Music Lawyer Charges $0 for 75 Minutes of Game ft. Ryan Schmidt

I say this to indie labels all the time. Do you want a label or do you want a petting zoo? That company had forged my client's signature. Right. The label has to get their money back before you see your next dollar. I could get up to $150,000 if they intentionally stole that. And did you get the deal? We did get the deal. If you ask any seasoned music industry professional who an artist should add to their team first, they're probably gonna say a lawyer. This is a super not sexy part of the business, but it is so so important that we had to get someone on who could kind of break it down for us in a way that we and hopefully you guys can understand. Our community helped us come up with questions like how is a basic record label deal structured? What is publishing? How does that work? What are the legalities of AI and music? And Ryan Schmidt Esquire delivered on all of them. Let's start it right now. One more time. Then we do it one more time. One more time. Spend a rock. Spend a bumble time. I was on season three of The Voice.

What? Oh shit. And uh Damn, Ryan got pipes. And they wanted to know my story. And and uh I just graduated college and I said, I'm a guy uh like play music, and that's a shitty story. Like what else you got? You gotta be a lawyer. And they said, I said, okay, well that's that's that's who I am. They said, if music was gone tomorrow, if nobody turns around for you, et cetera, what would you want to do? And I said, uh I've always been fascinated in the legal side of things. I love the music business. I want to be a music lawyer. That's it. You're the music law kid. Whoa. And then, you know, five years later, I'm in Nashville. I've been doing the songwriter thing for a couple of years, kind of getting burnt out. I'm thinking, if it wasn't music, what would it be? Music law. Wow. I think we're kidding that story. Let's keep that one. That's it. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Ryan Schmidt, Esquire. Esquire. What's a fucking Esquire, bro? Esquire. It sounds like such a corny ass fucking title, bro. It

Sounds like official. It sounds British. Yeah. It is British. Oh, it is. Absolutely. Okay. Well, they just nailed it then. We're not, there's no mistaking where that came from, you know. So the legal system comes from well. Yeah, of course. And then they everything has to be a little fancy. So Esquire is the name that you give to your attorney. There it's like counselor or chancellor. Oh. Wow. But you know, here's which would you prefer? man, you can just call me Ryan. Like thank God. Okay. I think I could go this whole episode calling you Esquire. Yeah. Esquire Schmidt. What do you think about the music industry and music entertainment law? Um, all right. So I I wanted to kick things off by just like, what's like the biggest misconception legally that circulates the music industry? Because I just feel like there's a lot of people that think something is true that's just like blatantly not true. I think one of the biggest misconceptions in the music industry is that it's not important to get things in writing.

Yes, right? I see so many people that they've got something that went horribly wrong. They haven't been paid any royalties. And I say, well, what is that contract say? You know, did did you your agreement with your your your producer, your co-writer, did it say who's gonna pay what and when? The what? Well, well, we don't have a contract. The what? You need to get this stuff in writing. And look, I'm not just saying in a signed contract, like text messages and emails, make yourself a paper trail. I'm I'm pretty happy with that too. But when you have nothing, yeah, now we have problems. So text will hold up in court. It depends. Like a text can be a binding contract if it has the right elements. So this is where I get my a little bit like legal nerd, right? That's what we're here. It's what you're here for. So while we got you on the pod here, Ryan. A binding contract needs three things. Okay. Right? An offer, an acceptance of that offer and consideration. An offer just like, hey, I want to buy your car, I'll give you $5,000.

If you say yes, that's an acceptance of that. And the consideration is the mutual exchange of value, right? I'm gonna give you money, you're gonna give me the car, we're good. We've got we've got a contract now. That doesn't have to be in a signed agreement. We just need those three elements, and we need to have evidence of that we're all on the same page. Because if they're in a signed contract, those three things obviously exist. They should, right? Yeah, yeah. Like if a lawyer, if a lawyer drafts it, absolutely. If you pull it. If you pull it off offline, and it says stuff if you pull it offline and you're like, you know, in exchange for this, maybe I'll do that, and it's not super clear, then you might not have in perpetuity throughout the universe. Totally. Hey, can I have you review the contract that I signed between me and Henry? I'm just saying, like it was legal Zoom. Totally. I don't know. Sure, no, let's let's do it. Yeah, but but I'm kidding, guys.

I don't know. I mean, what if it is like did you fuck me? I didn't read it. You didn't read it either. No, that makes two of us. Yeah. But think about this text can like totally fuck you over, right? So say you're working with uh a producer, and the artist is working with a producer, and they're talking back and forth, and they're like, hey, how about 500 bucks for this beat? We split the publishing 50 50, we split the master 50 50. How's that sound to you? And the artist says, in a text, yes, let's do it. That sounds great. That is a binding contract because you've got all three elements. Yeah. And so they come to me, they're like, let's let's work out a deal, let's like negotiate this thing. They somebody comes back with those those text messages. And you're like, sorry, guys, we we already have a deal. Yeah. Yeah. No need for me. Yeah. So be careful with your text messages, I think, it's a big like a big part of it.

Or also just knowing that text messages can be at least a starting point. Once again, like having a formal contract, I'm sure can cover a lot more bases than that very simple text exchange that you just described. Yeah, if you want to avoid that situation, keep things kind of vague and like you're exploring the possibility. Hey, I think that I would like to maybe do this. You know, potentially let's explore that. Not sure. Yeah. It's all about the wording. You know, yeah. It's got me thinking that I should be like recording phone calls with people and shit now. It's kind of creepy to tap my fucking phone. Well, the recording part, there's some legal legal stuff with that too. I don't think as long as one as long as one party to the phone call consents to the recording and you are one party, you're usually pretty good. I don't have to tell them I'm recording. You don't have to tell the other party that you're recording. But if you don't record, and there's plenty of people that kind of dodge the contracts and the written agreements and that sort of thing, if you have something like that, and you have somebody that on the phone promises you the world, but they can't get something in writing, after every single phone call, whether it's a text or an email, follow up and say, hey, I just had a great conversation with you. I just wanted to recap this real quick.

How does that sound? Please let me know if if my understanding is correct. Now you've got proof of that verbal communication. How many, how many artists are just blatant? I mean, just creatives in general are just blatantly just not doing any of these things. Like, do do most, right? Right. And and and I'll I'll admit that when I was an artist, I wasn't doing any of these things. Damn it, Ryan. Fuck. This is good. We need this. Okay, you're right, you're right, you're right. You know, I I tell people, you know, you need it, you need to have your split sheets, you need to have things in writing, and this would I wasn't doing any of that. But that's that's what I try to be now. I try to be the mentor to myself 10 years ago with everything that I do. I'm hearing, hang on, I'm hearing like uh just our community screaming through their screens right now. Like a lot of people aren't making any money, they don't have any money anyway, like regardless of their music making money, and they probably don't think they're at a point where they, you know, need a lawyer. Is there a point?

Like, should that should the first dollars that they see from music be going to you know, some legal representation, or like is there a point where now maybe it makes sense? When do I call Ryan? There is some benefit to I haven't released anything, I haven't made any money. There is some benefit to talking to a lawyer, whether it's I need to set up an LLC for my music business, hugely beneficial. Which no one does. You know, nobody nobody does. But like, you know, I got screwed as an artist with being uh unaffiliated, not having an entity. But if I did have an LLC, now I've got some real tax benefits, and I've got some limited liability protection. Yes. Right. So having an LLC, super, super important. Whether you're going through a lawyer or you're going through LegalZoom, honestly, LegalZoom and all the other ones, they're gonna upsell you. It's gonna start really really small. They can say it's like 99 bucks.

But by the time you check out, they're like, it's gonna be a thousand bucks because you need this. I didn't know what I really needed when I was starting my LLC. Yeah, I was like, they're uh they're trying to be like, yeah, well, would you like this and that? And I'm like, do I need this? You don't need LegalZoom to start an LLC. I know, I know you made me very aware of that. But try but try to get LegalZoom. If you ever have a problem, try to get LegalZoom on the phone. No, it's not gonna happen. So what we what we do at Bowen and Schmidt Entertainment Attorneys is that we offer like flat fee LLC formations. So for you know, $750 for a single member LLC, we set up your LLC, we are your registered agents, we are we sign up your EIN and we're we're we're gonna give us an operating agreement. Absolutely. That that that's included. And if you ever have any problems, you can call us. Like you can't call LegalZoom. Yeah, you can't call Zen business. That's that's the best part, I think, right there. So that that's what you need. Setting up peace of mind.

So yeah, so setting up your business, you know, why else would I need to like speak with a lawyer before to Henry's point I'm even like making money? Is there are there a couple other things? Some things that I see all the time is, you know, artists call me and they say, I want to get everything, I want to get all my ducks in a row. I want to make I'm about to release some music. I want to make sure that I'm actually monetizing on all the different things. And I say, Are you set up with a PRO? And they say, What is that? Absolutely. Yep. Yep. I say, well, well, ASCAP or BMI is your friend. It's not a scam. Sign up for it. Do people use CSAC? Well, here's the problem with CSAC, right? I don't know anyone that uses CSAC. No, no, people did use CSAC. And see, it was it was ASCAP, BMI, CSAC. CSAC was the smallest of it. It was invitation only. Mm-hmm. CSAC, a couple years ago, there was plenty of artists that I had that were on CSAC. A couple years ago made the financial decision that 75% of their artists weren't earning enough money for them to be worth it.

And they sent notices that they were dropping them. Jesus. So I don't love CSAC. It's invitation only, and just no buyer beware, they might drop you. Okay. Jesus. So yeah, so helping them understand, like, you know, all the ducks in a row includes signing up for a PRO. You know, what else are you doing at the beginning? PRO, MLC, Sound Exchange, getting all your royalties like in check, because so many artists think that I I set it up, I send my song to DistroKid. Shout out to DistroKid, sponsor of the One More Time podcast. We love you, DistroKid. We love DistroKid. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. And they they think they they send their song to DistroKid, that they're making the money there, that they've collected all of their royalties. We're good, Ryan. I got DistroKid. I'm good. I got you are a piece of the pie. you are good for your distribution. But the truth is you've only collected about 70% of the money that your music is making. It is the biggest piece of the pie.

Biggest piece, but it's only one piece. But if you're making a big piece, that other 30% is a big piece. Oh, even if you're making a little piece, it's still big. Go ahead and take it. When I was touring, like I'm I'm I'm BMI. And when I was touring, you got BMI Live, you got ASCAP on stage. You can upload your set lists because every single venue pays a blanket license to the performance rights organizations. And they part of that license is to license my music. And so if I upload my set, I'm gonna get a chunk of that venue's license fee back to me. Yeah, because they played your music out loud in front of people. Yeah. No, no one I know is doing that. Quite literally, I don't think any of y'all motherfuckers are doing that. Can you do that retroactively? Can I go? How far back can I go like that? I think it's a quarter or two. I think it's a quarter or two, but do it. Guys, you don't want to enter the black box.

Yeah. They don't. Yeah. What's the black box? Okay. So for those who don't know, you've got a limited time to register your claims for your royalties, right? Whether that's your PRO, ASCAP, BMI, I'm not gonna say CSAC. Fuck SESAC. MLC sound exchange. Yeah. People kind of disagree on what the actual time span is, but I've heard as little as two years, as much as five years. Let's be like very, you know, very conservative. Let's say two years is your your limit. If the money that comes in, these these organizations collect, they don't know where to send it to because you haven't registered your songs. They're gonna say, I can't pay it to Henry, I can't pay it to Ben, because I don't know that that's their money. It ends up in this black box. If you don't register those within a certain amount of time, now they're going to blend all that up and send it out to all their other members, and they're gonna give it to the highest earning members. The people already making all that fucking money.

So, like, you know, Beyonce, Taylor Swift are getting your royalties because you didn't register it. How much do you think the big artists are getting in black box royalties every year? Millions. Really? No, really? Oh shit. It's insane. Yes. It's little amounts, I think, for the most part, but it's there's so many ton of people. Yeah, it's quantity. Yeah. Even if it's small, yeah. Yeah, well, quantity. Because think about it, you got 150,000 or so songs uploaded to the DSPs every single day. So okay, so signing up for PRO, MLC, and just like just you know, helping them get set up. That's definitely something that you can benefit from very early on in your career. But then the next time that you should talk to a lawyer is anytime you are handed a contract that is going to impact you over the long term. If if you have like a venue reaches out to you and they say, I want to pay you a couple hundred bucks to play this show tonight, you don't probably need to talk to a lawyer because it's gonna be over. They're either gonna pay you or they're not gonna pay you, right?

But if it's like I want to license your music, I want to record an album, I want to own part of your rights, talk to a lawyer. Yeah. Interesting. All right, so on that note, you know, I would say something that you probably work most on is record label deals, right? Or that's like a pretty common occurrence for you. Absolutely. Record deals, record label deals, distribution deals. Okay. Let's just like get a really basic high-level understanding of like the things that an artist should be looking for or that will exist within a record label contract. Okay. So I'm the hottest rapper in the city. Okay, right now. Of course you are. Yeah. I'm the hottest rapper. Sony just sent him a contract. Sony sent me the contract. What are the things that would be in it? First, I gotta ask what's your what's your artist name? Ah, we don't know. Well, play back then, I guess. PB maximum. PB maximum, I like it. Okay. PB Max? Okay, PB Max.

You just get a you just get a record deal. I I love it. Okay, it's kind of like Ava Max. You remember Ava Max? I don't want to. I don't if it has to do with PB Max, I don't want to. I don't want to remember, right? So you get a record deal for this is what I like. Yeah. And you're getting uh okay. The things you gotta look out for. First is the term. What's that? How long is that first part of the contract gonna last? Or how long is the entire contract gonna last? And so term is gonna include things like um the initial period of the contract and then option periods. How how long in total is this contract? And are these quantified in uh like days, years, or albums or songs? Or how does it on days usually it's usually a few days contract? It's usually 474 days. It's usually in months or years, yeah. Um usually in months, but it's usually like 12 months from when we the label release your album.

Okay. Yeah, that's the first term. Okay, okay, and then you've got different contract periods. So, like you got the first album, yeah, and then you got options. Okay, and yeah, I've heard about the options. What what are options though? Options are you you already finished that first album. I made my first album, it's a fucking smash. It's a smash. Okay, good. It's a hit. Options never benefit the artist. Okay, well, interesting. Fuck. Options are only good for the label. That means that you did so good on your first album. Smash that the label wants to renew you for X amount of different albums. And they do it one at a time. Oh. So it's the label's option. It's not your option. It's the label's option. Unilateral option. Unilateral. You don't get it. Only their choice. We get no option. You don't have an option. I have artists that call me and they're like, I want to exercise my option not to do it. I'm like, I got some bad news for you.

You ain't got that option, bro. So PB Max got no option. if you're doing a label deal, that option is gonna only benefit the label because if you're doing well, you're gonna be underpaid. You have signed up for your first album plus four options. That's four four different uh four different albums, right? And they're gonna keep signing you up. You could have had one album and that was like your whole deal, and at the end of it, they would have to renegotiate. And now, since you're a smash, PB Max is a smash, right? Yeah, now you've got some real bargaining power, and you can go to everybody else around around town and get the best label deal, but not so fast because you've got an option, right? So now they can say, I've already locked you in to this deal a year ago. I'm gonna exercise my option and I'm going to continue making albums with you. Ooh, okay.

So we got term, how long is this shit lasting, and options that come after my first project when it's a smash, and they are the labels options. Exactly. And so, you know, what are some of the other like just high-level things that are gonna be in the contract? Another thing you gotta look at is the idea of advance and royalties. Breakdown in advance is I think it's everyone's twisted about this shit. Still, I don't know how y'all are still twisted about it, because I even get it now. Yeah, but the most basic way of explaining advance is a pre-payment of royalties. It's a loan, it's a loan. But I will I will challenge you just a little bit on the loan. Yeah, okay. It is a non-recourse loan. That's a little lawyer lawyer speak. That means that if Sony gives you a million bucks, and PB Max, I know that you are a smash. I'm a smash, bro. But say you flop. Don't say it, Ryan. Say you flop. They're not coming for your house.

They're not coming after you. Yeah, they just hold on to your music for as long as you aren't recouped. Okay. Right. And what's recouped? Recouped. you're using lawyer words, Ryan. Yeah, we're going fifth grade level here. We need it, like, okay. So it's not a loan, but it kind of is. So you have an advance. Yeah. So you have an advance. I get a million dollars. Pre-payment of royalties. Yeah. And it could include uh a marketing budget, it could include money for recording, or it could just be straight. Here's here's some living cash. Moolah. Right, straight moolah. Cash money, baby. Exactly. If you are recouping, that means that the label has to get their money back before you see your next dollar after the advance. Yeah. And you're not being recouped like dollar for dollar. What does that mean? You are being recouped on your royalty rate. Which what's like a standard? It depends. Okay.

Major label, you're taking a huge advance. You're taking a huge bag. You're talking 10 to 20%. Meaning like the royalties that are generated from my Smash album, I'm only seeing 10 to 20% of that that is going towards my million dollars. Repayment. Exactly. And so literally, if it makes a dollar, if the song makes a dollar, only 10 or 20 cents is going towards my million. Exactly. Fuck. But if you're in like we should start a label. But if you're in like an independent or if you're in like a distribution deal, that might that percentage might be a lot higher. Sure. Yeah. Are 360 deals still a thing? That was like a huge. Why are you taking my questions, right? Oh shit. I don't know. I don't I don't know what your questions are, bro. But it's like it was a huge thing. They've changed the name 360 deal. It's no longer sexy to call it a 360 deal. They did a rebrand. Yeah, it's a rebrand. It's an ancillary rights deal. Okay.

You fucking lawyers in your okay. So you won't see 360 anywhere. But uh wait, it was actually called like people. It wasn't called it wasn't called 360. It was a street name. Yeah, Street name. it wasn't called 360 in the contract. But like the first big 360 deal was Madonna in Live Nation. Okay. She signed Of course it was Live Nation. she signed a 360 deal for millions of dollars to get the touring, the merchandising, the albums, the publishing, everything. And a 360 deal, also known as an ancillary rights deal, means that in exchange for me signing PB Max, I'm gonna get a piece of every little thing that you do in the entire entertainment industry, whether that's you act, you write a book, you go on tour, you make merch. I'm gonna do everything to help recoup that instead of just your recorded music. Okay. And so do those still exist?

They do still exist. Are they the most common? You can usually negotiate them down. You can negotiate down the percentage that they'll take in ancillary rights. What I like to say for artists that are negotiating those types of things is ask the label or the distributor what relationships they have in those different verticals to actually earn their fee. Yeah. Right? What are you gonna do for me to get me acting gigs? If you are taking my acting gigs, do you have like the connections to get me those auditions? Because if you don't, you're just collecting money that you're not earning. I say this to the indie labels all the time. Do you want a label or do you want a petting zoo? And by that I mean, do you want to actually work on the rights that you have, or do you just want to like hold on to a bunch of artists and not be able to do anything with them? Yeah. Damn, petting zoo was that was crazy, Ryan. Okay.

All right, all right. So anything else that's just like kind of basic, you know, record label deal one on one that that you know our audience should know, or does that kind of cover the basis? I mean, those are good. You're gonna also want to know the difference between net and gross. What's that? So gross money is every single dollar that comes in. Okay. Net is defined in that contract, but it's usually you you get your royalties based off a net. Gross minus expenses. Yeah, it's usually gross minus expenses, but the way that expenses can be defined can be very broad to where you will never see any net royalties. So is have you had to go into a contract and refine what a label's trying to pass off as expenses? Absolutely, because a label could like go out and take the radio executive in X City out to a $6,000 dinner. They could rent a PJ, they could do all this stuff, and now you've got $2,000,000 debt on top of your advance and all this other stuff, and you'll never recoup. So what I like to do is I like to add in the definition of expense that has to be direct, I mean directly connected to PB Max has to be an actual expense and it has to be verifiable.

Like you've got receipts to show me when you send me that accounting statement. Damn the PJ example is crazy, bro. We need this too. Um imagine, bro. You're like, I thought I was almost recouped. Like, no, we have a hundred K more for the PJ that we that we flew. We got you for a little while. Fucking rate J1 from Pandora on. No, he would never do that, guys. Well, he would never do that. He would never do that. He doesn't know who the hell PB Max is Oh my God. All right. I don't know. Um, so what's the most what's the most common question that you get? I'm an artist, like you got hundreds, thousands, whatever, you know, however many artists hitting you up. You get DMs, I bet. Yeah, like artists in your in your you know, content, whatever. So artists asked me if I can get them deals and what what can I do for their music career, right? And my answer is legal work, right? So there's this misconception.

Shout out to Donald Passman, all you need to know about the music business, right? And he says that one of the first people you need on your team is a music lawyer because he is a music lawyer and he was writing the book and he was building a funnel, a business for himself. Love it. It's worked out great for him. He sold millions of copies. He's on version 27 or something. Totally. And I buy all of them, right? But they they call me and they say, I read that book, and can can you get me the deal? And I say, I can't get you the deal. They call one of the three major labels, right? And they say, I'm so and so, I've got a great album. I want to send it to you. I think you might have a I think you might have something that you want. And they say, We won't take unsolicited demos, but call back with an entertainment attorney, and we'll absolutely listen to it. Really?

That is not an invitation to send that demo once you hire an entertainment lawyer. That is a gatekeeping device because they know that most people won't do that. Oh, so but the you the burden goes to you. Right. So people call me, and they're like, I just talked to Sony on the phone, super nice lady, and she says, All I gotta do is hire you, send send my you know, my SoundCloud. and now I'm gonna get a deal. And I say, uh, yeah, well, who who do I send? Like, which which A and R, which executive No. No. No. Karen at the front desk, right? No, she's good. She's good people. So that's that's a big that's a big thing that I see, and I hate that labels do it. They pass the buck, and I gotta break the news to him. I'm like, sorry, it doesn't really work that way. They send you through this dog and pony show. Like, why? Yeah, it's just like, can you get me a deal? Can you get me a deal? Um, another thing is there's artists that haven't released any music that are obsessed with the idea that people are gonna steal their music.

Oh my god, I have that. Like that music is gonna make millions of dollars and they're gonna lose out. And so they're like, hey, can you copyright this right now? I need to copyright everything. Dude, you haven't released any music yet. Like But something that we do hear a lot that I believe is true, but also kind of finicky. Maybe you can clear it up. No, bro. Is that the second that you turn your song into a digital file? It is in itself copywritten. Absolutely. So the copyright act says that the moment you take your idea and you put it into a tangible medium of expression. That's the copyright nerd language. So I can write it down. You write it down on a notebook, I can sing it. You sing it into uh I voice recorder. It's an MP3 from Pro Tools. Exactly. Once you put that, you do have a copyright, right? But there are limitations. You knew it was coming, bro. There are limitations on what that means. You own it, it's yours, you have it, you're good.

But what can you do if somebody steals it? You get extra protections if you federally register it. What kind of extra protections? You can't go to court With my file. With your file. No. You've got to federally. Hey, judge, hear my mixtape. though. I got it right here, come on, man. I got the WAV file too, bro. We're High quality. Flack, you know. I got it in Flack. What's that? Higher than WAV. That's another lossless, you know. You fucking nerds. Lossless, man. Tidal shit. We're just like nerd specs. He just fucking flew around. We make music. Uh yeah. I never claimed to. So you get you get that. You also get statutory damages. So like if I just write on a piece of paper, I go make an MP3, whatever, I have to prove my actual damages. Which means like I have to show that the other person made X. amount of money. A million dollars, a million dollars for me, off of my fucking song. For me to be entitled to a million dollars.

Yeah. If I've already registered it and then they steal it, now I've got a range of statutory predetermined damages that I could get up to 150,000 if they intentionally stole that without having to prove anything else. So if they make $0, you can still get some crazy bag if they intentionally stole it. So let's go to Juice WRLD on that note. You know where I'm going with that. Okay, all right. I want to bring up Juice WRLD. Go ahead, just bring it up. So ask it in however which way you want to ask this, because I know where you're going. Yeah, we've talked about this a million times. So, you know, I work with a lot of artists. I produce, I like sampling, you know. Of course. And it's not all I'm not clearing, I don't have a clearance budget mechanism going before me. But I like to point artists to Juice WRLD who made a song called Lucid Dreams that is very largely the reason that skyrocketed him to where he was. Rest in peace. But it was an interpolation of a sting song. Sting notoriously does not like when you use his ideas.

He's done. They waited for it to become, you know, multi-platinum, whatever, because you can do that. You can also wait until it's massive. Came back, went to court, now owns like 90% of the song. Of course. But he's only collecting, he's only allowed to collect the money that was made off that one song, right? But he is now Juice WRLD. He's still his brand is now who he is. He can now go do a show and make 25,000, 50,000 for a show. He can come out with the next single and it's gonna stream and make a million dollars. So it are there, you know, is what kind of recommendations would you give to artists who are considering interpolating and or sampling without going down the formal clearance process. I talk to artists every single day that say, I can't afford samples, and I get it. It's Like it's tough in the streets, right? They charge insane amounts to clear insane amounts. There's the Juice WRLD example, there's the uh Lil Nas X, Old Town Road. That was a nine-inch nails sample. They waited till that became one of the biggest things ever.

They own over 50% of that. Oh wow. Oh, man. Because you gotta clear your samples. Most artists think that the song isn't gonna blow up. You know, I'm I'm nobody's gonna find out that it's here, whatever. But when it does, you are just like risking your your whole bag on it from that one song though. From that one song. Yeah, couldn't it be like if it's the one though? What if it's the song that takes me there? Yeah, you've you've you maybe built a career off of that, yeah, but you gotta give up a big piece. So there's different there's different things. I always try to say, like, what is your risk tolerance? Yeah. If you can sleep at night, be like, you know, somebody could come after me. Like, I know there's like a Billie Eilish sample in there, right? But I don't think she's gonna come after me, whatever. Cool. You can you can call me or anybody else when you do get sued, and hopefully it doesn't, it never happens, right? Yeah, but.

But you know, if you're if you're thinking about it ahead of time, you get the clearances or you find other types of samples that are easier to clear. Hey, Henry here. Sorry to interrupt this podcast, but there's something I have to address. As many of you know here at one more time, we love doing live music reviews. We love hearing the music from our community and providing helpful feedback that is hopefully helping you further your career. But if there's one piece of advice that we are tired of giving, it's that your master is too quiet. We shouldn't have to turn up the volume for your song just to have to turn it back down for the next song. That's not good. But Henry, good mastering engineers are so hard to find and so expensive. Enter DistroKid's newest tool called Mixia. I master music myself, and while I don't think AI mastering will ever replace the quality you get from an experienced human mastering engineer, it's pretty damn good. And if you already distribute through DistroKid, you can now master unlimited tracks using Mixia. And if you don't, we have a link right here. You can sign up for DistroKid with 30% off. Upload unlimited music yearly for an insanely cheap price.

Humans perceive louder as better. It's dumb, but it's true. Use Mixia for a clean master, and you won't sound weak on that playlist. Let's get back to the episode. What is some legislation that's going on right now that you think is good for the overall state of the music business? We've got, you know, AI is huge right now. Oh, here we go. Right. When we talk about AI, we've got two different in the music industry. We've got two different laws that really apply. We've got copyright and we've got the right of publicity. Copyright is what we've been talking about. It's protecting your sound recording and your composition. We're talking about your master and your publishing. When we're talking about that's that's all like somebody stole my lyrics, somebody stole my music, somebody stole my actual sample sound recording. That's all copyright. And AI comes into play because now you've trained this model and it's spitting out something that sounds like it, or you've, you know, you've used it in some way. You've also got the right of publicity, right?

Like I use AI to make the next PB Max song that you haven't signed off on. We've seen it with, you know, um the ghostwriter, Heart of My Sleeve with Drake in the Weeknd. Then Drake goes ahead and does it with Snoop and Pac. Snoop and Pac. And it's every anybody can do it. The problem is the right of publicity is a state law, and it varies from state to state. There's only 19 states that actually have a real right of publicity. So there's a lot of states where you would just be completely out of luck. We need federal right of publicity laws so that everybody can be protected, not just celebrities, when AI steals, clones your voice, and does something that harms you, whether it's make a new song or you know, make some recording that harms your business or your personal relationships or something like that. The irony is that like when it is a celebrity, it's easier to think that it's AI, because it's like, oh, they're a celebrity.

But if someone makes an AI of like a mid-level, you know, kind of it's like, oh, there's no way that someone made an AI of them. It's almost more believable that way. So clearly everyone needs some protection. So right now in half of the states or more, literally, people can make AI music and publicize it, and there's no repercussions. Yeah. And you said 19 states are protected? 19 states are protected. There's 11 more that consider a right of publicity more of like a common law. It's not like an actual law, but it's considered part of the legal fabric of the state. But you know, I'd say about half of them don't have those protections, and you get into some real legal issues about where the lawsuit should be filed, who has jurisdiction, and it's it's it's really messy, and there's no good clear issue. Even even like the Tupac thing, like there isn't a good legal precedent for what to do there. But we need like a right of publicity federally that looks like copyright, right?

Like if I have copyright and somebody steals my song and puts it on Spotify, I can do a takedown. I can I can issue a takedown, say to Spotify, that's my song, take it off of this person's channel because that's mine. If somebody makes a song and they use my voice, I don't have that same protection. I've I've got to look to the state. So I think federal protections that look like copyright, like a takedown mechanism as well, I think that'd be hugely beneficial. So if I'm an artist and I think someone's stolen my song, melody, lyrics, beat, whatever. Um what do I need to initiate a takedown? You can go to YouTube, Spotify, wherever it exists, and you can there are takedown procedures. There's the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which created the takedown. And basically it said that in the digital world, there's gonna be so many people uploading things to the different services. And the services, it shouldn't really be liable for what the people do because they're just providing the service.

It's so much burden on them if they would have had a scrub the fucking world to know that Ryan didn't steal PB Max's hit. Exactly. So there's a limited amount of notes and chord progressions out there too. It's like so what they do is they give them what's called a safe harbor, and they say, if YouTube, if you create something that's super easy for people to issue a copyright strike and you honor that, no questions asked, then you, YouTube, will not be liable for that person violating the copyright. So that act is just covering the platform's assets for the most part. Absolutely. But but so can I just initiate a copyright strike on anybody that I fucking want to? You can, but here's the here's the problem. You that starts the process, then that other party has a right to make a counterclaim to say that strike was BS, I actually own that, here's why. And they're going to do a value judgment.

And if you don't actually own it, they're gonna put it right back up. But so what what can I show to prove that I own it? You know what I mean? Like, do you know what is being is there an arbiter? You know, no, it's not just like what's being supported. Is it like timestamps of when I made it? Is it you know, just yeah, like what can I actually show? Your best evidence is the copyright registration. So that's where that comes into play. Like, look, look, I registered this and you are given under the law, you were given the presumption of ownership. Whoever registers that, the law presumes is the owner because like you wouldn't register something you don't own. Whoa. So it's it's it's a very powerful thing. But the takedown thing is for is about 14 days. You see, like you see celebrities suing fans and other people all the time. And they're like people on Instagram, on TikTok are like, that's so petty that they did that. They had no other choice, right?

Like the bad bunny situation. They sued a fan who filmed some live shows. The fan sued uh the fan recorded like a third of the entire concert and put it on YouTube. And it was pretty bad. Like arguably could there could have been fans that said, I saw that concert, I don't need to pay now to go see it. I've seen it on YouTube. So he is How do you feel about that? It doesn't compare to being at the show, obviously at all. No, but like, do you think it's cool or justified for Bad Bunny and his team to be suing a fan that uploaded uploaded a video? I'm sure his team probably convinced him that this is an extra bag we should be getting, but I've I'd like to think that if I was an artist, I would love my fans share spreading the word and evangelizing it. Yeah, like what do you think about that? So it's complicated because of the takedown uh mechanism, right? They ask for that to be taken down. If it's if it's one song, if it's a clip, artists aren't gonna care. That's unit user-generated content.

It's all good for them. It's good for everybody. Yeah, yeah. If we're talking about a big chunk of a concert, there could be fans that say that concert's trash, I don't need to go see it. Or they could say, they they could say, I have already seen it now, like I don't need to, like somebody like watched the bootleg, they don't need to go to the movie theater and see it again, right? So that's impacted the market for ticket sales. So the takedown takes it down for 14 days. In that situation, Bad Bunny says, I own the copyright to these songs. He's used a big portion of it. The guy who posted it says, I think it's fair use. I'm going to keep it up. At that point, YouTube is gonna put it back up because they're not gonna make a legal judgment of who owns what. They're just, how can they not though? Because the the because the takedown says that if you are the person that made the strike and somebody can bats it, your only choice to keep it down is to now file a copyright lawsuit. And then then they could show YouTube we're filing a copyright lawsuit, keep it fucking down.

You say, here's, here's my court stamped lawsuit. You, YouTube says, thank you very much. We'll keep it down. But if you don't do that, it goes back up. Oh shit. So you know, you know, our people think those artists are being really petty. They have no choice but to do that to keep it down. It's interesting, man, because I went live last night asking our community like what kinds of questions they wanted to ask. And it's so funny that you mentioned the whole like most common question that you do get asked is like, how do I prevent people from stealing my shit? And like that was one of the questions. And I guess that is that is the way. It's like if you genuinely think that, and this is what I kind of told the community I was like, look, I'm not I'm no lawyer, I'll talk to the lawyer tomorrow night, guys. But like I think what he's gonna say is is like you're gonna have to probably pursue a lawsuit. Yeah, to like really get it, to really get it taken down for good. It sounds like you're going to pursue a lawsuit, you're gonna need to hire a lawyer, whether it's a demand letter, whether it's a lawsuit, you're gonna need legal counsel. You're not gonna just be able to like call up Warner and say, hey, one of your artists stole my song, it's they're gonna ignore you. You know, so you got you gotta do that.

You also have to be able to find that use. Like it's pretty hard, you know, it's kind of a needle in the haystack. If somebody stole your song and took a little bit of it and made it a sample or whatever, it can be kind of hard to find that. There's AI tools now that do scan that and do like police the internet for that, which is something that I think is pretty good. If the amount of time and money that you have to put into something like that, unless the song that they stole from you is very obvious and it becomes huge and it makes a ton of money, it's like just make more songs. Yeah. Just take it as like they like you, they fuck with the sound you made enough to try and incorporate it into their own thing. It's just be humble and move on. Unless maybe there's like, you know, it's a huge record and you think it's worth your time. I don't know. It just seems like a lot to do. Yeah. So I was like kind of nervous to bring this up, but I'm gonna just I'm gonna just go for it, bro. Okay. Lawyers catch a lot of grief, bro. They do. There's a lot of like negative sentiments around lawyers. And the truth is a lot of lawyers earn that negative reputation.

What do you mean? Why? There's a lot of lawyers that earn the reputation of being standoffish, being too good for other people, being too important and too smart for others. And that's bullshit. I hate most lawyers. Yeah. Okay. Like what I try to do with everything in my being and every representation is be like a friend to my clients. Because I know that there's so many artists out there that have this negative um experience with a lawyer or negative idea of a lawyer that they're just out for money, they're not gonna have time for me, whatever. As a as an artist turn music uh turned music lawyer, I never want people to feel that way because I also had that. I hated calling lawyers. Like I knew when I had to, I I would, but I was thinking, how much is this gonna cost me? Are these people gonna judge me?

Whatever. I also think you being an artist is so dope that you've actually like been in the shoes of the people that you're representing. I think that I would just feel like I could trust you way more. Like this guy wrote songs. He gets it. He was lived in Nashville, whatever. Like, you know. And I also think that this guest who shall not be named was talking more like people that defend like murderers and shit, you know, people that beat their wives and stuff. So, you know, you're doing like music cases. I think it's a little more innocent. I think I think she was pretty much generalizing the fuck out of here. She used the word murderers at one point. She did, but it was also kind of general. Yeah, so you know, another question we got asked from from you know, from our community was how do you get paid? Like, you know, what is the structure for paying a lawyer? There's a few different payment structures for a lawyer. There's the hourly rate, which I don't like, right? That means that I've got a set hourly rate, whether it's 200, whether it's a thousand dollars an hour, whatever it is, and whatever, however long it takes me, it takes me, and you'll get a bill at the end of the month. Hey, it took me 10 hours.

Here's your bill. I hate that because that isn't nobody likes that. Nobody likes that experience of getting the invoice and the email. Of not knowing how many hours it's gonna take. No, it's like it's like imagine going to a mechanic and they're like, it's gonna cost what it costs, man. Probably a lot, you know. You wouldn't, you'd be like, no, I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. Probably a lot. So then there's then there's container. Then there's flat fee. Oh, yeah. And that's like a whether it's a contract, whether it's a certain type of case. Your LLC signups. Your LLC signups. We're gonna do this for this quoted amount. And whether it takes us five times as long for whatever reason, it's always this amount. And then you've got a percentage base, right? Like if you've got a deal coming in, the artist like doesn't have any money. This is very artist-friendly. Um, if you have a deal coming in, the artist has no money, it's their first deal, the label isn't offering to put in some money for you to have a lawyer review it, then you've got a percentage that the lawyer can take on the back end, a percentage of the advance, and usually that's five to ten percent. Damn, okay.

So for, yeah, so it's just kind of depending on like and then you got to retain you got a retainer as well. Yeah, yeah. And retainer, retainer is I we don't do retainers because I don't want clients to ever feel nervous about calling us, right? There are lawyers that charge retainers, and that's just like the privilege to have the ability to call them, right? Like you, you're gonna pay me X amount a month, or you're gonna pay a big chunk up up front, and now you can call your lawyer because like you've already you've already paid them. We do things differently. Like, I only charge for legal work. If you've got a case for me, you've got a contract for me. But if you are my client, you're not sending me an invoice if we if I call you and we talk on the phone for 10 minutes. If you're my client and like you have a question, I never want you to feel scared to call me. Like, I want you, I'd much rather have a five, 10 minute conversation with you and know that you're protected and you're registering your song, or you're getting those text messages instead of creating a situation that's much more expensive for you and for me in the long run. So are there ever times I'm assuming there are, but are there ever times where you know you're trying to explain to a client why this is a good deal and they're not necessarily like understanding it or they're kind of fighting.

You know, what I mean, is there ever uh contention between you and your clients when it comes to like the the terms of a deal? It's usually the opposite. It's usually that clients, many artists get a deal and they might even accept the fact that it's shit, right? And and truthfully, but they have been grinding for so long, and now they've got this opportunity, and they think, well, everybody's this is kind of like what do you got to do? You gotta sign this bad deal. And I would much rather say I'm signed to X label and still have this shit deal than be independent. Sounds good. I'm signed. So there's that. Like, if I'm taking a percentage, I will say to artists, like, I know that this is bad for me, right? Like, I know that I'm not gonna get paid at all for the 50 hours we put into this deal. This is a bad deal. We should walk away from it. There are other times where you know, I I say to artists, this is this is a great deal.

And for whatever reason, maybe they don't like the AR person, maybe the deal that was presented was different from the communications they had leading up to the deal, that can kind of really influence whether or not they want to do it. Like, say say AR is like, I'm gonna give you a half a million dollar deal, we're gonna do a licensing deal, it's gonna be amazing, and you're gonna get 50% of the royalties, right? And the artist's like, this sounds awesome, and they get the contract, and they're gonna get $30,000, 20% and the label's gonna own the masters. Oh, what the fuck? That's way different. Yeah. Let's talk about master ownership for a second. Is it like it's a huge thing that every artist thinks that it's it's just like this is the be all end all? I gotta own my masters. I got to. Yeah, who else can own them but me, Henry?

The label is that is that is that the mindset that artists should have. Like, where do you stand on master ownership? I guess. I think you have to look at master ownership in the whole circumstance of what that deal is, right? If a label is gonna give you a massive advance, you should probably understand that you're also not going to own your masters because you have traded your masters for this big bag. If you're taking no advance or a lower advance, then you should maybe license it and they don't own it, they've got it for a certain amount of time. The other thing to think about is if you were the songwriter, you can always make new masters of your song, Taylor's Taylor's version. Taylor's version, dude. Shout out to Taylor, it's kind of set a precedent. Everyone on game, yeah, you got the whole master situation. You gotta be careful though. There is a backlash in the industry to the Taylor's version.

The late labels hated that Taylor did this. Of course. For for 50 years or more in the recorded industry of of labels, they said you could, once this deal is over, you could re-record your masters because it's your song. After X amount of time, right? But it's it's short. It's usually like two to five years after this deal ends. Now it's a long time. Now it's a long time. But I've even seen like if you record this master with me under my label, you will never record this on. Wow, they're doing that now. They're trying that. Yeah. Is that flying? Not with me. Y'all go hire Ryan. Schmidt. That's quiet. That's right, baby. Yeah. He ain't letting that shit fly. Yeah, I heard that I read that used to be like a tiny little thing that no one really even considered in contracts. And now it's like a major function of every contract. Huge thing. Thanks, yeah.

Thanks, Taylor. Yeah. So I know you kind of touched on this on, I think it was Ray's podcast, but I do want to ask like, what is the biggest difference between a traditional label deal and a distribution deal? Because distribution deals are becoming so fucking popular right now. They're kind of like the new, you know, the new hot thing. Um, so just for our audience, like if you can break down the biggest differences between the two from like a you know high-level perspective, that'd be good. Absolutely. So we were talking about the label deal. We're talking about usually the label's gonna own. They could they could potentially license it, but they're gonna own the masters. It's gonna be a much lower royalty rate for the artist. It's gonna be a long term, right? And they're gonna offer all the traditional label services, such as radio, um art, artwork, tour support, you know, any music videos, marketing, anything that a label might do. Okay. uh I think it's important for that because some people literally still think that like labels are just giving you money, and like you can make an argument, you know, an argument for that if you want. I know a ton of qualified people that work at labels that do work in these other departments, and you are getting a fucking system if you work it right.

Once again, some artists don't get the love, and like that's the whole other, you know, conversation. Some artists get shelved. Exactly. But there also are some artists who like they want you to win. The digital marketing person is going to bat for you and like creating some fire fucking ads for you and like concepts of like ways to promote your records. So like you're getting some other shit other than just like the advance. You know what I mean? So that's the label deal. And then you got the distribution deal. And that might be from a label that just wants to offer you kind of the light version of their label deal. It's a junior deal. Yeah, they're not gonna give you like all the juice, and you're gonna get a better royalty rate because they're not doing as much, and you might be licensing your your music to them instead of giving up the masters, much smaller advance. Or it might be an actual distributor. They don't, they're not like a traditional label, but they are going to, they've got a good distribution network, and they probably have some pretty good marketing. Like they'll have like a marketing budget.

You'll get 70% of everything, they'll give you a small advance, they'll push it out on marketing, and we'll see what happens. That's why it's popular, I think. It just it sounds sexier, you know. But I mean, why do you think it's becoming more popular? I really think it's this misconception over the idea of master ownership. It the the word, the word master is in there, but it doesn't say we the label or we the distributor own it outright as a work for hire forever and ever. It says we license it for a certain amount of years. You know, what I was saying on Ray's podcast was you gotta be careful there. It's not just the the years that you see there. You know, it might say that you license it for 10 years. But it's actually you license it for 10 years, but if you're unrecouped, at the end of those 10 years, it's going to continue until the time that you've been recouped. Oh, really? So that could be a long time, or that could be forever.

Yeah. Depending on the advance, right? Exactly. Could be interesting. Damn. So yeah, I didn't understand that, like, because you know, you think kind of like, oh, like I distribute the song there, but then once my like contract's up, like I can distribute it through whoever the fuck at that point, right? What I like to do there is I like to build in buyout provisions, which means that like, say it's been three years, two years, five years from when that song was released. I, as the artist, can offer to the distribution company the ability to buy out that license for a predetermined percentage of my like usually it's like 150% of the unrecouped balance, right? And usually I'm not paying for it if if I've got some hot traction, like another label or another distribution company will say, I want to buy you out of your old deal because I want to work with you so bad. But if you have that, you can do it.

Otherwise, you gotta wait until it's until it's done. Okay. See, I always heard about like another offer buying them out of an old deal. So that's how that kind of works. Yeah, you can have it in the contract that it says like this is the set amount, or you know, practically you can just negotiate. You can reach out to them, say somebody wants to pay off my debt. I think a lot of distribution companies and a lot of labels will say, Yeah, I'll I'll entertain that. We don't see the silver lining in this one. So what's their offer? Yeah. For sure. Well, Henry. Yeah. We've entered a final segment of the podcast. I'm curious, real quick. Mr. Esquire. On the note of AI, like, you know, we're very much in defense of like getting it right. Do you see any like good with AI and music? Do you think it has a place? Are there any benefits? Yeah, exactly. Like the flip side of the coin? Yeah, like legal, you know, legal Ryan aside, maybe, and just like personally speaking, like how do you feel about AI? I think you know, we we talk about distro kid, right? I think that there's a lot. The greatest DIY distributor on the planet.

I think that there's a lot of good that AI can do. You know, you got Mixia, that's AI mastering. Right. Right. There's a lot of there's a lot of doing an ad for us? We're gonna use that ad in this episode, maybe. Or maybe we don't because he just did it. We'll use a different one. You've got a lot of AI that isn't just your your traditional chat GBT, mid-journey, you know, Suno, Udio, whatever. There's AI is everywhere, right? And there's a lot of good. I say to people, AI is not gonna take away anybody's jobs. AI is gonna take away jobs of people that don't use AI. It's a productivity booster. You can make more music, you can make um more output, yeah, and you can be more successful if you use it. And and I and I just hope that the AI tools that rise to the top are the ones that are ethically trained. Ethical AI, that's the big one. That's that buzzword. Yeah, that ethical in front of it.

Yeah, it's big. Changes the game. It does. Well, Mr. Esquire, we have entered the rapid fire rampage. This is gonna be a three-part rampage. Let's go. We're gonna start with just some short answer. Easy questions. Let's go. Let's get into it. Starting with, what did you have for lunch today? I have I had Zaxby's. Me too. Damn. Me too. Kick and chicken sandwich. Would you have wings and things? Had the Zax pack. Oh, okay. Tenders and the Texas Toast. I feel you, bro. They offered me if I fill out the survey at the bottom of the receipt, I can get two of those for the price of one. Did you do it? I mean, it's not my order. I still have the receipt though. We'll see. Thanks for bringing it up though. Really valuable information. Ryan, tell us about the craziest case you've worked on. The craziest case I ever worked on is a distributor catalog buyer in the UK. I represented an artist. The artist was offered a deal to buy out their catalog from this UK distribution company. So own all their masters.

To own to own all their certain amount of their masters. Okay. And it seemed like a pretty pretty good deal. But I said to them, if they're reaching out to you kind of cold call, there might be other people that want to do that. There's plenty of people that will buy your catalogs. First offer is usually not the best offer. Usually not the best. You know, there's even like the small ones, uh like Duetti and Beatbread, there's other places that you can go to. Just shop around, right? And so we went to those other places, and they said, I'm sorry, we can't offer you a deal because that company had already shown us a signed contract between you and them. What? For the deal. That company had forged my client's signature to shop deals with those companies. And what he was gonna do is he was gonna offer a deal 20%, 10% of whatever they were offering, already cash in on that and reach out to him and say, Do you want to sign this? Based on a forged document.

Wow. Damn. What a scam, bro. So because he hired you and you took him to other places and shopped him around, you discovered We discovered that we reached out to the company, sent a very nice letter saying, you know, you've got strongly worded. You've got a very limited amount of time to make this right, or we're gonna go to war. Yeah. Turns out it wasn't the company. It was this rogue agent in the company doing some real sketchy business. They had no idea. Fire him, they give us all of the assurances that we need with the other people. They like copy on the emails. I'm so sorry. We don't have a deal. We don't have a deal. We don't have to do. And we can go forward and have a deal with all those other companies. And did you get the deal? We did get the deal. Let's go! With a different company. Yeah. Yeah. What a good story. That is a good one. Damn. I'm so glad that that actually came through in the end. It's just one of many stories, probably where hiring a lawyer massively worked out.

Hey, man. Forget what that other lady said on the podcast. Go lawyers. No, for real. Ryan, if you were an item in someone's kitchen, what would you be? I'd like to think that I am a like a good, like a knife. You know, like you use it every single day. Dependable, dependable, sharp, sturdy. You know, sturdy. And um, yeah. Like you got nice. Yeah, I like that. I had to oven mitt um stops people from getting burned. Oh, I like that. Oh, you think you did something there, bro? You really think you did something there. I like knife too, though. It's a good one. Um start this one off with free Jeff. Free Jeff. I don't want to put that on Ryan, but once a pro I mean, he doesn't have to say it. I'm saying it. Well, you looked at him and me. Which Jeff were we talking? Young Thug. Not Jeffrey Epstein. No. Jesus Christ. The only Jeff that matters, Ryan. Once and for all, some of y'all know where I'm going.

Are lyrics admissible evidence in a court of law? How is what's going on there? Yeah, this this really should never happen. But this is we are getting um both statewide and federal, we're getting bills that are introduced to protect the admissibility of lyrics against artists in criminal trials. It should never it should never happen because art is make believe, right? It's art. It's art art. It's not everything that anybody writes in lyrics is 100% factually accurate or who they are or who they represent themselves to be. They it's lyrics. It's embellished. It's this evidence should only be based on what actually happened, who somebody actually is, what they actually did, and not some piece of art that they made. Damn.

There it is. There it is. Free Jeff. God damn it. What is one of the dumbest things you bought online? Oh man. Um you know, like the late night um infomercials where they like try to sell you like old like bundled CDs. Like there was like a late, late night drinking, like in college, where I bought like a seventies, like disco pack of CDs. And there was 20 of them, and I think it was like a subscription. So I think in total I paid like $300 for CDs. Damn. Remember when you had to pay for music? Jesus. Okay. They were great. I I kind of regret it. He doesn't actually regret it. Good. That's good. So breakdown fair use for us when it comes to music copyright. What artists and producers should maybe be considering when they're sampling, where they can maybe go to sample things where they aren't, you know, gonna get in too much trouble. And also the difference between straight sampling something and interpolating something, actually.

I know this is a huge question. I was like, this is so many things. I just remembered those. These are all great. I just remembered that the Juice World thing, they interpolated it instead of directly using the file, the master, you know? Sure. And that somehow is not as harsh of a absolutely so let's start with fair use. Yes. You see so many YouTubers say, like, this is fair use. I don't mean it, I don't own anything. Don't hit me with a copyright strike, don't sue me because it's fair, it's fair use. Fair use isn't a right that anybody has, it is a defense when you get sued for copyright infringement. Oh it's not a right, it's it's something that could protect you from being liable for somebody's like, you know, you got parody, you've got um commentary, you've got news reporting, you've got educational use. It's gonna be something that you say, I think that I shouldn't be liable for using your thing because of X, Y, and Z. I think I've transformed it enough, or I think that it's some some fair use, but it's only gonna protect you when you get sued.

And if you rely on it on the front end, you you could get burned. So, what if I'm a YouTuber and I want to use a popular song in my video? Am I allowed to? YouTube's different because YouTube has licenses with all the major platforms. So they're gonna let you keep that on there. They're just either gonna demonetize it or they're going to um make sure that that's paid out to the owners of the copyright. Wow, okay. All right. So then I do like the interpolation versus sampling. So what's the difference between interpolating versus sampling and like how does it impact artists, producers, writers, et cetera? When we talk about an actual sample, you know, we we talk about both sides of the copyright. We've got the sound recording and we've got the composition, right? The master and the music and lyrics. That is in a sample, you've got to clear both sides of that. You've got to clear with the label and the publisher to be able to make that in your new song, create a derivative work. Yep.

In interpolation, you've created a new kind of sound alike. You don't aren't you aren't using the master recording. No, you're not using the sound recording. You still need the permission from the publishing side because you Because it's the music and lyrics. You're using the music and lyrics. These notes in this order. Yeah, it's not the actual version, like the file or so you only need to clear half of it, which is why sometimes in like TV or or movies too, you might hear some cover, because that's half the price. Oh, yeah, to to put that in that the movie. Wow, maybe interpolate versus straight sample. That's kind of a good thing. Oh, but but when we talk about like some other um good ways to sample that are free or near free, um really, really old records. Public domain that are in the public domain. Yes. How old do they have to be? They have to be X years after the writers die. So there's there's two different ways.

The copyright lasts 70 years after the last living author dies, which can be a long time. A lot of the things that are entering the public domain were under the most of them, all of them, 1909 copyright act. So that was 95 years. So that's why like Mickey Mouse entered the public domain this year. So 95. So we can use Mickey Mouse's theme song. Not a theme song. You can use Steamboat Willie as he was depicted in his first cartoon. Okay, right. Jesus Christ. So anything that's like super old, but like I don't really know if like you're gonna be like, this is gonna be a fire beat with like this old like Victrola, like you know, jazz, jazz thing. Who's to say? Maybe. So you got that, you've got creative commons. If somebody uploads something on SoundCloud, YouTube, and they say it's a Creative Commons license, that means that they are giving it to you subject to something. Usually it's just like give me credit that that's in there. So that's another way to kind of get free or near free.

It's pretty cheap to put a liner note that that came from so-and-so. Yeah. Another way is uh I love this company called Track Lib. Track Lib is a subscription service that has pre-cleared samples. It's basically like you are in a record bin online, so everything you see within that subscription service is pre-cleared and covered within the subscription you've already done. You don't have to worry about getting the clearances because they've already done that work for you. And then you've got ethical AI, right? If it's ethically trained, and we're not talking about Suno or Udio who are getting sued by all the labels right now, but there's ethical AI companies, and you know those the names of those change every single day. But if they are ethically chained, then anybody can use that because they aren't technically copyrightable. So you can use that. That's why like um BBL Drizzy came out, and anybody could use it because there was no copyright to it. Yeah.

Interesting. Interesting. Damn, bro. And then like, what if PB Max is just lazy and I, as his producer, just make a PB Max song for him? Like I fuck this guy. He's he's not inspired. He won't come into the studio. And I use AI to make a hit for him, and he signs off on it. Like, that's kind of that's cool, right? That's totally cool. As long as you've got his consent to use his voice and make the P Max and he's lazy as shit. Like, that's cool. Dope. What just happened? It's a hypothetical Moving on. Ryan, you've been given the power to create a federal holiday. What is it called? What day is it? And how are we celebrating? Oh man. I I gotta go with like it's in October, in the beginning of October. Okay. And it is Harry Potter Day. Oh, right. And you guys just like everybody and and you just wear, you just dress like nerds and you just dress like Harry Potter and everybody in Hogwarts. Cast spells around and shit. You just have to I'm a huge Potter fan, and you watch, and

you watch movies, and like it's cool. I I love this idea. Harry Potter Day, uh first annual coming. October 1st, 2024. Final one of the short answer. What is your favorite curse word? Oh fuck. Classic. Can't go wrong. Can't It's true. I was like, spit take watching Sides' favorite curse word. Oh dude, that's hard. Yeah, yeah. She said I don't like curse words, and then like boom, I Couldn't believe that. Yo, y'all go watch the sides episode. You can fast forward to the rapid fire rampage. Go to her favorite curse word. And if you want to, if you want to laugh, then that was that was something. Moving on to the this or that. I'm gonna give you two choices. You pick one. Starting with drums or melodies? Melodies. Intro or outro. Intro. Giant hamsters or tiny elephants. Tiny elephants, that's not adorable.

It does. I think it's obviously tiny elephants. Bowling or pickleball. Bowling. Drake or Kendrick? Kendrick. Have an imaginary best friend or no best friends. Imaginary. Hell yeah. Fuck what people think. Grow a tail or wings that don't work. Wings that don't work. That looks cool. It's kind of dis it's like, oh my god, can you take me? No. Anyway. No, I'm kind of tired today. It's misleading for sure. Spotify or Apple Music. Apple Music. Silly hats or silly socks. Silly socks. And finally go back to singing and songwriting full-time or leave the music business forever. Singing songwriting. That was easy. I don't know, because he could at least go to another. He still be a lawyer for like, yeah. Yeah. But then it'd be like tax law. I'm like, who wants to do that? Yeah.

Real estate. My friend. Fucking psychopath. Dude. Final part is the word association. I say one word, you give me the first word that you think of right off the top of your head. Alright. Starting with music. Business. Adventure. Sports. Velvet. Underground. Instagram. TikTok. Contract. Negotiation. Brunch. Mimosa. Good man. Chanel. Fendi. California. Snoop Dogg. Beer. Wine. Infinity. And beyond. Lil. Kim. Bowen. Schmidt. Let's go. This has been your favorite music lawyer, your favorite music esquire. Ryan Schmidt on the One More Time podcast.

Holy shit. My brain hurts, kinda. Like, you do an amazing job of dumbing it down, but it's still a lot. It's still a lot. Rewatch this a couple times. We need the retention, to be honest. I mean, that's good for sure. But like honestly, if you're like me, I'm gonna have to rewatch this to like remember how he breaks down certain things because it's a lot, man. It's chock full. That's why, like, please, if y'all do get presented any sort of contract that is like substantial enough, like that's gonna impact your career longer term. Like, please, please call fucking Ryan or whoever the fuck you know. Somebody's trustworthy. Yeah. Because yeah, like having that legal advice is key, man. But as always, please like, comment, and subscribe. I appreciate you guys tuning in each and every week. And thank you, Ryan, for coming on. Thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate you coming all the way from Savannah, baby. That's right. Let's go. Until next time, Henry. Getting out of here.