All right, everybody wearing overtime. It's the bottom of the eleventh. The basis are loaded. I just being Michael cost to load up the basis because you want that force play. He was giving me the stink out a whole game, so I had to hit his ass with a baseball. The Daily Show is a whole ball game, but beyond the scenes podcast, we're like extra innings. That's just a little bit extra baseball for your money. It's where we take some of your favorite segments that you've seen on The Daily Show and go deep with them. Let me deep like a home run, but deep like it's in more information. You know what the hell I mean. Today's episode is completely unrelated to sports. We're talking about the world of music and music streaming and the way musicians have been getting short changed by the record industry. Uh. It's a segment that we call if you don't know, now you know. And if you missed that episode, here's a little bit of The Internet has changed so many specs of media consumption, but few have had a more tumultuous relationship with these changes than the music industry. CDs became the standard medium in the nineteen nineties at the same time, home computers were becoming more commonplace. Software like Napster paved the way for a new era of piracy. CD sales plummeted as more and more people logged on with the introduction of the iPod and MP three players. The industry did see a boost from digital downloads, but it wasn't enough to make up for the dwindling physical format sales. The breakthrough came in two thousand eleven. Instead of buying and owning songs and albums, we started listening to ads. We're paying monthly fees and exchange for access to essentially all the music in the world. Online streaming music became an eleven billion dollar industry, making up fifty six percent of global music industry revenues in two thousand and nineteen. Spotify has dominated the streaming music industry with about one hundred and thirty million pre subscribers worldwide. So streaming has been the best thing to happen to the music industry since the government created l s D. But even as these services have arguably saved music, they're not exactly sharing the wealth. Even though in America people are spending more money than ever before on music, musician pay is it an all time low. While the music industry reportedly made a whopping forty three billion dollars in two thousand seventeen, the bands and artists themselves only walked away with a near twelve of the cut. Spotify pays close to sevent if its revenue to the people who own the rights to the music. That's usually the recording labels. The amount artists received on a single play is miniscule. On Spotify, that number is somewhere around zero point zero zero four cents per play. Dozens of young artists coming to me on Twitter every day going I've got, however many million plays? I have two hundred thousand monthly listeners. I do not make minimum wage. Joining me today to help fix the music industry is Daily Show senior writer Mr Daniel Radars and a gentleman who I believe needs no introduction, singer, songwriter, composer, just an all around good brother. Hello black, how are y'all doing doing good? Hello? Hello, good to be here? Thank you? So, you know, for for Radars, just so we can set the context first before we get into Allo and you know what he brings up with Roy, That's who people want to hear from right now. Well, yes, yes, yes, let's let's discuss music with the gentleman. For the people who can't see you, it's a wonderful, wonderful bedroom. There's lots of books in music. You're clearly a cultured man. Okay, sidebar. Only trust people with unorganized bookshelves. Your bookshelf is not organized by color. Some of your books are horizontal, the rest of them ships is vertical. You don't care because you actually read those books. I don't trust anybody that designed a bookshelf who you trying to lie to. Yeah, the books come in and they go back in after I read them, and then if I want to find him again, I never can. So this segment, if you don't know now, you know, you all go deeper and deeper into you know, a lot of issues that are usually commonplace surface level conversations. Break down this segment exactly with regards to the music industry and the the pros and cons of the rise and streamers. Yeah, well, like you said, you know, this is one of those things where you know, we all the writers and producers on the show, we're always like reading everything and you know, watching everything. Most of the time we just focused on like what the big news of the day is, because that's you know, it's a daily show, so we got to do something every day. Um. But uh, you know, a few months back, UM, I was just on Twitter and a video came across my feed that was actually put up by a new organization. Uh it's called Union or the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers. I've never heard of this group, but it was about you know, Spotify. I and so I watched this video, and you know, I kind of knew everybody who listens to music kind of knows generally has a sense that, you know, musicians are kind of getting screwed over these days. But I watched the video and there was one thing in there in particular that made me sit up and think, oh, there might be a story in there, because there's stuff in here I didn't know. I had always kind of thought the reason musicians are making less money now is that there's less money that people are spending less money on music. Right, we all kind of heard, oh, you know, people stopped buying CDs and they started, you know, stealing music on Napster, and then it kind of came back through downloads and streaming. But once people stopped buying CDs. The money never came back. And one thing that I learned when I was finding out about this is that there's actually more money going into the music industry now than ever before. It says, not going to the artists. And I didn't realize that, and you're probably like, hell, yeah, I didn't know that, but like I didn't like it. Just just always under the impression that you know, the reason people are making less money is there isn't thatss money. In fact, that's not true. There was a lot in this that I didn't know. Like I knew, and as a stand up comedian who has had two Comedy Central Our specials, you're welcome. You do get a little pinch when you ship airs on the streamers or whatever. But as a comedian, comedy is like jazz, and it's such a back of the record store genre that you're not really doing that to cash in. I did not know that the number was forty three billion dollars that the music industry brought in last year, Yet somehow artists only got at at foot. You wouldn't have this ship without us, That's what I'm saying, especially now because like back in the day, it seemed like, oh, well, music labels did work. You know, they got the records into the store, and they did promotion and they you know, they got it out there to people. But alum, now you probably do a lot of that stuff yourself now, right, yeah, Ali, break this down. How did you get involved in this? Because I know that you were very vocal about this. I got involved because I had one of the biggest songs in the world in Waked Me Up, Wa Me Up? When it It's all over, when I'm wiser and I'm all this time, I was finding my face, didn't know who I was, and I was looking at the streams total and then looking at the money that came in from the streams total, and it just wasn't making sense. So I'm a songwriter and a singer. Not every artist who's singing their songs is also writing the songs. But when I looked at the math, it just wasn't it wasn't adding up. You know, I'd rather have a dollar per download or somebody purchasing a CD than point zero zero four cents for a stream. It's it's not a it's not a it's not a tenable situation for most of the artists. Do you think alo just as an artist, do you think that streaming what are what are some of the pros of streaming? Do you think it's saved the music industry to a degree, because the music industry was taken a bath, And I know that's where a lot of those three sixty deals came from, because the record labels figured out, oh, ship, we're not gonna make any money off you from album sales. So I want a piece of your t shirts and your live nation and all your tour dates, and then we'll make sure your song gets on the radio. So do you think streaming in a way save the music industry? I do give it some credit. So I was part of the nast generation. When I was in college, I was downloading all kinds of free music, and so it wasn't gonna be possible for artists to make money off everybody's downloading the music for free. Having an organized system by which there is some sort of subscription paid, some money paid, we'll put money back into the system that gets distributed to the artists. However, the way that the system works right now isn't an equitable system. So I would give the streaming industry some credit for saving the music industry, but it was also in a moment where we're always rapidly transforming with with and and progressing evolving with technology. Things are always going to change. If we can have artists at the table though, to make some of those decisions on how it changes UM so that we can continue to offer value, really valuable music and art, then I think it'll make for a much more fair and fair play playing ground. You know, the thing that you said about UM, about you know, giving them some credit, is that's one of the things I think that made this like a piece we wanted to do because we all do love streaming, we love spotting. Like, I listened to so much more music now, and I'm exposed to so much different music now than I was when I was just buying CDs because there's no barrier to entry to just listen to anything, you know. I started listening to like Norwegian pop music because I just saw this, you know, weird looking dude with long hair, and I was like, what is that? I was like, oh, this is cool, right, the algorithm got yours. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying, Like, it's like if the story is like, oh, there's like an evil oil company that's like dumping spilling oil into the ocean and killing all the fish. That's not necessarily a great story for The Daily Show because what are you gonna say. You're gonna be like, oh, yeah, well they're bad. But like with Spotify, we're like, oh yeah, you know, it sucks that the artists are, you know, being treated so badly, but like we don't want to go back to a system where we're paying fifteen bucks for a CD, Like this system is better. As as someone who listens to music, I don't want to say like as a music consumer, because like I don't want to think about music is like a commercial transaction in that way. But like as a as a listener, it's like I don't want to have to give this up. So I like hearing you say that, like there's a way to fix this problem for you that doesn't involve me having to go back to see there's a guilt as a consumer that you feel. It's kind of like if you own an iPhone or a pair of Nikes, where it's like, well, how do you fix that? And then like it's how do you all radars at the show? Um, how do you all decide went, because this isn't necessarily a political thing, but this is an issue of labor. How do you all decide on the writer's wing and then the producer's side of the show is just a whole side of the building that I'm rarely on unless y'all got pizza over there. How do you decide that this piece gets through the political noise to make it onto the show? Well, I mean, honestly, we're always looking for pieces that are I mean, it's political, but it's political in a different way. You know, we do so much politics, um and this is like pop culture. But once you start to break it down, then you kind of get sucked into the political angle. And we kind of anything where we can like sneak it in, we always find that more interesting. Plus, you know, we're always looking for how can we make it a little bit more lively than just you know, Trevor sitting talking to the camera. And look, Trevor is great at sitting and talking to camera. But once somebody said, oh, if we do something on music, what if we had like a song at the end of it. And then we thought, well, what if we get one of these musicians who like you know, because there are a lot of people, a lot of musicians who have spoken up and have been vocal about it. Um. But like you know, we knew Allo, like you know, our audience loves you, and we actually had a clip UM on the in the segment of UM, you know about the thing you were just talking about about how you realize you were getting money out of your song? Allow Black co wrote song Wake Me Up. It quickly became one of the most streamed songs in Pandora's history, but in an article for Wired magazine, Black wrote, in return for co writing a major hit song, I've earned less than four thousand dollars domestically from the largest digital music service. Four thousand dollars for a number one hit. Guys, you know the music industry is messed up when the guys singing your songs on the subway make more money off of it than you do. So once we knew that would be in the show, and like, man, you've already caught a song called I Need a Dollar Like that could not be more perfect for writing a parity version. So we're like, all right, let's go out to him see if he's willing to do it, and then as soon as he was like, yeah, I'll do that, We're like, okay, this this is getting on the air. Alo, what's different about this battle now, because as far as I know, the record industry has always been shady. Is it the addition of the streamers now playing the role of co conspirator or is it the fact that this system, this construct was kind of built before our eyes over the last you know, ten to fifteen years. Good question, that was built before our eyes. You saw it happening. Which you didn't see was the inside baseball where Spotify, looking like it's standing alone, is ultimately heavily heavily invested in by the major record label corporations. So Spotify doesn't really have much say. And when I joined the fight, I was joining the fight really as a songwriter. Look, what is John Lennon or Paul McCartney without the lyrics and melody that they wrote? Right? What is a on without the lyric and the melody? You could get a great Michael Jackson song, and here three four hundred different versions of it. Right at the end of the day, it's that that unitary piece that that more so that nucleus the song writing, And when I learned that the songwriters get one of the income out of all this, I thought to myself, that doesn't make any sense. Uh what where where would the music industry be without the that piece of intellectual property, the actual song writing, the underlying work. And so I just started doing more digging and just getting involved in the fight. I give the music industry this much radosh. At least they do it the white artist too. It's some equal opportunity bullshit, like this ain't just a shady ass record label. Just oh, you stole on my road? Like no, the industries like fuck, oh y'all. They already did that part, already did all the stealing from the black musicians, and now they're like, who else do we have? UM, you know, I want to talk. I want to go back to the thing you were talking about about songwriting, because that's something else that I discovered working on this piece. But first I want to say something else that, UM I learned. That was another thing that I didn't realize, UM, that I found so interesting. We always here, oh you know, artists make I think it's like point zero zero four cents per stream, which is terrible just on its face, right, it's not a lot of money. But what I learned is that that's actually not even how it works. That's a very rough estimate because in fact, artists don't make any money at all per stream. What happens is when you put money into Spotify or any of these services, whether you're paying for it you know, like a subscription or advertising dollars or whatever it is, it all goes into a big pot, and then they divide that pot up so that, you know, by by whose gets the most streams, So the you know, the biggest artists who have the most streams, they get the biggest chunk of the pot, and then it goes down from there, which means that if I pay fifteen dollars a month for Spotify and you know, uh Drake or a little Nosac or someone has like the most streams that month, even if I never listen to them, and I do, don't get me wrong, I listen to some little nozas. But even if I didn't, even if I was like, I'm gonna like find some indie band from Brooklyn, New York, because I know these guys, you know, and I don't want them banging out on the street corner. I want to, like support them to Spotify, gonna play their music. Of my fifteen dollars is still going to go to Drake that month, because even though I didn't listen to him, everyone else did. And it's such a weird way. Yeah, it's such a weird way to divide up the music. And so now I know some people are saying, well, look, whatever else you do, just make sure we get one penny for every stream. Just every time you stream an artist at all, one penny will be making so much more money. Alo do you think, like, is that a good way to her money or is there some better system? Yeah, it's the problem the rates paid per stream, Like, how do we make this more equitable? The problem is the rates paid per stream. And the issue is that as an artist, as a businessman, right, I don't get to choose my price. Any other industry you get to choose your price as a as an entrepreneur, you get to say this is what I'm willing to sell my wares for and if there's a willing buyer, then so be it. If there's not, then I die by my own sword, and I want to be able to choose my price. You're gonna tell me that, um, Bill Withers Lean on Me is worth point zero zero four per stream, same as uh. I don't even want to name no artists right now, but you know there's a gang. You can just say it. Royal Junior comedy albums from Comedy Centrally is not the same, princess. It's fine, I'll tell I'll lay on that grenade. That's fine. Take the hit. Yes, you can take the hit. So you you get me right, And so what I think is, why can't Mr Wither's estates say, nah, this is worth four dollars a stream, and if you don't like it, so be it. But this is the price. It's not going down because this is what the worth is in terms of value, artistic credibility, authenticity, and um, what he delivered to the world. So, you know, if there's going to be a number, at least let the artists decide and we can figure it out over time. Well, only three of artists on Spotify made more than one thousand dollars annually, and Spotify is you know, they've kind of said their position on this. We're gonna break down that a little bit after the break. We are speaking with senior Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh and the wonderful, wonderful songwriter and musician Alo Black about how I can get more royalties for my Comedy Central specials. This is beyond the scenes. I need a dollar, dollar dollars? What I need? What I need a dollar because dreaming ain't working for me? Well, I need the dollar Spotify tri please. There ain't nobody by my CDs and before two and three? Hello when we did you did the parody song for the show. And I've always been curious about this because we don't get many celebrities. I'll say this, we are surprised when people say yes to us. Would that be a fair statement, Radarsh, Like, what are you talking about? People love doing the Dalla show. They're knocking down our door, Hey will you come do a comedy thing with People love to coming to be interviewed by Trevor. But when you asked them for hey will you come joke with us? It's what is the joke? What is the nature of the joke? How will this joke affect my standings and the public? I have to distribt So just talk to us a little bit about just creating that parody song and what it was like, what that whole experience was like, well, we had a good feeling about this one, because it wasn't just like, oh, we have a joke and let's just get a celebrity to do it so that we have a celebrity on our show. We knew this was a topic that Ala was interested in and and had spoken out about, and so we're like, you know, you know, if he wants people to learn about this, like, honestly, more people are going to watch the segment and listen to this podcast if he's part of it. So it's like we had a pretty good feeling that that he would do it. So we were very of course happy, and we did. What happened was the head writer, dan Emira, who's always pitching parody songs anyway, we're like, take a crack at writing some new lyrics for I Needed Dollar that are about streaming. So uh, Amira, you know, put his little baby to bed, and then uh, in about three hours, wrote two verses and a bridge for a new version if I Needed Dollar. We sent it off, and I have to say, and we got that recording back from you Alow, we all literally burst into cheers because it was so much better than we could have imagined like you committed to that performance like you were, you know, like you were performing a square garden like many so many artists would have been like, Okay, I'm doing a joke song, but I gotta make sure the audience knows that I think this is a little stupid and that these clowns you know, are not. But like you sold that like it was the most heartrending experience, like it was you know, like it was a breakup, you know, like you're like I was like, you know, my soul was struck by your anger at Spotify and your heartbreak. And I was like, oh, this is gonna be good. Yea take us from the email to the studio Elo. Yeah, I got the email and I did think. At first, I said, I thought everything you just said, Roy, I was like, how is this going to affeit my standing in the music industry? But then you know, it came to me, I was like, you know what, this is serious for me. It really is. I've been I've been in front of I've been in front of senate hearings around music being paid to our most legendary artists and how uh rate courts are setting up the rates for what we're being paid as artists as like, you know what, any opportunity to spread the gospel a little bit more two people the better. No better opportunity than on such a well respected show with where respected host. Um I'm talking about Roy, not Trevor. You know what I'm saying. And it's just to me. To me, I was like, if I do this right, if I look serious about it, they can make the joke happen. It's gonna work for them. I'm not a comedian. I don't need to try to be funny here. I'm a singer. Let me do what I do good. And they've already done what they do well. They wrote the lyrics. I'm gonna just try to sell sell it. Wait, I can sell it, and that makes it funnier. I mean when you're when you perform something that's a little bit silly, deadly serious, it makes it ten times funnier. And also you get across that it actually is serious. So it couldn't have worked out better. Are there any streaming services that you think are better than the others? Are they all to some degree culpable in this? Like what's what's what's good about streaming? What do you like about streaming in general. And then are there any of the sites that are a little you know, which one kind of feel good about you being underpaid on I would I would say you could feel good about Title um. They pay at least a penny per stream um. I would say that you can feel good for me. What I like about streaming is accessibility. You get access to everything you want when you want it. And that's sort of like that's the light bulb, you know, the electricity in your house, the water on in your tap. When you turn it on, it works, and you pay for what you use. Right, That's what I would change, just like you pay for what you use and even you know you have your PA peak our rates with electricity, and so you should have your peak songs and peak artists that can try charge a premium for what they what they delivered to you. Um. But yeah, I would say Title is probably the best rate. Apple is a good is a better rate than Spotify, and I think over time it will probably get better and better. The u N United Nations has a subcommittee on Intellectual Property, and there they actually put out a white paper on streaming globally and said, point blank it's it's not working for artists. So we got the U N on our side, Well, that means any day now things are happening. If you got the U N on your side. Let me ask you something, actually, because you up something interesting the way that the way that you said, Um, you know, you listen to what you want when you want it. And it's like, you know, I actually do listen to about kind of half the music that I listened to that way. But I think I'm a little unusual. I think the way most people now actually listen to uh music services, and I think because of the music services want it this way is through playlists, right where you just like pick a mood or an activity or you know, a genre or a decade, and you just put that on and and they've selected the music for you and it becomes more like listening to a radio station. And that's why some artists have said, oh, we should actually get paid the way we do when a song gets played on the radio. Um, it's a little confusing to me. Do you mind explaining, like what's the difference, Like, because you, as a songwriter, you actually do make pretty good money if you have a hit song on the radio, whereas you don't make very good money if you have a hit song on its dreaming service. UM, is that right? Sort of? You know what's interesting is they have this concept of leaning back, which means you're not really actively choosing a song. It's like you're saying, it's a playlist. And they have this concept of interactive, which is also I think based on like playlisting. And then there's active users who are actually deciding and choosing who they want to listen to their UM, purposefully seeking out a particular song or artist UM, and those pay differently. Those rates pay differently as well, UM in terms of people who are paid subscribers versus non paid subscribers on these services. UM. To make a dollar on let's say Spotify from a non paid subscriber, it takes five hundred and sixty streams or something like that, maybe a hundred and fifty streams from a paid subscriber to make a dollar UM. And so I say that because when you get this concept of who's leaning forward, it also depends on leaning forward, meaning choosing specifically, it also depends on whether they're buying into the system, whether they're subscribing, and if they're not. UM it's it's not really helping on the economic side. If you have a hit song on an old fashioned radio station that pays differently than a song on Spotify, does right and can it be made so that it's more similar on Spotify? I get paid on the publishing side and on the master side. There are two copyrights associated with any song. There's the underlying work, the songwriting stuff that you can note on a aledger of sheet music, and then there's the master recording, the stuff that you actually hear playing through the speaker. And those are the two copyrights. Spotify pays out on both of them, albeit way less for the underlying work the songwriting. Now on radio, they have historically never paid out on the master side. They only pay out on the songwriting side on the publisher side, and that is a huge difference. That's been a fight that uh, you know, it's it's very difficult for the record labels too, two wage and and even to win. Radio conglomerates are very powerful they have. This is way more inside baseball than you need. But imagine going to your local uh lawmaker, your senator, congressman and saying, hey, can you help us draft a law to change how radio pays music artists for their for their master copyright for their audio, and then the lawmaker is gonna say, uh, well, you know, I kind of need that radio station to advertise when I'm running for office. So I don't want I don't want to be in there in their in their bad book, so they won't do it. So we'll never be able to get that opportunity the way that we should, just because we're not gonna find the support. And the record label doesn't care because they need the exposure from the radio to drive everybody to get more money from the touring which they're also in the artist's pockets on to me the downside to streaming, And I guess, but you know I grew up. I'm I'm forty two, so I grew up in the era of the midnight album cell where the hottest album you went to the mall on them, Like I remember going to a midnight sale at Tallahassee Mall for Masterpiece Ghetto d We went again for Tupac All Eyes on Me, like I remember Blockbuster Music Radosh when they introduced being able to listen to the album and those little listening stations. Do you like, oh, my god, I get to hear the whole ship in the stock, you would lose your mind, dud. You remember, do you remember the last physical album that you bought, like just as a fan of music, like because like I'm literally thinking and I feel like it might have been something from Ludicrous, Like I feel like Ludicrous alta John were probably the last two man artists that oh five oh six ish, because I was scared of Napster for a while because I called a virus off bear Share, so I played the game straight up for a minute. The last record that I bought was probably something I would listen to a lot of underground hip hop. One of my favorite artists was the late great Jay Dilla. He produced for Ericabado and work with with D'Angelo and he did work with Q Tip Truck called Quest. So I probably purchased you know, vinyl um his uh his last works Donuts, raid Ash was it? Taylor Swift? What was your last Yeah, I'll make it. I'll make it a little bit more white in here with my answer. Um no, I'll say that. Uh. You know. One of the things I honestly don't remember, like just to buy an album for an album, like just to listen to. But I do know that one of the things that artists do now precisely because they're not making money on CD sales, is that, um, they'll put out special packages, like for super fans where there's like, you know, extra tracks and a book and all sorts of stuff. So, like, I'm a super Bob Dylan fan, and uh he put out like an album of like eighty tracks of every uh demo and every take of every song on Blood on the tracks and it had, you know, a book and a poster. And I was like, y'all buy that. I don't even have a CD player. Like I also had to get the digital version so that I could listen to it on my my system because I don't have a CD player to actually play it. But I did buy it, and I us that's one thing right out that like artists are kind of scrambling to do is put out these special things that have like extra bonuses for the fans. Is that sustainable? Is that a real thing? Or is that just like especially in so it's all industry, Yeah, we can't tour. It's all industry industry inventions. Uh. If I recall kind of the history of how the industry of music worked. It was like singles started out as singles, it wasn't albums. And then Um, one of the early rock bands realized. The executives realized, well I could I could fit about thirteen songs, ten songs on on a on an album, and then we can sell it for more same production manufacturing costs. So that's how things changed. UM. I I would say, I don't mind it going back to a singles market. UM. I love album I love albums, UM, but you know, if it has to be per per sales, yeah, try to try to keep it at buy my buy each song per song, and we don't need to do all these extra um gimmicks to try to sell more and do more. You know, we have this concept right now called the Waterfall album. The waterfall album is where you I did this on my last release. So you drop an album it has ten songs, and then each month you add a new song to the album, and and so it keeps people engaged. So you have to try to find brand new ways to keep people engaged in purchasing the music and also just staying on playlists. They don't want your they meaning the playlists and the streaming services. They want everything that's brand new. They don't want your two month old album, So you've got to find a way to refresh it and make it, you know, brand new. I would love to talk more about that and what some of the solutions are, you know, Number one, how artists going to circumvent this? What can we do to put pressure on the record labels and the streamers, and what can we as fans do. I have one idea that might work. You're probably not gonna like it all, but I'm gonna try it anyway. We'll talk about it after the break. This is beyond the scenes. We've been talking about music streaming and just you know how shady it is and exploitative, and how the record label time and time again figures out a way to take advantage of the artists. All black, I guess you. I guess what I should first do? UM as a member of askat myself, UM tell you thank you for what you're doing, because I didn't know this until a couple of months ago. Motherfucking stand up comedy. We only get paid for the record, not realizing that our joke is essentially an acoustical composition which we wrote ourselves as well, and you should pay me as a composer. I have no idea what type of money I'm going to get, but if I get more than three hundred, I'm putting it in bitcoin. How can fans? What can fans do in general, because more often than not, this battle between artists and the record label. Traditionally, as a fan, I've always felt helpless, like when I you can correct me, I'm sure you're more of a music encyclopedia than me, but you know, I just won't name the artist, but I know that there have been traditionally a lot of rappers who speak out against their label and go, I'm only getting fit this in a CD or a dollar c D. And as a fan, the reaction from a lot of people, especially a lot of black people, a lot of hip hop fans, well, you shouldn't design that deal not knowing the intricacies of how you get distribution and how you get in stores at that time. But it seems like distribution is less of a necessary need. So what can we as fans do to even try to help support artists other than just set up eight laptops and just let all of them ships play all black? The best thing that you could do to support fans, go directly to the fans and to the artist for the merchandise that they're selling. UM. The artists, if they have their own, uh, their own infrastructure, can deal with you on a one to one basis. UM, there are you know, many of the major artists have such a huge infrastructure around them that it's not gonna be easy to do that. But for for independent artists and up and coming artists, they generally have their own merriag website where you can buy a t shirt or whatever. UM, they might be able to to sell you a song one to one from there from their website as well their band camp or their tune core. UM. And you know, share their music, share, share all the love, and spread the gospel of what they're doing so that when we do open back up and people can get into concerts, UM, they can get a chance to to get that that concert ticket money. UM. That's definitely one of the plays for for a lot of artists. I know a lot of artists that survive off of that touring money. Boy, I bought concert tickets. I'm just remembering now in January and the concert is still officially just postponed they haven't canceled it if I haven't got my money back yet, but I cannot wait for that concert to actually come around. And then the radar on the right and side of this, how do you all decide how deep? Because this is a very deep and intricate and layered issue. When we started getting into solutions, I know, in the field department, we generally only have two quadrants that we can exist in for four minutes. We can either existence how did we get to this problem? Or how do we solve this problem? We rarely have space for both in the field department. How were all able to sparse out what some of the solutions could be and should be versus what people just have to go and read up on on their own. Yeah, and then boy, and that's one reason why it's great that there's a podcast like this where we can kind of take it to the solution, because you know, we write it all in and then it's really like, you know, it's a comedy show, so it's like, well, what's the funniest part, um, what's the most interesting part, what's the most engaging part? And in this case, it was like we just spent so much time just like talking about how we got to this point and how messed up it is, and we had a lot of good jokes off that, and then we literally ended up squeezing and here are some possible solutions, and then Trevor like rattles them off in one sentence, and you know, it's it's purely that simple. But I actually want to ask you to bring that up about solutions because all the stuff you were saying about like what the fans can do a true right, like on a day to day level, we can do that. But Roy earlier you said that this is actually a labor story, which I think it kind of is. And one of the things that we found with like stories involved labor or corporations is that a lot of times it's not anything that you know, individuals like us, like even the biggest fans in the world, we can't really solve it. It has to be like some kind of big systemic change. And so I'm wondering, like, man, is this something where it's like all the artists kind of need to band together and go to the labels as one big group and say we're changing this because you need us more than we need you. And maybe the fans can like support the artists in that or or go to you know, your lawmakers. I know you said they don't want to go up against the radio stations, but maybe they also don't want to go up against you know, every voter. So I don't know, maybe there's like some kind of bigger thing like that that could happen. In addition, it's one of the solutions we didn't get to. I feel like the solution is going to be in a technology solution. I feel like it's going to be a technology solution. I feel like technologists will help us through this. Artists working with the technology sector UM and coding sector. UH. The tools that are in place right now for streaming, they work well for distribution, for consumption. UM. What needs to switch though is the pay the pay mechanism, and I have a feeling that you know, uh, the blockchain is going to help us do that. UM. You know, with the technology that exists now, you can basically I D like think about Shazam, you can I D every song has a digital audio footprint, and that footprint ultimately can dictate how how your your payment is delivered. UM. I've been an advocate of the the phone services that you use the Internet services, the s p s that you use to be the paywall. And so just like your utilities, every time you turn on a tap or turn on the light, it recognizes it and you you pay for that at the end of the month. And I feel like, you know, that's one of the ways we can think about it. It's like a digital ala carte type system. Yea, yeah, but you don't want them monitoring your data. So there's definitely got to be some some privacy controls. All. I hear what you're saying, but I already had the vaccine with the eight micro chips in it. It's fine. I'll be fine if you, you know, if we pay for if they figured out a way to like charge us for like every little thing we do in like some game. It's like you play a game and we're like, oh, I doesn't want to do this little cheat, and it's like, I'll pay a penny for that. Like, well, if we're doing that for like crappy mobile games, we could chose hell do that for music. It seems like that should do. Here's a naive question, though, and this is coming from a guy that has seen people go viral on TikTok and twitch and YouTube and I G stories with their own original stuff who had no label, they had no support. What does the future of streaming look like? Because what is the advantage of a record label? If I, like right now, what's to stop me from going in the studio, getting my ship recorded and mastered and then getting some I S R C code digital footprint embedded in the track and sending that out onto the internet and uploading that to set. Because there's ways for me to get on the streamer without a record label. I could just sentiment like, there's digital distribution companies that are just take a thirty pinch off of the dollar and I get to keep seventy cents. So what's to stop an artist that's popular, Like why do I need a label if everybody's listening to their stuff from a streamer anyway, and I can get to a streamer without a label. Yes, that's a good question. Ultimately, the answer is, uh, whether or not you're gonna be part of the global consciousness as an artist. Um, you may be in for a second, for a hot minute with your hot song, but um, you know these big boys are are there to play and if you want to get that radio, you're gonna have to work with them because this is the the decades old kind of you know, inside club. And then if you do have that one hit, they're gonna come at you with a huge bag and be like, look, here's a huge amount of money that we're gonna offer you to join our record label so that we could probably never pay attention to you again. Um, and you probably won't get all this money. It's just promised to you over time if you ah, if you perform. And so you know, when you hear about these big multimillion dollar deals, these are usually spread out across ten albums, um, you know, and multiple years, the artist doesn't necessarily see all that money. And you're looking at a lot of young cats who are flossing, but they're flossing. They got a bag, but they're flossing off money that's not gonna last forever. That's not forever forever money. Some of that's gonna be gone. The reason why they end up going to the record labels is because they get that big, big paycheck in there in front of their face, rather than having to wait for the slow drip from the from the streams. What does it take then, because you know, there's independent artists that have stayed independent, like a guy that I two guys that I've enjoyed, one Immortal Technique, the other one Tech nine. And you know Tech nine is a rapper that if you know him, you know him. He definitely does not get the spins on regular radio, but it seems to have carved out a decent living for himself. And we'll never He's not gonna get mobbed at the airport the way Drake or somebody from Young Money would or whatever. But why do you think that or what does it take for the artists and the creators to realize that they're the ones with the power and not the labels in the radio stations. It's gonna take uh, a lot of communication from I'd say the more mature and seasoned artists in the music industry to work with some of the younger ones and help them to recognize. You know, young young cats, they're rebellious. They just want to do what they do and and get their money. Uh, they're not really paying attention to the history of everything and where the trend is leading, or at least where the the the activism within the within the artistry is leaning. Um, it's it's a tough it's a tough battle. We're battling culture. Um, cultural norms, were battling, uh, some deep seated industrial norms. And I'll just keep trying to stand up and and and speak my speak my truth. You know, Roy. This is why when we when we write anything, we almost always stay away from what the solution is because the solution is always really hard. It's really hard. It's much easier to talk about the problem than the solution. But but o, man, thank you for trying, at least in this arena. Yeah, this is great, man. That's pretty much all the time we have. Brother, Where can people find you on the internet if they want to support what you're doing and set up the eight laptops? Yes, um, the best thing to do would be to of course stream my music on any of your favorite streaming platforms. But I'm most active on Instagram and sharing whatever is brand new and that kind of information personally and with my team, so you know, check from me there. Oh, okay, done deal. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I'm Roy with JR. Daniel Radars, Sir, thank you so so much, And you know, what I'm gonna try and do. Allo, I'm gonna try and get you on this Paramount Plus and get your music streaming on a video channel of some sort. Let's put radars, Let's put the parody video up on Paramount Plus. There's a paramount I gotta look into that. Well, absolutely, there is a Paramount Plus bringing you all of the best in the Paramount library, including hit shows like Comedy Central's The Daily Show. I'm sure this solution to this problem is another giant corporation. I think you hit the nail on the head right. Star is gonna sound a little bit dumb. One Nion Streams will buy you a branding pack of girl. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio appen or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to go even further beyond the scenes. Check out the video version of Beyond the Scenes on The Daily Show's YouTube page. I need a dollar because it ain't working for me.