotlighting, you know, some of your ex I guess you know some of the records you're excited about. Yeah. So I assume you've obviously listened to those, but then like how much more are you, you know, what I mean, like how much are you consuming? Yeah, on like a daily basis. I mean, I have to listen to a lot of the stuff that comes in from obviously the labels in our distribution companies, but then I'm also paying attention to social media, what's going on in any local market, whether I'm in Atlanta, LA, if I'm popping up to New York, whether the DJ's feeling. So I I get different pieces of information to like determine what's good, what gets on the radar.

Because the reality is, and you guys have probably heard this, and the number always changes, so I'm just gonna say 50,000 songs get uploaded a day. I've heard a hundred. Yeah, a hundred, right? It's always it's always a different number. But there's no way that myself or even my team could listen to all these songs every week. We just it's just humanly impossible. So we have to decipher which ones we're gonna give our time to. This is why I also tell artists don't make like a song where you're dragging out the intro or it's a 30-second intro, or there's a bunch of talking or there's a clip. No, go right into the song because people have short attention spans. Yeah, and most curators, right? We're gonna listen to the first 30 to 45 seconds of a song. That's generous. If you're lucky, That's generous. we do live streams. Shut up.

We listen to a minute 45, and even then, some people are like, you didn't get to the good part. Let them keep going, let them keep going. You were cooking. No, right. I mean, you didn't get to the good part. We have short attention spans, and they're getting shorter as time goes on. They ain't getting any longer. Right. There's it's not getting any longer. So that's why the songs are shorter. And I I tell artists all the time, get right into the song. Yeah, get into the meal. So many artists are gonna hate you when you say that, obviously. Right? I mean, I'm assuming you get some some feedback that's like this is my art, it takes two minutes to build up to the climax. I mean, that's cool. Like, if that's what you want to do, I'm just gonna let you know what's happening with your audience and stuff, and with what what people are are listening for. Now, you might have people that will hang in there or and wait for the minute 45, but most people, especially when it comes to new music, and they don't know who you are, they're they're not sticking around. I always think like a listener or a consumer, and most people are passive listeners.

They're on their way to work. They're doing something else. They're doing something else. They got their kids in the car. So they're not sitting there by the radio like our great great parent grandparents did listening to the city. Playing a record, smoking a doobie, just paying attention. Right. Like we're doing other stuff. We're multitasking. People are on their phones. So you have to make your song or your music stand out because if it doesn't, I'm either gonna skip it or I'm changing the channel. And this is the biggest challenge in the world that we talk to artists about is that like you want to make art for a living, but are you willing to change your art to make a living? Yeah. Because like oh, that was have you said that before? Not like that. That was a bar. It's kind of a bar, right? Like that's a caption right now. That was you can be the dopest hobbyist in the world, but the second that you don't want to have a job and you want to collect and you wanna do this for shit for real and make a living and go on tour and do all these other things, are you willing to compromise and change your art to do that? It's a big internal decision that I think For sure. People aren't ready for, man. Yeah.

So if I'm a you know up and coming artist, how do I even find my way on to the platform or the radio in the first place? No, that's a great question. So I tell all artists who ask that question, it's usually when I'm at a conference or in a room full of artists, I say, look around. There's a hundred people in here. All you guys are artists, right? Multiply that by five thousand. Ain't no way I can listen to all of your songs. So you have to do everything in your power to make your song stand out and rise above the crop, right? The thing that I look at, and I guarantee most other curators look at, regardless of the streaming platform that they look that they work for, is the on-demand streams. If you're able to get some sort of traction on my platform without any editorial support, it's definitely gonna raise its hand, it's definitely gonna set off a flag, and I'm gonna look at it. Meaning you have real fans that sought your music out and clicked, I want to listen to XYZ artists.

Exactly. Exactly. That's that's an indicator, no matter where you go. And like you said, the fans are showing that there's a demand for it. So if I put it on a playlist and giving it more exposure, I already know that there's a fan base for it and it's it's it's testing well. It already converted. It already converted. Right. So I tell artists all the time there's so many tools and resources out there to build up your audience to build the algorithm. Whether you're using the streaming tool, the streaming platform tools, ours are called AMP, which stands for artist marketing platform, it's completely free. You can look at your analytics, obviously, but you can also feature a track. So if you have one track that you want to say, oh, this is the one, this is the one I'm gonna push, then you can basically feature that track for free and it pushes it out to more people without any editorial support. And it's something that artists can do on their own. They don't need my permission or anything like that.

And it just helps build your audience organically because it's pushing it out to listeners that like your similar style of music. The other thing, obviously, you know, going on Facebook, doing look-alike campaigns, you know, people say ads on TikTok. You can go that route, but doing some sort of influencer campaigns, the blogs, simple stuff. Having an email list, having a website, building up your your audience that way. I mean, a hundred people who are willing to pay to see your show is better than a hundred thousand Instagram followers that might not spend five dollars with you. Yeah. So That was a bar first. So how many what percentage of the smaller artists that you see, you know, those those red, I guess not even red flags, probably green flags. I don't know, whatever. Yeah, good kind of flags. The good kind of flags. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, what percentage of them have like sounds or you know, content trending on TikTok, would you say? I would say a good amount of them.

It's gotta be, right? Yeah, it's uh I mean it's a direct correlation. I mean, uh the artists that trend on TikTok, you usually see their on-demand streams are are are high, and then after that, it's like, okay, we we got it, we gotta do something with it, regardless of how you know I might personally feel about the song or not. If my audience likes it, I'm gonna go with what my audience uh wants to do. How hard is that? It's not really hard. I've I've learned over the years it's not about me. So I've I've taken I've taken any type of ego out of it because once you get into like that that stigma of oh, this song sucks, or this new generation can't make music, then you're not gonna be open to hearing new sounds or hearing what like this next generation wants to hear. So I I always stay open to all types of music. And even if I don't get it on the first time, like I'll listen to it over again, or I might need to experience it somewhere at a club or a festival and say, oh, now I get it, you know. So you love Playboi Carti.

I do like Cardi. I do I like I I I actually met Cardi when I was when I was a program director in DC. Ooh. Yeah, yeah. He was doing the show out there. Yeah, this is like 2017. So it it it it was uh early. It was at the Fillmore, which holds about 2,000 people. Now he's doing uh 10 times that, 20,000. You know, so who's an artist that you just didn't get at first recently that you've kind of come around to? When I first heard Ice Spice, at first I was just like, okay, let me listen to this again. But then when my 20-something-year-old niece, who is probably one of the smartest people I know, like intellectually, graduated from Yale. Oh, wow. Okay, so really really smart in the world. Right, really, really smart. No, I thought you were just being nice to your niece. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, my niece is so smart. No, no, no. She graduated from community college. Like, you know, she graduated from Yale at four years. So I hate people like her anyway.

Shout out to your niece. I'm just kidding. But when she said, she was like, Oh, I love Ice Spice. That's my favorite artist out right now. I said, Okay, this is undeniable. So it's just like I said, we're gonna roll with it, but I I I get it. What what made you get it eventually? Did you see it live or did you listen to it? in a certain space or it was just the the movement. Yeah, she's got that. She's got a movement, she has a cult-like following, and it doesn't really matter the background or your education level. She's tapped into something that was undeniable. So for me to say, I don't necessarily, I don't get it, like, no, you just have to learn how to get it, or or tap in with people that that really love it and ask them questions. So I asked my niece, like, hey, what what do you like about her? What what is it? You know, and she's just like, I just love her style, I love her bars, I love everything. So and anybody that says that they they get all the songs or they get all the artists, they're probably lying.

Like, none of us get everything off the rip. Yeah, like nobody bats a thousand. Absolutely. You're gonna strike out sometimes. You're you're gonna ground out. Yeah. So you know what I just heard though, bro? If you want to get the ear of J1, just send music to his niece. Send music to my niece. Oh shit. I'm just, did you pick that up? no, that's kind of demon. I wanted to make sure they picked it up. All right, you know, I don't know if I agree with that, but I probably just crossed the line of source, but like, I'm just I'm just recapping what I just heard. I don't know, I didn't say it. Okay, cool. So, you know, you've been in radio for a bit. What's something that you think that you took from your early days in radio and are now applying in this current role? The thing that I learned when I first got over to Pandora is people still like good music. A hit is a hit, and they still want to hear the hits. It's just Pandora gives you more room to like play hits, right? Whereas when I was in radio, especially early on, they say, Oh, just play these, these records right here.

And it's like, but it's only like 15 songs. You're telling me there's only 15 hits out there? Like, come on. Like, like I used to DJ. I there's 15 songs, I'd be done in in in less than 10 minutes, right? Um, so the thing that I learned is is people still want to hear good music. They still want to hear the classics. It's just you have to just curate it in a way that it makes sense and you're giving them the best listening experience. So then how do you think Pandora differs from like Spotify and Apple? I feel like we were kind of touching on this with like it being one of the older platforms, right? You know, in comparison. But you know, you mentioned that you thought it did have a lot of discovery tools. I I do know a lot of people that go to Spotify playlists for discovery. So, like, you know, what would you say is the biggest differentiator between like the other two major DSPs being you know, Spotify and Apple? I think Pandora is more of a laid back experience, right? We talked about the Uber drivers or the business owners, the hair salon owner, the gym owner.

You don't have time to necessarily create a playlist or find that playlist that's gonna appeal to your customers. So you want to find something that you know you like, whether it's a song, an artist, or a particular station that you like, and you want to press play and you want to go about your business. Set it and forget it. That's what Pandora does best. Oh, man. We're the ultimate laid back experience. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I could totally see that. Whereas the other ones are more like aggressive and active listeners versus maybe like autopilot a little more, you know, passive in that sense. Yeah, and and and that, and that's fine. Like people people have different preferences. That that do like that. I I want this, I want this, I want it to sound like this. And then there's people that like I I have a kid, I can't be screwing around. Like, let me press the button. Yeah, and I think the passive type of people that want to put it on autopilot autopilot are the is the growing one out of the two groups, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think there's more and more of them every day. It's just so hard to find stuff

that. People get overwhelmed. I think they give up music. Yeah, it's a lot of music. Yeah. it's too much. It's like artists are popping up left and right. I mean, it's beautiful because technology has made getting music out more accessible to everybody. But like the other side is there's more music out there. There's more artists. It's it's actually harder to break an artist now than it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago. And again, I I'm not saying it's good or bad or anything like that. It's just it's just different. So why do you say that? That it's harder to break an artist now. Because one, the the barriers of entry are lower, right? So you have more competition. Like you said, there's so much music and content being thrown at us. People don't necessarily know what to stick with, or or they'll they'll go on one thing and then just get distracted by another, or something's hot right now, and if it disappears for like a couple of months, we're on to the next thing. I mean, look at the news cycle.

It turns over so quickly, right? We were talking about hip hop beefs, you know, only days ago, but now it's like it's kind of crickets. It is kind of gone already. Right. Well, until Kendrick's album drops in May, supposedly. We'll see. Yeah, but yeah, damn. I I'm curious how you feel about um we interviewed, we talked about Will Hill. Shout out this nice candle we have on the set from Yeah Hill. Yeah, he straight up said, like, we need to bring back gatekeepers. He doesn't, he doesn't like all the shitty music. He thinks there should be less people making music. Do you do you prefer it one way or the other? Obviously, this is how it is now, but but who are the gatekeepers, though? Well, back in the day it was, you know, MTV and labels. But yeah, but you're saying, like, who would we vote? Yeah. Who would it be now? Who are the gatekeepers, right? And how they get the job It's not even possible anymore. And even then, people would complain about the gatekeepers back then. Oh, it's all political. The gatekeepers take take away the gatekeepers. Okay, they take took away the gatekeepers. Oh, no, there's no gatekeepers.

It's too much shit now. It's like you can't fucking win in this. Shit, man. What do we want? Right? So I I mean, I do think there are certain gatekeepers whether it just looks a little bit different, like the bloggers. Do you feel like a gatekeeper? I mean, I feel like I tell people I'm a I'm a piece of the puzzle or a piece of the pie that you need to get your stuff circulated and popping, but I can't do it by myself. Bro, I'd be on a power trip if I had Jay One's. I'd feel like the goddamn king of music. Like whether it's him or Tuma or Carl Cherry or like whatever. You want to be on the radio? I'd I'd get such a power trip, bro. What did Uncle Ben say? With great power comes great responsibility. Oh, I thought you were talking about I'm I'm Uncle Ben to my niece and oh okay. I was like, what did I say? Spider-Man Ben. I know, but okay. No, no, no, yeah. Spider-Man Uncle Ben. I just married to Aunt May. Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, I don't know, man.

I just do you get a lot of people uh frustrated if you're not supporting them in the way that they think that you should be. I'm sure there are. Like, I can't answer every DM that I get, or I can't play every song. What I do do is I always treat people with respect. When people do talk to me about music, um, and I do listen, I try to give my honest opinion. And I at least try to tell them, okay, here's what you can do, right? People always ask about playlists. I'm very honest. I'm like, it's very competitive. I can't play list every song, but here are the steps that you can do to possibly get your song playlisted. And what other steps? So it's what we talked about earlier, right? Engaging with the artist tools, building up your audience, engaging with the algorithm, marketing yourself, doing collaborations. And then also kind of realizing where you're at, right? So if you're an artist, and it is actually funny, like my little cousin, he's an artist, and he's thinking, oh man, I got the plug.

My cousin, I'm like, nah, dude, you gotta work like everybody else. But the thing that really made him stand out is he was doing his own beats. So I told him, I said, look, you can get into more doors as a producer than you can as an artist, because as a producer, everybody needs tracks. And if you connect with the right people, right, and go out to these places and network, you can get into a lot of studio sessions and then you you blow up as a producer, then who knows, right? Or as a songwriter. We're seeing a lot of songwriters, especially on the RB side, come along and then they made those connections, they penned some big songs, and now they're winning Grammys. Engineers. Engineers. If you're a dope engineer, you know how to like really do a session and run a session. You can be in in all types of studio sessions. So you don't have to necessarily say, oh, okay, I'm gonna be an artist and have tunnel vision. No, be willing to pivot.

Be willing to do different pockets. I know people that started as artists and and and now they're managers of of huge artists, right? But they know how to handle their artists because they were one. That's the other thing people have to think about. Not everybody's gonna break. 50,000 people ain't gonna break. Most people. It's just not gonna happen. And I and I hate to, I'm not trying to crush people's dreams, but voice of reason. But but at the end of the day, not everybody's gonna make it. So be willing to pivot. People need financial planners. Yeah. So what's what's one thing that you've done at you know, SiriusXM slash Pandora that you're most proud of, would you say? Like in your tenure there. I would say establishing the playback series. Yeah, for those that aren't familiar, what is it? Because I thought that was gonna be your answer, and I'm so glad it is. By the way, at playback Ben. At Playback Ben is mine. At Playback Ben. Yeah. There we go. yeah, there we go. Maybe if playback's looking to hire, I can quit my shitty corporate job. Uh or just change your name to one more time, Ben.

Well, okay. Yeah. We'll talk about that later. Yeah, okay. Anyways, so yeah, what you know, what is playback? So basically, what it is is when an artist comes into our facility in front of a intimate audience, no more than a hundred people. They sit down, they talk about their journey, but also their project, right? So it could be a new project that's about to come out or that just dropped, or it could be an anniversary project and they're going through that. And as they're talking about it, we'll play the music. So they're not necessarily performing. Some people do get up and perform if they if they feel like it, but it's a conversation uh with the music. And we started it when I first started at Pandora. The first one was with Common and DJ Drama. It was an incredible conversation. We've heard of them. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the one that that really set it off. And we've done so many artists. I mean, everybody from Dionne Warwick to Lil Durk.

It's just been an incredible experience and uh a lot of great conversations. Our most recent one, we did one with T-Pain and Young Cash for their new project. So very recently. So and do you host those conversations? I did at one point, but I'm the mindset of always trying to like groom the next person or give other people opportunities because I want to more so be behind the scenes and be in the executive role. So I was hosting them last year, but now shout to DC. DC Young Fly. Yeah. Well, yeah, Fly Guy DC. Sorry, yeah. Yes, Fly Guy. Everyone, don't make that mistake, bro. That was such a rookie mistake. Let's edit this out. We'll edit this out. All right, say it again. Just repeat it. Fly Guy DC. Yeah, man. Shout out to Fly Guy DC. So we recently put him on as the host for the playbacks that happened in Atlanta. Oh man, I was gonna put my hat in the ring and fucking Fly Guy DC.

Like he made it too. You have been next. I'm just saying, like, no, I I do want to get into like stuff like that. Obviously, you know, we do the podcast, so I'm very comfortable, of course, like you know, hosting conversations. So I do have that as a goal of mine, like personally, but fucking Fly Guy DC. God damn it. He's probably got this. But no, so is it true that like the payments for artists are like much better? Like if I'm an artist, are the royalties better for like Pandora and or Sirius XM? Or do you know much about that side of it? I know in my experience, it's different when um on Pandora, for example, someone could listen to your song, but they don't type you in. So it's a that's a totally different, you have to sign up, you know, artists and producers. Hopefully you guys know this. It's a different payment method when it's uh like is it interactive or non-interactive? Yeah, you've been doing your work. Yeah, I'm a producer engineer, so I gotta do that. That's exactly what I've heard of these things, but yeah, like explain maybe like yeah. It's high level. I mean, you said it best.

So you have interactive streams and non-interactive streams. So an interactive stream is if I go to a specific song, if I type it in, or if it's on a playlist that I can directly go to that song, that is an inter uh interactive stream. Those usually pay out more depending on the pay scale. Non-interactive streams are what you hear like on Drake Radio or Lil Baby Radio on Pandora, where it's more like a radio experience, you can't determine the song that's coming up next, so it's a non-interactive stream. It pays out less, but you actually can get more on your stream as far as money because those type of streams are paid out through SoundExchange. SoundExchange. Yes. So SoundExchange was set up by the U.S. government and it guarantees the performer of that record a percentage of that record regardless of your deal or not. Now, if you sell, if you sell your SoundExchange rights, then forget about it.

Like in people, people have done that. You can pretty much sell anything, but but think about it. If you're like Sold My Soul, so where are you going to get that. But um that's just where my brain went. But but we've seen like artists who have had messed up deals still get their SoundExchange checks based off of their catalog and just their their their non-interactive streams. Oh. So if you're out, if you guys are out there and you have your your BMI ASCAP, you have your, you know distribution, but you don't have SoundExchange, you need to sign up for SoundExchange. Get that non-interactive bag, my gosh. Absolutely. And Pandora and SiriusXM are the biggest payees to SoundExchange. There you go. Well, J1, we've entered a final segment of the podcast. Take us home, H3. Man. Good stuff. Such good stuff. I knew this was gonna be a good one, but I told you. Anyway, this is the Rapid Fire Rampage. This is the final segment.

It's gonna be a three-part rampage. Okay. I'll explain to them as we go. It's just gonna start off with some short answer questions. Rampage! Let's get into it. Love the sound effects. It's good, right? Have you seen Archer? It's terrible. I have not seen Archer. Okay. H John Benjamin, my favorite voice actor of all time. We'd love to interview for I don't know why he wouldn't fit on here, but whatever. Anyway, uh, question number one. Sup. Sup. God damn it. We're off to a hot start. Hot start. Moving right along. J1, give us your top three tips for artists who want to get their music played on Pandora satellite radio or just want to get noticed by curators like yourself. What can they be doing? Have a plan. Have a team. Teamwork. And do as much as you can on your own and don't rely on anybody else or try to come to us. If you do the right things, we'll find you.

That's the one. It's always that. That goes for so many examples of that. I know. It's that's how the industry is now. It's like, what can I do to get the attention of this? And da da da da-da-da-da-da-da. It's like if you focus on your own shit, be dope. They will find you. If you have to just pretend like that shit doesn't exist, the labels will find you, the radio will find you, it all happens. Like build your little thing. If you build it, they will come. It's true, man. Sure. J1, you must choose one song to be played. Every time you walk into a room. This is great. What's your walk-in song? This is the ultimate curator experience. Exactly. Like this guy's gonna program his life right now. Let's go, bro. What you got? Freestyle by Lil Baby. Oh. God. I love that song. Arguably, baby's best. Seriously. No, most people would say that's his best song. It's a good one. Moving right along, J1, what is one music industry lesson? Maybe from Brian Calhoun.

That just changed your life forever. What is something that clicked and shit started to move? That was heavy, bro. Yeah, I got it. I was like to start light. I was like, oh shit. What's something that clicked and shit started to move? I was like, okay, Henry. Everyone wants to know that. I won't say like things started to move or anything. Okay. I will say, don't sleep on anybody or write off anybody. Doesn't mean you have to, again, support their music or or playlist them, but you just never know. The person that you shit on, or you disrespect or just kind of like curve, they can be that next superstar. So that's why I say I treat everybody with respect and at least shake their hand and say what's up to them and like give them some sort of tip or something like that. So they don't be like, oh, J1 was an asshole.

No, I I talked to you, I was just very honest with you. Like, hey, I I I can't play your music right now, but if you do X, Y, and Z, then maybe you have a shot or circle back when you have this. Keep your doors open. Keep your doors open because again, people may not remember what you say, but they'll remember how you made them feel. Oh God. That is one right there. You spit, bro. That is one. God damn. But I just feel that rewind this episode to what he just said. I just feel that, bro. And absorb that. Because that is huge. I feel that, man, because I also think that um, you know, shit. Even people coming in, uh, there's just a lot of people that actually react like kind of like aggressively to, you know, when they hear no, or like when they hear like now's not the right time, or like I can't do that right now, but do X, Y, Z, maybe. We, There's a lot of people that like respond very like weird to that. Some people take it and get offended.

Yeah. Regardless of what you say, because all they want to hear is a yes. Yeah. But I found that some people just appreciate that I take the time to talk to them or just give them some sort of advice or something like that. Yeah. And and and I'm honest with them. For sure. And I'm not disrespectful. I'm not telling them, oh, your music stinks. Like it'll never get played. You never know. They might it might go viral tomorrow, and then I'm looking stupid. You're the asshole. Right, exactly. So that's the type of education I try to give people. Because when they ask, y'all put me on your playlist, and I say, Well, if I put you on this playlist and it doesn't do well, it could hurt you more than it can actually help you. Yeah. Because then they have they they remember that you're the one that fell off. Well, I think you're giving them that education right now. Yeah. Right. This one's called Ideal audio J1. Okay. You can put any artists, producers, writers, engineers, anyone that you want together to make an album to create your perfect personalized album. Wow.

Who are you putting together? How many do I get? Whoever you want. Unlimited budget, alive or dead. Let's just make the J1 album. Ooh, alive or dead? Or dead. For a songwriter. Let's go. Give me Smokey Robinson. Oh, okay. Producer. I'm gonna give my my Harlem biased because I was born and raised in Harlem. Harlem. I'm going with Teddy Riley. Ooh. Okay. Who's the artists, bro? Who's the artist? Yeah. You could pick one or two, three. Okay. Damn. bro. Maybe two. Let's cap it at two. You gotta cap this shit. No cap. I mean, I mean cap. If I'm if I'm if I'm going with Smokey and I'm going with Teddy, then wouldn't it be crazy to have a Prince and NJ? Shit.

Quincy's on the sidelines like, what the fuck, right? Throw Quincy out there as an associate. Okay, yeah, for sure. We'll add him on. Yeah. I think he just made the greatest album of all time. Yeah. He did. Unbelievable. Oh my God. I love it. He's curator for real. Ultimate curator. All right. also, I don't have this on my list either. I'm just thinking of stuff that I just want to ask you. because I'm fascinated. This has never happened, by the way. Have you met Rude Jude, my favorite radio DJ of all time? Yeah, I I have. Is he just amazing? That's all I wanted to ask Jude is an interesting guy, man, but he's he's he's brilliant. Who's rude jude? Rude. Bro, you are tripping. I'm tripping, bro. Shade 45, the greatest radio DJ of all time. I don't know, Rude Jude. I'm sorry. You are completely sleeping. I'm sorry. If we could interview anyone, I would interview Rude Jude. It'll be Rude Jude. Jude Anthony Angelini hit us up. Okay. Moving on. Wow. By popular demand, we're bringing back an old favorite. J1, you must eliminate three states.

Which states do you eliminate? Oh my god. They're off the bat. The people don't die, though. I want to just they relocate. They relocate to another state. You don't have to pick the lowest population. Yeah, but they're gone. Like, what's three states if we don't need them? You know. Rhode Island? Yeah. Fine. He went with the small one already. It's fine. Basic take, but go ahead. sir. Sure. Once again, the people don't die. Yeah. They don't die. No. So like you didn't have to like pick like shitty states. What goes on in Maine? Lobsters. Oh, yeah. We don't we need the lobster. We do. Facts. Delaware? Okay, Delaware. Yeah. Another small historical. He's going- Fuck it. Fuck history. Fuck history. Yeah. Oh God. Oh, man. What's the third state? I don't know. Someone's got to go. You're really hurting the Northeast right now. I know. Jeez, man. we don't need them. New Mexico.

Okay, you took it out west. That's fair. I just don't know anything in in New Mexico. Yeah, I don't either. Yeah. Albuquerque. Yeah. Breaking bad. Yeah. Well, yeah. Okay. I I mean, I can't. say- I mean, I think it's just meth. I can't say Like Montana or Wisconsin, because I I watched uh Yellowstone. I'm in the middle of Yellowstone right now. It's fire. After that, I was like, oh, I'd need to go up to the next one. Does it keep getting better even? It does. It's just so good already. So I can't wait to get home after this interview. Yeah, man. Can we wrap this up? It's like it's like a it's like a Western godfather. Oh my god. So good. Yeah. That's a good way of putting it. Well, last one of the short answer is a new segment called How Many Times Have You Said It Today? Your word is bro. I've said it probably about eight times today. Eight is respectable. That's a light eight. That's Mid to low tier. That's a long day. He's had a long day. That's not bad. You've heard him. Yeah, no, I haven't heard a lot of bros. Does that include text messages too?

Yep. Yeah. We never talked about that. It does. It does. I just oh bump it up to 10 then. Okay. It's 10 bros. bros. 10 bros. 10 bros. 10 bros. Moving on to part two. This is the this or that. I'm gonna give you two choices. You pick one. Right. Here we go. Starting with double digit bros. Satellite radio or terrestrial. Satellite. Fuck you, terrestrial. Fuck you, terrestrial radio. Who needs you? Why are you still here? Go away already. Start off with a layup. That was good. Thank you. Just to boost Jay wants to. Yeah, pop his shit, bro. Come on, man. Yeah, I got you. Ban TikTok or keep TikTok? Ooh, that's a good one. I say keep it. Yeah. Keep TikTok. Drake or Kendrick. Oh no, I'm not picking this one. Fine. We play both of them on our station. We do. Okay, fair enough. Movies or podcast, right? Still movies.

Incorrect. That was the only one that had a run. Does Pandora have podcasts, right? We do. Yeah. Okay. We actually got like some listeners on there, bro. I don't know what's going on there. Let's talk to him after. I know we need to figure out Get the boost. Okay. Uh-huh. I signed up for AMP. I think it has podcast stuff. And like I was in there once, like a long time. Yeah, not I should be in there more. Let's Get back in there. Uh-huh. Hunting or gathering. Jesus Christ, bro. I don't think I've hunted before, so I'm gonna take gathering. He's gathering, bro. He seems like a gatherer. Yeah. Doesn't he? Maybe the gunshot isn't good for the gathering. That's off brand. Yeah. Plan it out or wing it. Plan it out. Meditate or skydive. Meditate. Save a thousand strangers' lives or one loved one. One loved one. Delicious food with no calories or delicious alcohol with no hangover. Delicious food with no calories. And finally, become a full-time rapper or leave the music industry. Is it a successful rapper?

That's up to you. Yeah, we're so annoying, bro. What's the what's the deal structure like? Like there's a lot of questions. No further information. You're starting fresh. I'll say that. Starting fresh? You already have a hard rap name. J1. Well, okay. And you remember all those like pointers you gave the aspiring artists to build their fan bases to get you have to do those things. You have contacts at Satellite Radio and Pandora. Oh, I'm getting out the music business. Yeah. Okay. Or I'm gonna be somebody's manager or something like that. No, that wasn't an option. No. It was rapper or leave the music industry. No, I'm out. He's out, bro. I'm out. I'm out I'm working at a bank or something. J1, the banker. The last section is the word association, J1. I'm gonna say one word. You just give me the first word that you think of off the top of your head, as little thinking as possible. Here we go. Let's go. Starting with hip hop. Culture, podcast. Awesome.

Fish. Smelly. Anxiety. Common. Cousin. Family. Rotten. Tomatoes. AI. Interesting. Korea. South. Twitter. X. The letter R. Rhyme. Zombie. Walking dead. OnlyFans. Don't pay for it. Lil Dirk. Poster child. J1. Let's go. Poster child, J1. This has been J1. VP of programming at SiriusXM slash Pandora. Your favorite curator. Appreciate you coming on the podcast, man. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. Absolutely. As always, please like. Please like, comment, and subscribe. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcast, Pandora. Come on. Yes. Go listen to our podcast on Pandora. Yeah.

Do they have a review system there? Can they give us five thumbs up? Thumbs up. Give us a thumbs up. Yeah, give us a thumbs up, man. We Got those thumbs. Give us two thumbs up if you can. There you go. Send me the thumb, mascot coming soon. Oh, God. Until next week, Henry. What are we doing? Getting out of here. We're getting the fuck out of here. Peace. Y'all.