Chris Evans Part 1: Software, Audiogust, and More

Not to be confused with the actor who plays Captain America, the Fisch Bowl presents to you our interview with Chris Evans from the band Audiogust!

Dive back in to another conversation on Evans musical and studio beginnings, putting music out there and the challenges it comes with, favorite bands and influences, and other past and present projects from Evans to share with the world!

Transcript

Fishbowl Welcome And Music Nostalgia

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Attention, all you dishes in the sea.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the fishbowl.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Chris Evans of Audio Gus, not to be confused with Chris Evans, Captain America. Or any of the other Chris Evans's. Or any of the other Chris Evans. Exactly. Thank you for taking the time to swim in the fishbowl with me.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Excellent. Excellent. I I hope the temperature is just right.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

It it feels it feels totally natural.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I I have my floaties on, so I'm ready to uh dive in here. I did the Finns thing so I can get some velocity. Excellent, excellent. We we we do a lot of fish buns here. Awesome, awesome. Well, first off, I have been listening to not just your latest album, but the other two albums prior. I love the throwback to grunge and nineties alternative. Wait, what? I I know, I I wish, I wish. You know, I I I was born in '88, so I I you know grew up in in the nineties, which I consider the eighties and the nineties probably the two best decades for not just cinema, but for m music post, I guess my the baby boomers, with like the all the classic rock, you know, Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, you know the list could go on.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So the 60s, the 80s, 90s. We'll forget that thing that happened between there.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Exactly. Right, right. The little thing called disco.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

There's something in there. Right, right. There was some good stuff at the end there. I mean, like, you know, the police and some of those really 80s bands were actually doing some great stuff in the end of the 70s, but yeah, generally speaking, the mid-70s were, you know, a a little bit of a gap.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yes, yes. I I I do have to credit the punk scene in the the mid-late seventies into the eighties, one of my all-time actually favorite bands in the in the kind of you know, gothic horror genre of the cramps. They were doing some stuff that one you could not do today. Two, just the the horror vibe that they had, the gothic, you know, even being incorporated into a lot of the eighties horror movies back then. You know, I I I got into them when I was older, but I didn't realize like how much of their music was, you know, sampled in in a number of horror films from the 80s. So I'm like a huge, huge fan of them. But I digress.

What Sparked Chris’s Music Journey

SPEAKER_00 2:47

We are here to talk about Chris Evans and Audio Gust. My first question for you is what got you interested in music?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Music was sort of always a thing for me, as far as I back as I can remember. My parents listened to a lot of music and you know, took me to my first concert when I was, I think, five. It was Elton John, by the way. Nice um in the early 70s, so it was really good then because it was almost late 60s, so early 70s. And, you know, I would I always love just listening to music, listening to records and and singing along. And then somewhere in high school, there was this sort of, you know, it would be cool to be in a band. Actually, I'll tell you what it was. It was it was watching the movie The Kids Were Alright about the Who, and seeing them on stage, you know, playing Won't Get Fooled Again, Bob O'Reilly and things like that. And they just looked like they were having such a great time. And I was young enough to not realize that it was, you know, drug-induced, but that's okay. And I just, it was, I was totally taken by just watching them do that and said, I want to do that. And so, you know, my father played guitar, so he was okay with having guitars. He didn't do electric ones, but he had some acoustic things. And so I got an electric guitar and sort of started to play really horribly with a bunch of other guys. We were all really bad, but we were the same level of bad. So over time we got better and better. And by, you know, the late 80s, we were playing actually by the mid 80s, we were playing all sorts of you know cover songs of of stuff and some originals there. And and then when I went to college, I played in, you know, a bunch of bands and and worked, and the dorm that I lived in had a recording studio in it, a student-run recording studio, which like wasn't a thing back then, but somehow it was, and learned a lot about you know, producing music and and recording it and engineering it. And this is back when it was on tape, so it was you know an eight-track reel-to-reel, and you know, the number we had like two digital delays as opposed to now you have an infinite number in the recording studio because it's all in computers, but so I you know learned to record a bunch of those things, and we recorded a bunch of my own stuff and sort of learned played around with it, but also recorded some other bands and and and learned to do all that fun stuff. And actually, and after college, I started a podcast company. We recorded podcasts for companies, and just you know, for internal communication type podcasts. The the challenge was that it was 1988, so you were just born, I suppose. Yeah, right, right. So we were a bit ahead of the game there. Uh but again, it was you know, sort of an excuse to have a recording studio as part of uh as part of a job. Through the years in between, I would be in this various bands and we recorded some albums and things like that. And then, you know, a few years ago, and then I got into software, wrote a lot of code, and did less of about every five to ten years. I would suddenly jump back in and record some stuff and then stop and be in software again. And a few years ago, I sort of said, okay, I'm done with the software thing. I just want to do this all the time now. And so that's what I do. And that was when I, you know, sort of did the first album as as a, you know, let's let's put a thing out and then let's really focus on, you know, figuring all these things out and learning and getting much better at songwriting and producing and singing and all the different aspects of it.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Awesome, awesome. Do you still like do stuff with the podcast company or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

No, that one sort of stopped a long time ago because we were, you know, 15, 20 years ahead of our time. Right, right. Which is actually a an interesting theme that went through a lot of my software time. Just being a little bit ahead of the game, enough ahead of the game that it was the wrong time. And eventually the thing would come around where it's like, oh yeah, yeah, we we did that a while ago. So yeah. But you know, there's there's the right time for everything. And when and when podcasting finally took off, I was like, ah, there it is.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I I actually started like, I mean, ne uh August next year will be ten years of me uh trying to consistently do this, trying to figure out ways to, as you do with Audio Gus, to make it the full-time gig, passion, dream project, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, I mean, my my goal is to try and help out as many, not just musicians, but like independent artists, filmmakers, pretty much anything that kind of falls under spectrums of you know, film, entertainment, music, arts, you know, which I the reason I kept the name, the fishbowl, was exactly so like it wouldn't be limited to just one thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

You know, because I I I have huge passions for really just wanting to help,

The Real Grind Of Being Heard

SPEAKER_00 7:45

you know, bring whether it's musicians together or artists together, you know, get their stuff out there. Um like my goal is I love just kind of helping promote stuff that I like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

So I'm I'm a big I'll tell you we appreciate it because it it it is the hardest thing these days isn't the creating of the music or even making it sound right. It's it's getting people to hear it, getting the getting the right people to hear it. And the right people to hear it for me are the ones who like what I do. One of the things that it took me a while to figure out, but I realized that everyone sort of has their own personal taste of music, right? The things that they like. And it's based on the lifetime of everything they've listened to, you know, when they were listening to it and what was happening in their life at the time, and what other emotional things were going on, so certain things resonated, but then those things hit for them. And you never know who those people are going to be who like the things that you do. But if you love it, then you know you know you've hit one bar, which is that it is lovable. And the trick then is to find the other people who have, you know, a similar enough, you know, musical DNA that that they'll like it too. And they're out there and they number probably anywhere between the hundreds to the millions, but there's a lot of people out there and there's a lot of music out there, and finding them is is tricky and it just takes time and it takes a lot of sort of persistence and consistency of of putting things out there because every release basically is an opportunity to to have the next person who you know who loves what you do hear it. And the majority of people won't, because there's a lot of music, there's a lot of styles, there's a lot of work there. And so odds are any individual won't be the one who connects with what you do, but they're out there, and so it's about you know keeping looking and and finding new ways to to find them and to connect with them, and yeah, and so things like this are a great, you know, and another tool that to help find those people.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

I I completely agree, and that actually brings me to my next question.

Family Influences And Pop Culture Detours

SPEAKER_00 9:55

But first, I wanted to comment on something you had said before in my initial question was something about the who. My dad is probably the sole reason I am into everything I'm into today. And my dad, going back to like kindergarten first grade, would be listening to Tommy and who's next, you know, in in our minivan and back in the 90s, the the good old days. And that was like my first major introduction to music, and then everything from Floyd to Zeppelin to Alice Cooper to Black Sabbath to Stones, everything in between. My dad is a huge Zappa fan. He's seen saw him a bunch of times back in his uh his youth, yeah. Uh who I I have come to love and admire, not just as a musician, but as a human being, talking about a lot of stuff that we're kind of at in society today that was going on back, you know, be decades before we're at 40 some years, you know. But my first concert was actually Eric Clapton and Roger Daltrey opened for Eric Clapton. And it was at a venue in Pittsburgh, where I'm located, aka The Land of Zombies, uh, that is no longer there, but it will be forever infamous in film history because that is where Jean-Claude Van Damme defended the Civic Arena from Powers Booth and his terrorist team that was trying to ruin a penguin's hockey game that went into sudden death.

unknown 11:48

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Uh-oh. It's a port's phrase that you just does that doesn't really carry the fear that probably should, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

I know, I know. Uh, but you know, big action movie buff. Obviously, you can see in the background there's some movie iconic movie memorabilia. Dust Toldon is talking about musicians. Robert Rodriguez in his band, Tito and Tarantula, did you know the the music for what is it, uh Desperado and Dust Told on, and a lot of the the famous songs in Dust Hold on are like from his band. So not everyone is trivia, trivial to that knowledge. So let that let that be known. But as I digress again, the question that I was trying to relate to what we were talking about originally, who would you consider some of your major influences, as well as like who are some of your favorite bands of all time? And then on a side note or a sub sub note, what genre of music would you say currently is your favorite to listen to, or any like bands from from that genre?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah,

Chris’s Influences Across The Decades

SPEAKER_01 13:03

good question. Uh so in terms of influences, you know, there's there's like there's there are these sort of times, right, where it sort of would shift shift significantly. It started out, you know, with with early Elton John, like the Madman Across the Water and Tumbleweed Connection and stuff like that. It's funny you you mentioned Tommy, because if you remember, there was a movie called About Tommy. Right, right. And it was it was not a great movie, but one of the things that my dad said was I really want because I was buried in Elton John. And Elton John was played the pinball wizard in the movie, and so I was like, Oh, Elton John, blah blah blah. Tommy movie. We went and saw it, and I want to get the soundtrack, and my dad was fine. We can get Tommy, but you have to get the version by the Who and not the motion picture picture soundtrack. And I was like, Oh, but Elton John's not on that. But he was right, and we got the the original by the who, which is just brilliant, and and it, you know, and then the who thing would come back years later, you know, when I would with when I saw the kids were all right, but so much of that was just you know, just this this this real nice connection of how it sort of went from this Elton John thing. Then it went to this, you know, to the Who. And and you know, when I was starting out in bands, we were playing lots of sort of metal stuff, so Black Sabbath, and it was, you know, it was the 80s, and so it was it was the early 80s, it was pre, it was the just pre-MTV-ish 80s, right? So we would go play it at clubs, and it was you know, a whole bunch of Night Ranger and Ozzy and and all those kinds of bands. And then MTV came on, and that was a huge shift. Because before that, you you could see music videos like on some channels, like as these late night things where they would play a few music videos, but you couldn't get much. And then when MTV started, suddenly you got all of them all the time. And it was just, you know, for several years, that was just it was whatever was on MTV, and they were always looking for new stuff. And so, you know, everything from and and the the the music we were doing shifted from the sort of you know metal bands to like the police, a lot of police, Duran Duran, and who who jammed, you know, squeeze eventually then into the eighty into the later eighties, like Crowded House, who I just thought Neil Finn is a fantastic songwriter. And so, yeah, so a lot of those kinds of things. And then when we hit the 90s, it was, you know, the first time I remember the first time I listened to, I mean I heard on the radio, I think. The first time I listened to Nirvana, Nevermind. And I didn't I live near Seattle now. I didn't live near that here then. I lived over on the East Coast then. And yeah, the first time hearing that and realizing, oh wait, I've heard this on the radio, I've heard this on the radio, and then but really listening to it was like this is just an amazing thing, and Pearl Jam, and all the sort of grunge things that were just just the energy in them was brilliant, and it was just this great, you know, sort of the same concept of what the police did back in the 70s, which was taking this punk concept, you know, getting getting getting past the the all the disco-y blah that was going on in the 70s and going back to something more raw, but still adding something powerful and mature to it. So it wasn't just a kid's thing, it was a there's some there's there's an anger in here, but it's a it's a justified anger reason behind it. That they're not we're not just angry, they're angry because of a thing. And and having that come into the music. So that was that was a huge thing. That again, it was their sort of a reaction to a lot of you know, the the grunge was a reaction to a lot of the hairbands, and a bunch of that, you know, where where rock had gone in that time frame was was very sort of vapid. They weren't really saying anything, it was just sort of blah. So just like punk and the police and and groups like that brought you know an energy and a and a vitality back. The same thing happened in the 90s, I think, with a bunch of the grunge bands and a lot of the stuff that came out from here in Seattle. And that was a sort of a big shift

An Interactive Concert Startup Too Early

SPEAKER_01 16:57

for me. And then in the early 2000s, it was, you know, I I I one of the times I left, I worked at Microsoft for a long time writing software. I left, worked there several times actually. The first time I left was to go to a startup that was focusing on live concerts on the web, where we would have a sound stage in Las Vegas and bands would come and play, and we would send out four different video streams, and you could switch between them while you're watching. So if you wanted to just watch the guitar player, you could choose to watch just you know the guitar player isolation camera. And the music would be going, and we'd have absolutely brilliant people doing the video direction and the music, people who'd you know produced with Michael Jackson and stuff like that. So just big, great engineering folks there. And bands that would come through would be a lot of the ones that were sort of up and coming, and some of them that became pretty big, you know, Lady Antebellum or Lady A now played there, sort of a country thing, Motions City Soundtrack, The Maine, Matt Nathanson, and then I think our last show was Motley Crue. And of course, it was 2007, 2008, and so we're trying to get funding at that point. And 2008 was the about the worst time to try to get funding for a startup because the entire world economy was circling the drain there. So that didn't last because of that sort of shift, but it was just this, you know, again, it was something we were ahead of the game, right? This was 2008. So these types of live and you know, we would we wrote a thing where you could type these little what we call shout-outs to the band. Basically, it's like sending a little text message to the band, right? And it would come up on the screen and there would be basically emojis that were animating. You could click on an icon and the emojis would animate. Now, this was before there were emojis, so this was ahead of the game. But we would, you know, shift it for the for each band as to what were the little emojis you could do. There could be there was an underwear one that was sort of animate, or there was uh, you know, devil horns for a metal band, or there was, you know, thumbs up or there was kisses or there was whatever. And the more people clicked it, the more it was sort of animate on the screen. And so they're looking at the screen. There's not much of an audience in the soundstage. They're looking at these screens, but the screens are showing what people are saying to them and showing the you know the interactive things. And then the audience could vote on which song they wanted to hear next, right? And then and the band would play the show in the order that the audience selected, which always meant the best hits were played first. It wasn't the best way of actually doing a set list, but it was sort of a you know, icely interactive. So it was it was a brilliant way to do shows. And this is, you know, again, this is 2007, 2008. So this was very early for this kind of thing. There wasn't Spotify yet. If there were, or if there bear was, there barely was. And you know, this is the kind of thing that had we been doing this starting in 2018 and really hit our stride in 2020, it would have been an amazing thing for bands to be able to come to this isolated place and do live performances for their fans during lockdown, it would have been great. But that wasn't when we did it. We did it 10 years before that. And yeah, it didn't last. But a lot of the bands that we saw I sort of met there that came in through from there became big favorites. Motion City Soundtrack is one of them. They're just absolutely brilliant. I don't know if you've heard them, but they're just Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and Ari Hest and Matt Nathanson. It was just really cool to be able to meet some of these folks and sort of hang out with them before they did their show, and they weren't quite sure what to expect from it because they're used to sort of playing off the audience. And there was a band called In This Moment Metal Band, really great. And it was fun to watch them because they come on and they're they, you know, they were on, I think they were on the OzFest tour at the time. So they were playing big crowds, and they come into this place and you see this, you know, big metal guy, guitar player, and he's looking very doubtful about this as they start. He's like, This is gonna be dumb. Kind of thing. He didn't say that, but you can sort of see that he was like, This is not what we're used to. Okay, we'll do the thing. But then as they started playing and and all this audience stuff started happening in front of them, they were blown away by it. And he, you know, he went from being a to be to being like a kid in a candy story, right? He was he was giggling, it was it was great. Because they were able to interact with the people who were watching them in a way that they can't do on a big stage, right? You don't get to hear what anybody says to you because all you hear is just a roar of noise. You don't get to interact, you don't get to respond. And and so being able to actually see those messages and who was saying it and where they were from, as part of the little thing that spins up there, was this this new experience for them. And so it was really great to watch sort of how they would their their realization of this was a sort of a deeper level of connection than they had before. And you know, so being able to to create something like that and to understand what it takes to get to connect out to people, but then also see how the fans could interact with the artist was was great. And then being able to see all the stuff in the back that we needed to do to make it actually work and to iterate on that was was really a great experience, actually, from the software thing. And again, it was being able to blend the music part, right, and the production part, things that I loved, with the software thing and creating a product from that was very exciting. And it would have been great if it had lasted longer, but but now I do this, so that's great. In the end, we have the right place.

Building Studio Notes For Song Tracking

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Have have you ever thought about like I don't know, like like a lot of the stuff that you were like ahead of the time on. Have you thought about like ever diving back into that while also doing audio gusts or like mentoring or you know?

SPEAKER_01 22:21

I have so part of the reason I wrote software is I enjoyed doing it. In fact it's a nice similarity between writing software and writing songs. Both of them are very you know you you can't touch them, right? There is no physical manifestation of a software program. I mean it's a floppy disk or something like that, but nobody actually uses those. And there's no real physical manifestation of a song either, right? It's it's sound, it's an idea, it's a performance, there's a recording of it, but even these days that's that doesn't turn into anything physical, right? I have I have these files on my computer that are these songs. I have these files on my computer that are applications. And in the end, when I release them I upload them to Apple in both cases. So it's you know it's there's there's a big similarity in in in terms of creating music. In fact I use Apple's apps to create both of these things. And the App Store is actually built on top of what you was iTunes Connect. They used to be the same thing. And yeah so there's a there's a big similarity there. And one of the things when I started writing a lot of songs is when you write songs you need to be able to track a lot of things about them. Not just like where are the lyrics but what and what are the chords but you know if you're going to release it you need all these different identifiers. What is your ISRC number and your ISWC number and did you copyright this one? And have you and so I started I wrote an app to track all of these things and and I'm actually going to ship that app probably in the beginning of next year to it's called Studio Notes. And it's you know just a way of keeping track of all of the songs and the recordings of those songs and all the different you know versions of it. And and when I release it all the stuff I need to know about what's the UPC code and what are the links to it on all the services and yeah so and there isn't anything quite like this out there. And so maybe this is the next big thing for songwriters. Maybe not but it's you know it's it's it's finding something that well here's a gap that I think would be really useful and it's certainly useful to me. And just like you know when writing songs if you want to write a song the only way you can really write a song and and know if it's good is if you love it. Because you can't tell what anybody else is going to do. And you know if you write something that you don't love you can think but someone's going to love this that's great. But now you got to go find another audience out there that isn't like you and that's that's a really hard way to do it. So you know with this application it's I wrote something that I need and there's an awful lot of songwriters out there and an awful lot of you know producers and musicians out there. And I think if I need this, there's probably a lot of people out there who need this too. And so this is going to be a let's put this out there and not charge too much because I know that everybody is always trying to make money off of songwriters and musicians and producers. I know that because everyone's trying to make it off of me. And yeah I'm being able to put it out there in a way that you know is sustainable but you know helps them will I think will be an is going to be nice. And I'm looking forward to that. And at the very least I know it's really useful to me and so I'll keep working on it because of that and hopefully we'll find another set of people like that. And I sort of held off on releasing it for a while now because the moment I do that I'm back in software again not just doing music but there's such an overlap in in this particular case that I've decided it's okay. So hopefully this will be the next huge thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Well I I I'm keying my fingers crossed and like congrats on just being able to release it in general and I'm like my my my sister is a striving musician I should say but again I'm like I I am I'm friends with a lot of musicians.

Great Music Exists, Discovery Is Hard

SPEAKER_00 26:04

I guess like going back to something we were talking about earlier was favorite you know bands and genres and like what you grew up with that developed like your taste into so and so but I like I would say for me you know like I I grew up I guess starting out getting an education in classic rock you know everything from like with bands we talked about earlier and then you know growing up in the 90s just having a huge exposure to everything that was like prominent during that that decade. But being as young as I was you know I didn't have I guess a full appreciation and knowledge and inventory of like all the different albums and songs and really all the different bands that were out in the in that decade because I've come to refer to the 90s pretty much like the 60s and 70s as terms of like a musical movement where there was literally a plethora of music to choose from. It wasn't just grunge you had all the rap you had huge surge and what now is like I found to be really prominent is like shoe gay's kind of psychedelic rock type stuff. That I'm seeing in terms of a music scene right now I would say over like the last 10 years it's been building up and up and up now it's like exploding. At the same time I also see a resurgence of 90s influenced bands. Like I think it actually showed up on Spotify as a new genre called new wave grunge. And it's very interesting because like it's the the the bands are all like you know kids in their like mid you know 20s that didn't grow up you know during the era of of like listening to it but really also hasn't had per se like a musical movement to kind of you know cling on to and I kind of see that just now with everything that's gone on you know politically the the last 25 years to where we're at now I think you have like the one thing that you know is really missing with Gen Z is a something they can cling on to and call their own because everything has music wise film-wise has either been rehashed or you know remade literally and not by any you know good standards for the most part there's been a few but that have tried to hold to the originals or at least as a sequel but it's far and few.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

I mean in a way you know the big indust industrial entertainment big in big entertainment have been very much in a rehashing things right I mean so much is so much of the the big entertainment is taking existing things that are already proven and going and and making them into movies and things like that, right? Which why you see all the you know Marvel stuff and you know even what is it wicked and things like that, right? The the that was around it was a play and which is based on a movie from way back when right so it's all sort of because it's so exp exactly because it's so expensive to come up with new ideas and be wrong. But if you look at music I think it's a little different these days. Yeah the stuff that you hear on the radio is going to be whatever but that is largely sort of controlled by you know by the labels and and and the the the radio industry which most DJs have no ability to actually do anything about. I talked to one of the local DJs in Seattle about playing something and he's like if I played your song even if it's the best song in the world I would get fired for it because I have no control over what gets played that I that all comes from corporate right so that's not you know so much of the rate that radio is is you know you're you're being played what what they're being paid effectively to go do whether they happens you know how that works with legally things, you know, it's it's still the same kind of concept there. But if you look, you know a lot of people I've I've heard people saying there's no good music out today, which is absolutely wrong. There's quantities of good music out there and and because there's everything coming out right now. The challenge is with you can look at the different numbers somewhere between you know 2000 and 1000 new songs per day or per week or whatever being added to Spotify there's vast amounts of music that's being released. The challenge is how do you find it? Because it's out there and people are creating you know things based on what they've loved. And so yeah this this concept of new wave grunge absolutely right I mean people who just love that sound love that feel I was excited when I heard a sort of a pop song I think it was Tate McCray maybe had chorus on the guitar and I love that effect but it's very 80s sound and to have you know so one of the bigger pop bands bringing that you know adding that sound in I'm like oh good it's back right and wanted to do it. Every time I put it in people like oh that sounds dated. I'm like it sounds cool. Now it sounds sure but okay but now it's now so how much how many people have to add chorus on their guitar for it to no longer be dated for it to be modern again? I don't know. But it's it is easier than ever to create music. You know you can I can sit I do all of almost all of my songs myself so I write them and I record them and I play them and I all mix them and all those things. And I I can do that now. Back in the 80s it was possible because I did that some when I was in the studio but it was harder because it was there was so much more you know so many more sort of or so many fewer moving parts really. But once I had that I couldn't do much with it right I mean I could I could I could even go and make a record but I could only get it into the record stores that I could physically go to and talk to them and see if they wanted to go and sell it because there was no way of getting distribution. Now I have you know everyone has the exact same level of access to distribution that the labels have. The record stores aren't really a thing anymore and getting into the streaming services is really easy. Maybe a little bit too easy but it's easy. And so you know every song that I put out there is equally playable by the entire world to everything that Taylor Swift or you know you name it puts out there, which is you know an opportunity that is that has just never been there before for musicians. And so it's it's brilliant in that way. The fact that there's no money anymore is dis is is disappointing. But you know the ability to get the songs out there has never been you know better. And then you know there's all sorts of challenges that come from that of people putting fake stuff out there or junk stuff out there or whatever. And I don't mind people putting bad songs up there. If they actually did them and made a bad song someone might love that bad song. And so if they love it then totally fine. Go find your audience for it and I think that's wonderful. People putting fake songs up there that aren't actually songs and then just going and doing some streaming thing to to try to get some money out of that thing with with bots and things like that is terrible because you really you really are stealing money from the people who are who were doing this and trying to do it for real. And trying to do it because the music is important to them and they can't not write it and they have to put it out there. And if you can find the people who love what you do it's it is brilliant. And just for me seeing that sort of slow growth over the past few years has been just amazing. I mean look at the you know the wrapped results that just came out from Spotify looking at the artist ones and it tells you the number of you know the number of people that you're the in the top 10 artists for or the top artist for. And that number is now larger than the number of people that I know like a couple years ago it was like I know who those seven people are right that one's me. That one's my wife that one's not that told me my mom or or or my brother or whatever. And and now it's it's larger than that number of people which to me is like okay that's it's it's a really cool thing to know that somewhere out there there's someone who really likes what I do to listen to it enough that they listen to you know the songs that that I put out more than anybody else or in the you know the top ten of all the stuff that they listen to. And I don't know who they are and it's it's just this it's it's wow okay and and I guess I want to keep going because if they like it that much then I'll then I want to do more of them.

Merch Plug And Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 34:54

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