LAZERBEAK INTERVIEW

Hans: Well, welcome to a Campfire Music Foundation interview. A Fireside chat, if you will. Today we are honored and lucky to have the legendary Lazerbeak with us, One of the pioneers of the Minneapolis hip hop scene, incredibly talented artist and producer, and the co-founder and CEO of Doomtree Record Collective. So welcome.

‍Lazerbeak: Thank you so much. What an intro. I appreciate it.

Hans: For sure. Well, today we're here to talk about streaming economics, the reality of being a working musician in today's environment. But before we get into all that, I just want to ask you about Doomtree, because you guys are a business, but you're also a collective, a movement.

Lazerbeak: Yeah, a lot of things, totally. A dysfunctional family.

‍Hans: How did you kind of get that sort of community-rooted mindset? Like, what kind of led you to have that ethos in the first place? I mean obviously, you guys are a friend group, but not every friend group does what you did.

‍Lazerbeak: Totally. I mean, I'll give you the probably too long of a version. You can cut it down. But coming out of high school, like, in the year 2000 we were really getting into hip hop and kind of just, like, rolled with a bunch of people in the same boat that were trying to figure out how to make it as well. And so some of us had gone to high school together, some of us had just met up in Minneapolis, and we all just kind of were like, hey, we should just do this together because it's really hard to do it on your own.

And so it truly started as what felt like 15 solo artists that just came together, because mainly no one had more than two songs, so no one could perform, but if we had seven artists each perform two songs, then all of a sudden we could fill up a 30 to 40 minutes time slot. So it's just, like strength in numbers. Also, if you have seven people on stage and they each invite, like, three of their friends, then at least you have 25 people drinking at the bar and maybe the club will invite you back. So it was kind of just like, kind of a necessity.

And also just like I don't know. I've always loved crews. I've loved the idea of community and collaborating with other people and building something from the ground up together. So it just kind of happened. We didn't ever think we'd get out of the Twin Cities at first. I wouldn't have given us more than a year. Certainly we dropped from 15 to seven eventually. But that was 20 plus years ago, and we're still active as a label. Everyone's kind of doing their own thing. But we've always operated as, like, an artist collective. So essentially, we're here for our artists and our co owners to do whatever they want creatively. Whether that's like, if Dessa wanted to write a cookbook next week, we'd put out her cookbook. You know what I mean? It just so happens that it's generally art music and books and film. So, yeah, I'm going to ramble so much, so you just have to reel me back in.

But, yeah, that was, like, how it all started early.  was asked to be in the crew before I'd ever even made a beat or had the equipment to make a beat. POS was just like, you'll figure it out, you're in. And then he took me to buy an MPC and I started making beats. And then I've been doing that for 20 plus years. So it's kind of just like I'm a really strong believer in just crewing up with whoever's at your level.here's no need to spend all your money trying to get some big feature or work with some huge producer, work with your friends and figure it out together. It's so much more rewarding.

Also, I think it's just easier. That's just kind of like the DIY ethics that I've been raised on that we kind of continue to have. So it started out as just like a collective of friends, then all of a sudden you got to put out an album. You're just, like, de facto a record label. Anyone could be, we could be a record label right now. Fireside chat records. Okay, well, now we just have to figure out how to press up a CD. And then we figured that out, and then it was like, oh, we should make T shirts or we should try to book a show outside of Minneapolis, and it was always just like, okay, suddenly now we're a label.

We started making songs all together, so now we're actually like a band. Sometimes we're a collection of solo artists. And then we're kind of a community in ourselves because we worked pretty much entirely with our friends on every level. So music videos, artwork, photography, publicity, radio, everyone was here. So we kind of slowly started to it's not like we created it from nothing, there was certainly a blueprint for us, but we were able to expand on that. And I think that's, like, the beauty of watching any scene grow is that it starts with a seed and it gets to this point, and then some other people come in and take it to this point, and it just slowly unravels. Now at 41, I feel like an OG and I get to see the next waves come in and watch the thing grow and change and become more inclusive and younger and it's beautiful.

Hans: Yeah. That's amazing, man.

Lazerbeak: Yeah, it's really fucking cool.

‍Hans: It's just a testament to the work and to the ethics and to the whole ethos that you guys have that you're still so rooted in community 20 years later.

‍Lazerbeak: Yeah, I'm born and raised here. I grew up right outside of the Twin Cities in Hopkins. I've been lucky enough to travel all over the world with music, which has only strengthened my faith in this scene here. And what we have not only as, like, an artistic community, but as a community that supports the arts, because none of this stuff works without people that are just fans that will actually come out to a show. Dessa sold out First Avenue last night on a Thursday night.

So we not only have grown, like, a really strong, vibrant artistic community, but with that, there's also been an infrastructure locally to help grow a fan base. And I don't think there's many other cities that have it as rich as we do here. And a lot of that comes from everything from the papers and the weeklies covering local music, having a radio station like the Current or Radio K that promotes local music, supports local artists, having venues like First Avenue and all their affiliated clubs that take chances on local artists and book them.

Hans: Like the Cedar Cultural Center.

Lazerbeak: Cedar, exactly. I mean, really, it's amazing to watch such a strong network of venues, too, because, like we were just talking about, there's the Dakota, more for jazz, there's the Cedar that has a lot of world music and all sorts of stuff. Then there's like, your typical rock clubs that also now are booking every genre imaginable. And it's not unlikely here, and even since I was young, it's never been unlikely to have a local bill on, like a Wednesday night. It'll be like a hip hop artist, a bluegrass band, a punk band, an R&B singer, and the place will be packed and everyone's friends. I think part of that is because we come from a small enough town that without a lot of industry, so we have to figure it out together. So that means that we have to rely on each other and ask questions and hang out to figure out how to do this. That's kind of how Doomtree was born.

‍Hans: So when you guys are starting in the early 2000s, obviously the landscape of the music industry was very changing. You had piracy battles going on. You had all this sort of stuff. How did you guys approach making music, releasing it digitally, pressing physical copies on your own and all that?

‍Lazerbeak: When we started, it was still very much a CD world, and digital hadn't quite hit yet. It was right before piracy started. It was right before, like, LimeWire and Napster and all that. We were pressing CDs, and it was the glory days. Unfortunately, we started at the very end of that. I wish I'd been around in the 90s for that, but you could press a CD for like $1.50 and sell it for $10 or $15. That actually was money in your pocket to allow you to book shows and go on tour or to fund the next project.
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Hans: Especially if you own all your own masters.

‍Lazerbeak: Exactly. You know, we own everything, we make everything. And so every dollar made is ours, every dollar spent is also ours. So that was like I remember the first couple of tours, Sims and POS were going out and Sims was opening up and probably playing to like 150 people a night. And he was selling like 60 CDs a night. So that means, like, over a third of the people were actually putting that money down and it kept him alive on the road.

Then piracy starts. But the nice thing is that iTunes exists first as a place where people would actually buy a digital album. And for us indies, it took us a bit to figure out how to actually get our music on those places, because back then there wasn't like Distrokid, so it took a while to figure it out. If you didn't have major distribution, which we didn't have, but once we did that, it was like, again, glory days for like two years, right? But anyone in the entire world now can buy our record for $10. It costs us nothing to press it, actually. And yes, iTunes is going to take 30%, but still, it's like very little work. And all of a sudden with the internet, we're seeing sales in the Ukraine and in Singapore. And I just remember the first time the monthly drop came in from TuneCore for digital sales and it was just like, oh my God, it was thousands of dollars, and I was like, we're going to make it. We're going to keep making records. Like, this will fund the next five projects or whatever.

So then it was like, I remember we put out the first Dessa album and that was when I first saw the digital money. And I was like, yo, we're like an actual label now. It wasn't like hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it was enough, especially at that age. We were all scrappy and working. I was delivering pizzas. Most people were in coffee shops. It was enough to keep us going and to fund our passions. Then piracy, which still in the beginning was okay because people were discovering us before the Internet. And I existed in bands before, essentially the internet. The only way for people to hear about you was either if they happened to come to a show or if you were lucky enough to get a ‘zine to write about you and they picked it up at the record store.

So with all this stuff, when we're making our first music videos, people are seeing it all over the world, they're passing it around, we're starting to play more shows. Major. And so even then with piracy, at least the word was traveling. And all of a sudden we were seeing more sales, we were able to take the money. We're making off digital, make more merch, sell it on our Web store, and that would kind of offset the cost of people downloading the record for free. And so that kind of gets us to that level where we're like, okay, now the CD sales are dropping, the iTunes money's up, but it's dropping because of the piracy.

And that leads us into the streaming era of, like, Spotify. I mean, I remember when Spotify came to the States, No Kings had just come out, which was our big first crew album, or collaborative, I'd say crew album. We played the Spotify offices in New York City to the 30 people that worked there, and we hung out, we all got free Spotify accounts. We were like, this is sick. But that was before we knew how the money was going to all shake out. So in those days, we weren't giving our albums to streaming services until, like, two months after they'd come out. So we'd incentivize the preorder, which is how we have always stayed alive as a label.

The preorder concept was essentially like smoke and mirrors to be like, yeah, preorder it early and you'll get all this cool extra stuff, but really it was like, we don't have any money to press it, so give us the money up front so we can go and actually make it. And it was a win win for everybody, but still, it was just such a nice now there's things like Kickstarter, but this was kind of like, for us, the original. You know, we'd have our pre order money, which would basically fund the end of it, and then we'd have the digital money come in from, like, itunes digital albums for a couple months, and then we'd kind of put it up for free on Spotify and all that stuff SoundCloud.

Until everyone used Spotify. And then you're kind of forced you just kind of, like, slowly. It was such a slow flip that all of a sudden you're like, okay, it's helpful. Well, maybe people will buy a T shirt at the show, or they'll stream it and we won't make any money, but they'll come and pay know, you'll figure out a way to make up the just slowly. It's been this slow descent into, like, there's no money in streaming unless you're Drake or you have millions and millions of streamers. And now there's zero. Like, iTunes doesn't even sell digital albums. There's Bandcamp, which God bless, Bandcamp, but also, I don't know if it's long for this world with the recent acquisition, and it's still, like, kind of a blip compared to everything else.

And so you kind of think, like, digital is gone. As that started to happen, everybody was like, all right, well, we're getting back on the road. Like, we'll just make money from shows, that's okay as long as you stay touring and touring and touring. Well, that was awesome. Except that even before COVID you felt the cannibalism or what do you call that? Yeah, we cannibalized the shit. Because when you have that many artists on the road, the market gets burnt out. So the average showgoer is like, fuck, man, I love seeing shows. But 20 of my favorite artists just came through in the last two months and I got to pick a couple of them.

And what's even harder as an indie is that stadium shows got so much cooler and so much more expensive that if someone, and rightfully so, wants to go see Taylor Swift or Drake or Olivia Rodrigo and they save up all their money for the last four months to go spend $300 on a ticket. Now all of a sudden, the $20 they might spend on a local show is like taken. And also that local show cannot compete with a fucking billion dollar arena.

Hans: Also, the hundreds of dollars spent on an arena ticket, really none of that's going to get back into the local music ecosystem.

Lazerbeak: Correct. Exactly. So it's this constant power struggle with the indies and the powers that be the majors. And look, I listen, I have a Spotify account. I love it. My kids listen, it's incredible. The concept is amazing. The fact that I have every album ever made at my fingertips is beautiful. So as a consumer, I'm like, hell yeah, It's incredible. And then as an artist and a label owner and someone who has kind of watched just the independent artists specifically just get squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, taking it personal, it's like really hard.

I feel like as indie artists, we're always looking for the next little tiny pot of gold. We're always the first to find it because that's the only way that we can survive. So at one point it was like college radio, okay, well, that'll get us airplay enough places where then we can book tours around these colleges or we can get a little bit of the college money and play shows. And then it was let's see, let me think about all the other things.

At one point it was festivals. Like once Coachella came and then indie festivals started happening, that was a way we would actually make real money at festivals, and they were still booking independent acts. And Doomtree, which was kind of this hip hop crew, but was also influenced by indie rock and all these other genres we were perfect for festivals because the hip hop festivals would have us, the weird punk festivals would have us as like the token hip hop act or whatever.

We could do it all. And so we could string a living together by playing some festivals, scattering in some shows. Then all those festivals started getting bought up by the big dogs like Live Nation and AEG. And all of a sudden you see again, too many festivals. And also even the indie ones that get brought up. Now the bill is all the same. It's all the same major label artists or the new artists that majors just signed. So we got squeezed out of that. Well, then it became like, okay, well, there's money in sync. There's money in getting your song placed in a commercial or a TV show, and there's actually still indie boutique companies that pitch your stuff to those places. Boom. And if you get one of those hits, that's real money. It's like, maybe the last real money out there. So then we find that, we get some placements.

I remember we got a song Shredder's got a song on The Rock’s HBO show Ballers. Some cool stuff like that happens, which it's very infrequent, but when it happens, it can help fund your next year. Then everyone picks up on it, then the majors pick up on it, and it's just like, with that level of power, as soon as they sniff it out, they have the money, the infrastructure, the people, the muscle to take it back.

So it just feels like this constant, like, we get a leg up, indie’s even had a leg up with streaming for a second because it really was like it wasn't just like, on your new release radar. It wasn't just major label releases. It was like, actually, I was discovering new independent music, and now I pull that thing up, and it's because it was owned by the majors. It's just a vehicle for them to push their new TikTok artists or whatever.

So everyone was like, okay, at least we can tour, even if it's harder because everyone's doing it or whatever. Then COVID happened. As an artist and a manager of several artists at the time of COVID I canceled over 150 shows in a three day time period. I had two acts that I was managing that were on the road at the time that we had to figure out how to get home. And I had three acts that were basically going on, like, North American tours. After spending the last three years kind of in hiatus working on albums, this was, like, finally the big payoff. It was the big payoff for me, too. As the manager, I've been basically working for free for a couple of years. And then you're like, okay, two months of shows, everyone finally gets paid, and then that makes this next year doable.

But then Covid happened and it was all gone, all gone. So not only is there no other money, and God knows we all got sick of those live streams within the first two weeks, it's like, then the only money that was left if you were even at a level where you could tour or play shows, is completely gone, and it's never come back. Like, even since Covid has gotten better. So anyways, now ask me the next question!

Hans: So it's so hard to make money from streaming, it's hard to make money from touring, hard to make money from festivals. Sync placements are even harder to get for independent musicians than they once were. Everything is being squeezed. How do you make it work man?

Lazerbeak: I don't know, honestly. I'm at a point as a manager where when I work with a lot of artists and younger artists, and I'm kind of at a loss to even understand how to get the word out at this point. It's not only that there's no money, it's also that you're vying for everyone's attention and so is everybody else. And even things like Instagram, where as an indie, we were really able to connect to a community internationally and Twitter and blah, blah, blah.

In the beginning it was really useful. Now the way that that stuff works, it's like it's all about you have to spend money to get anyone to see it. So if you don't have any money, how the fuck do you get anybody to see your content, let alone even maybe stream it or even listen to a song to maybe get to know you? And so the idea of even guerrilla marketing with no money, which I used to be so creative and good at, it's like I can still come up with cool ideas, but it doesn't connect because no one sees it.

And so I'm really struggling to figure it out. How I make it work and how I've always made it work is my whole life's catchphrase is little money, lots of places, so I have to diversify everything that I do. I've never been able to be simply a musician or an artist as much as I always wanted to. Since 7th grade, I was like, I want to be a rock star. That's all I want to do. I want to make music. I've never been able to do that. So I've either worked I delivered pizzas for the first ten years of my musical career and I managed to take out and delivering pizzas was great because you'd work a bunch until you went on tour. You'd get all your shifts covered for two weeks, you'd lose all your money on tour. But you'd come home and in that last week before rent was due, you'd pick up everyone else's shifts and you'd figure it out and you'd pay the rent and you'd do it all over again.

And I try to tell younger people too, especially in rap, there was always this idea that if you worked a real job, you were like a failure but there's just no other way to do it. So I really preach to kids that they should work jobs, make money to have a solid foundation so that you can then do your art. Because it's not like winning the lottery, but feels like it sometimes. And the industry loves to prop up these stories of overnight success or like, well, look at Lil Nas X. He just kind of like made a song and then all of a sudden, whatever. But that is winning the lottery. And half the time that's funded by a label that wants you to believe the independent story that's been creating this artist for years in the background. So it's all kind of a sham to me. 

Hans: Yeah. And I think what you're saying is just reflective of the changing nature of musical labor over the past 20 years. I mean, artists have to have wear so many hats nowadays. They have to be their own booking agent, they have to be in their own social media manager, they have to be their own marketing agent. Like all these sorts of things that record labels traditionally used to do and no longer are needed necessarily in the digital era. Yet 75% of all recorded music revenue still goes to the big three.

Lazerbeak: Totally! 1000%. And we're dealing with such insane burnout on the indie level because, like you just said, I spoke to a bunch of young artists recently, and it was like, for the first 50 minutes, I just said, let's go around. The room and just share what's really got us down, because this is going to be more of a therapy session than anything. Because I don't have any real answers for you. But let's at least commiserate together and then try to build each other up.

Like just social media manager alone is the most daunting task right now in 2023. Like insane. So even to make the content, let alone post about it, is just an absolute mind fuck. I think what we don't talk enough about is like don't talk about enough I should say is how it can impact your mental health immediately. The second you even log on, even if your only intention is to post about your show next week, you are just inundated and you get down the rabbit hole and everyone's kind of presenting their best self. And especially as indie artists, we're like soft flexing or hard flexing the entire time. Like any little win we're making seem huge because we have to for perception.

But as an artist, if you don't remember that in the back of your head, all of a sudden you're just like, man, everybody else is killing it and what do I have? It just creates this sense of doubt and competition and it pits us against each other. And so that alone really hard.  It's like the nature of the beast. You have to use it.

I think it's hard. I think at some level it's a privilege to be able to be an artist like this, making content. But it's also a job. And like you're saying it can be so stressful. It's super stressful without without a ton of payoff. For me, the way I've done it is - And I've been lucky enough for a decade now to say that music is my job. But music is my job means I run a record label. My job looks like a nine to five office desk job, right? Maybe 5% of my time is spent making music. I'm on emails and zoom calls and phone calls, and I'm running a record label. I'm managing several artists. I'm releasing music. I'm producing for other artists. I'm speaking, I'm giving talks.

What are the other ways that I make money? There's a little tiny little money that comes in from ASCAP, because I have, like 650 songs released into the world, and I still get like $400 a quarter or something like that every four months or three months. So all these little things I play shows every once in a while. All these little things equal, like, little pots of money everywhere. And that's enough for me to figure out how to cobble together a living.

I'm very fortunate to be able to do it. I'm very grateful and thrilled that I can still, at 41, say that I do this. But every year you come, the first of the year is like, is this the year I have to go back? Hopefully I don't have to go back to delivering pizzas at this point, but it's not beneath me, I'd be happy to do it, I guess, but is this the year I have to get a real job? Is this the year I have to go work at an agency or something?

Hans: Well, and I think it's just so fucked that you have built a whole community with tens of thousands of fans who listen to your music, who pay Spotify and listen to your music, and that doesn't come back to you. It's not like you don't have fans. And this is the case with so many artists nowadays. Everyone thinks that their favorite artists are wealthy and rich, right? They're not.

Lazerbeak: Right. That's also a problem, I think, perception. I mean, part of that, again, is that we tend to, again, only show the good side. So it's easy for the public to think like, oh, well, they just are killing it all the time. But I remember for years, and I think to this day, the perception of that everyone a lot of people thought Doomtree was, like, rich. Like, we lived in mansions, and we were like I remember when one of the artists was barbacking in the winter when we weren't touring a lot just to kind of get extra money. And he had to stop because the amount of people that would come in and just be like, "Dude, what are you doing here? Why are you bartending?" "Because I need to make money, man! I can't retire off this."

My hope has always been to pull the curtain back on a lot of this stuff. Since the beginning, we were very honest about our preorders and why it's important to support this album. Because the money we make off this will actually go into paying for the recording of the next album. I try to also be as transparent as possible about the money and the lack thereof. And even sometimes when there is a tiny bit that comes in like, yeah, that is real. That we did make tens of thousands of dollars on that one placement. However, that happened once in five years and that just doesn't stretch anymore. Not to mention I have three kids. This is not a sob story. But the $700 a month I could live off of when I was 22 is a billion times more than that now with a family and things like that. So it's tricky. It's tricky. Well, I don't know. We got to figure something out. I don't know. I know you have ideas. I was also really disheartened to whether it's true or not to hear that there's talks of Spotify not even paying artists for streams at all until they reach a certain number. Yeah, I just think that's garbage.

Hans: It is garbage. And I mean, last year, 90% of all the money they paid out to rights holders went to 1%, the top 1% of artists. So all the money that your fans are paying Spotify to listen to your music, that's going to the top 1%. And like you said, it's not just streaming. They found ways to extract revenue from every single aspect of the music ecosystem. But you remember, at the end of the day, music is about community. Music is about connection and about sharing your art with the world. And artists are going to keep doing that. You're making it work and everyone else is going to keep making it work. But at a certain point, it's like something needs to change.

Lazerbeak: I think so, what I love about how technology has in the best way possible. When I started making rap beats, for a piece of gear to really do that was like $1,000 or more at the entry level. I remember I was fortunate enough to have a mom who fronted me and dad, they fronted me $1,200 and I worked it off at my movie theater job over the summer. But without that $1,200 in hand, I couldn't have gotten the thing that allowed me to make the music, right? Nowadays that has become not a barrier for people. Like if you can figure out a way to get any sort of like if you have a phone, if you have anything that can access the internet or even if you could go to the library to access the internet, you could make music and you can record it and release it, which is incredible. It's amazing. That's like the most incredible thing ever, I'm so glad I live in a time where I watched that happen. Then on the flip side, there's what we're talking about. So it's like how do we level that out somehow

And also I used to say it felt like something was going to have to change in order to kind of like I don't want to say like population control, but it's a beautiful thing that so many people can make and release music. There is a tipping point, I think, where it's just do you know the stat of every single day, how many new songs get uploaded to Spotify or something like that? It's like a couple hundred thousand. Yeah, it's insane maybe that maybe in a week I can't keep up. And I am insanely passionate about new music, like checking new things. I'm still always looking for stuff and I can't keep up. So let alone the average person that might listen to the radio still and check Spotify occasionally, it's just too much. Just like a lot of the internet, right? It's like we cannot keep up this pace.

So at some point it may be one of those things where it does kind of weed some people out who have gotten into it, maybe for some of the wrong or more wrong reasons. I don't know. That sounds like a mean thing to say. But how some people start bands because they want to get girls or they want to get famous or they want to get money as that is just less and less of a thing that is possible to happen. I think maybe some people will go different directions which might free up a little more room for the people that are really passionate about it. But even saying that feels not true. It feels like a wish that I have. But I don't think that there's a way for that to work either in the current system.

Hans: So to take it back to what you were saying earlier, it sounded like kind of at the early days of the digital music revolution, like iTunes were working for you slightly, a little. You guys were stoked that Spotify was inviting you to your studios. It sounds like you had a pretty positive outlook on streaming. When did that change? When did you realize that this isn't working?

Lazerbeak: You know, even at first, I don't think there was ever a time with Spotify where I was like, yes, this is awesome money wise, right? It was a thing where it was cool to see. I remember SoundCloud even like it was free, but it was cool when we would drop a new song to see tens of thousands of streams and just know at that level that there were that many people listening. And that was enough, mainly because there was still money coming in from iTunes for the album sales.

So it was really where I realized it wasn't working was when I started seeing the iTunes money drop. And so you're like, oh, and it was pretty quick and it was pretty noticeable, you'd put out a new album, and you'd kind of rely on those first couple of weeks sales to kind of get you through the next six months. And when that started dipping, but then I could see the streams are looking crazy. All the intel is that people are loving this record. They're listening to it all over the world, and they're listening to it a lot. Then it was just like but barely any of them are buying it, and these streams are crazy. But when I see the accounting at the end of the month for all digital sales, I'm like, the money at the end total is low. And then we start to feel it at a level where it's like, oh, we can't actually go record at that studio on this next one because we're not making enough money to do it.

‍So then you have to get really scrappy, like, oh, we can't make a music video this time around because we don't have that extra money. We can't dump this into cool packaging. Sometimes we couldn't even press it on vinyl or make physical products just because there wasn't enough in the bank. So I think in that time period, I wish I knew the actual year. It was probably early Aughts, where it really started to be like, maybe mid Aughts, where you're like OOH. And then by 2016, 2017, it was like, oh, man, this isn't going to get better. And then every year pandemic has just been a blow.

To, yes, I love that, obviously, for a billion reasons, I love that we're not in the middle of a lockdown with COVID. However, everyone's like, oh, this is the year everything's going to come back to normal, or people are going to come out twice as hard. Not true. We're all still adapting to what it's like to be a social being in physical form. And I think we're going out less, and I think we're a little more picky about what we do go see.

Also just like, I think a lot of people and I might be biased because I spent so much of my life seeing shows, but I think once shows were taken away, people got used to not going to shows. It wasn't like, oh, my God, all I want to do is go to 1000 shows when this is over. It was kind of like, oh, actually, I don't really miss staying out until two in the morning and whatever, paying $100 at the bar.

So I do just think it's different. And I don't know if it will ever not be that way or if it will ever go fully back to what it was. I do believe - look, I guess I've been releasing music since I was probably 14, so that's like, whatever, almost 30 years, right? I've seen a lot of shit change, and at no point have I ever stopped, right? And even if I would have to get a job, I wouldn't stop. COVID taught me that I think I am a lifer. I need to make music in the same way because it makes me feel good. In the same way that getting 8 hours of sleep makes me feel good, or working out occasionally.

Hans: Hanging out with your kids.

Lazerbeak: Yeah, hanging out with my kids, having a good meal, just like the same way that makes me feel good. Making music makes me feel good. If all the money goes away, which it actually did for three years in COVID, I still have to make it. So that feels really good. That was almost like a renewal of the vows for me as an artist and someone who had probably gotten used to treating being an artist as a profession. I was able to kind of reconnect with like, this is just me. This is who I am. It's in me. Whether there's money or it's my job or it's my hobby or whatever, it's just I want to do it. And I think that will never change for the people that do this stuff.

However, I think there will be less great art because there won't be the means to create great art. There won't be the space or the funding even. Just like I can't just go from here over to a studio right now and make something out of thin air. I need to have a little time to get inspired. For me, I watch a movie or I go for a big long walk or I need to have some space to get into a creative zone and then I can be creative. If we're all working like two jobs and we have kids and we blah blah, blah, how do we even find an hour to get inspired let alone another hour to make something?

Hans: I think it's interesting how music actually sounds is linked to these economic issues. Like if you had another 4 hours of the day to not worry about getting more money in and just make more music, then that would change how it sounds.

Lazerbeak: Absolutely. It is truly is like we're rushing stuff out because music is essentially free but we have to on top of the pile, right? So now instead of spending a year, not that we ever needed to do this, but instead of spending a year making an album, another year like recording and fine tuning and getting it right, we're just like shitting out songs to stay at the top of your feed.

Of course we're going to lose some quality control in that, right? I can say the same for myself. There's a lot of times where I'm just like, whatever, it's just a song. It's going to basically live for seven days before it gets buried. So it's good enough. We just have to stay out there. We have to keep pushing.

Hans: It's not sustainable.

Lazerbeak: It's not sustainable. And it just makes for like all of our standards are being diminished, I think.

Hans: Could you imagine what it would do if artists could rely on their recorded music as a dependable income stream and actually make music as a living instead of having to be all these other hats they have to wear?

Lazerbeak: I mean, the old idea in my mind was like, every album I put out is just another revenue stream for me. It only gets bigger. Granted, it'll be tiny bits of bigger, but as someone who's now released legitimately, my Lazerbeak complete playlist on Spotify is like 620 songs. So I have 620 recorded songs that are out in the world publicly to be streamed, to be purchased, that I've worked on. I am not seeing that. Instead of this [spreads arms big], I'm seeing this [makes arms small]. So what does that look like for someone who has just put out their first EP? How do you build off of that? Unless, again, you strike it big on TikTok or these little things that only happen to one tiny sliver of people. I don't know.

Hans: Yeah, I mean, it's just the state of musical labor has been broken, probably since the birth of the music industry, and over the past 30 years of digital music especially, and now the past few years with COVID all these things are unraveling. And it's not like streaming is terrible, it's not like the technology is the issue. It's done so many good things creatively for artists, and to be able to record without having to go to a studio or having the help, that's so important.

Lazerbeak: It's incredible.

Hans: But the economic model is broken.

Lazerbeak: Exactly. Yeah, I think that's it. I also think people would pay more money for Spotify. And I also think you could tweak just the free version or whatever with the ads if they were able - And again, it's not just Spotify, but it's kind of just Spotify. It feels like at least in the States, because no one else shares that percentage of user share. But yeah, I don't know. There's just got to be a way to actually compensate people differently. 

Hans: I think on a bigger picture, when you look at who's in control of the music industry, it's not music companies. Spotify is an audio company and Apple, Amazon, these are all just huge corporations that obviously don't have the best interest of music or the music ecosystem.

Lazerbeak: They're really good at making money. Of course they are. And so it doesn't surprise me, but I am actually a little surprised at how easily we all kind of got taken for a ride. I just think there's so much of, like, we get fed these stock answers every time something like this happens. Right? Oh, well, think about this, though. It's going to be really great. It's like exposure or more people are going to check you out or you'll make money this way and it's all just kind of garbage to get you to grab on. Then as soon as they start dragging you along, you realize. And then all of a sudden, it's too late. The car is going too fast, that if you let go, you're fucked.

Hans: And where's the negotiating power? Because as a musician, if you stop making music for a month or two months…somebody else does it instead.

Lazerbeak: There's no bargaining. Even if 90% of artists pulled their music from Spotify right now, I think it would still be fine because there's that much music out there, you know what I mean?

Hans: Exactly. And last year I think it was 60% of Spotify's total revenue came from music before the year 2000.

Lazerbeak: Wow. Yeah. I mean, I think about it at my age, the majority of friends that I know that aren't like musicians or continuing to do this type of arts life, and I think the stats are most people kind of tend to listen to the music from 15 to 25 the rest of their lives. Like you just lock in. So it makes sense that you would still be at 40 listening to Dookie by Green Day or something.

Hans: So besides the economics, what else is either working for you or not working for you with streaming? I know a lot of artists don't love the fact that Spotify takes your marketing rights. They're not necessarily super transparent or how often they pay you.

Lazerbeak: God. Yeah, the big one is the no money part. I think one thing I do like is being able to see concerts on someone's Spotify profile. I think that's great. I actually use that as a consumer, like, oh, let me see when they're coming town. And I think a lot of times I wouldn't take the extra step to go to their website or something to look at that. I think that's cool. I really think that the follow button is great. I think if they were to promote that more because if someone clicks follow on me and I put out a new song, it will show up in their personal Friday new music thing. That I think is great. I use that for artists that I like. So there's so many cool features of the platform. I really don't have a fuck this for much more than just the money. I actually may not even know about what you're talking about with the marketing rights. What is that? 

Hans: Okay, so I've talked to artists who, when they upload their music to Spotify or a label uploads their music to Spotify, then they say, okay, if your music's on our platform, then we're allowed to use you in our marketing campaigns. So they could use your photo, they can use your album picture, all without paying you anything.

Lazerbeak: I see. Yeah, I don't think I'm big enough to have to be upset about that. But if I was, yes, I would be upset about that for sure. Yeah.

Hans: How often do you see your numbers from streaming platforms?

Lazerbeak: Well, so we work with DistroKid, which is like a middleman digital distributor, so we get paid monthly. But they combine everything from all platforms in that. So I don't know exactly. I'm sure if I'd looked into it, I could tell you. But yeah, it's not the easiest to figure out.

Hans: So I think we've identified a lot of issues. Where do we go from here? What needs to happen? If music is going to come back out of COVID stronger, more creative, rooted in community? How do we make those things happen?

Lazerbeak: Oh, man. I think talking about it is number one. So these conversations and specifically more and more artists starting to share the actual struggles, which we are seeing more and more, especially when it comes to touring, you're starting to see even bigger artists say, like, hey, I'm canceling this tour. If I didn't, I would lose like $100,000. And even like the big artists where you're like, oh wait, really? Them too?

Hans: Like Santigold.

Lazerbeak: Totally. Yep. So more and more of that I think will slowly cause a ripple effect for people. It's just recently happened where indie artists are starting to talk up about how venues often gouge a percentage of merchandise sold at a show and how that's really hard if you're an opening act and the venue is going to take 40% of your T shirts because they don't think about how much it costs to make those T shirts. They're just taking 40% off the top. And it is hard for especially independent venues because they're struggling too. They get screwed over by Ticket Master. That one's tough. But it is nice to at least hear that on both sides. It's cool to hear the venues talk about that too. Like, hey, but actually we have this to worry about. And everyone's like, oh, okay, shit. That also speaks to how all independent stuff is struggling because of the big dogs.

So if we all start talking more about it instead of kind of keeping it secret or sugar coating it or pretending that we're doing awesome, I think that will help just allow the average listener to realize, oh, that's not cool. I didn't know that. I just thought this was great and everyone was getting money because I listened to their music right? So I think it does kind of grassroots start with that. I mean. I don't like I think about a country like Canada where for as long as I've been in music, there's been a lot of government funding for the art.

Hans: Yeah I think there's definitely a policy and public infrastructure side of this whole thing that if these issues are going to get fixed.

Lazerbeak: Yeah I think there has to be some federal money. Not that I'm holding my breath for it, but the reason why I met so many Canadian bands and have seen them on tour is because the government subsidized their tours like they paid for their tour van or If you look at the Canadian model, they even pay for artist housing. They subsidize their food. They subsidize all these sorts of things. Music videos, all the studio budgets. When you recognize music as a facet of public health and public well being, then it's like, oh, the government should be investing in all this.

Especially knowing that it can be a great export - I know that America or the United States is different because everyone looks to us for art and always has and maybe always will. Who knows? Obviously a smaller country looks at a service like music as an actual export where they're like this is, you know, like Sweden with Abba, right? They're like, yeah, this actually helps people learn about our country and blah, blah, blah. Whereas we don't have that incentive because we're like the big USA and people always check for us anyways.

But yes, I think that's like a huge right up there with talking about it is like figuring out how to fund it that isn't just now artists pleading with individual listeners and consumers to do even more than they're doing just to help us out. Because all of that burden shouldn't be placed on the people that are already trying to help and are listening and are trying to go to shows when they can and are spending their hard earned money on this stuff when they can. There's got to be a different it's got to come from somewhere else. Because I think that's the thing is we're squeezing the fans so hard right now that everyone's burnt out. It makes even me as a fan be like, Fuck, man, I don't even want to look at social media. I don't even really want to go onto Spotify because it's almost a bummer sometimes.

Figuring out ways to just kind of take some of that pressure off of everybody I think would go a long ways. So huge windfall of cash would help. And I think we keep coming back to this, but the economic model needs to change. We don't know what exactly that looks like, but it starts with having these conversations. It starts with educating fans about these issues. And yeah, we have power as artists and as the music community.

This is where all this shit happens. And these guys take all the revenue, but all the value, the real value is here in the work we're doing, in the work that all the working musicians do. Like these conversations are so good to identify problems and commiserate and then also at the end of the day trying to find some, like, mutual support. I have a gratitude journal I write in at the end of the night so that I don't get too cynical or callous. Still remembering the good stuff. Right. And what a gift it is to be able to be a musician still, whether or not you work a real job or not. What a joy it is to play a show in front of five people, let alone 50 or 500 things like that, because otherwise it's almost just, like, too devastating. So I try to find trying to find the joy in all this, to just keep us afloat is really helpful in these tough talks, right?

And yeah. It's hard. I mean, it's so hard to stay positive. It's really hard to stay positive. And I'm not saying we should always just put on a big happy smile, but yeah, without the joking or even there can be hilarity in the commiseration. Right. And it's also like, what do you have left? At the end of the day, it's like your music. That'syou have to be grateful for. That's what keeps you going. It's a bummer that there's all this other stuff, but think about making music is essentially free. The feeling I get, the high that I get in the ten minutes after I make a beat I've never experienced anywhere else, and it's free, essentially.So there's things like that that I have to just remind myself in order to calibrate all of this and be able to still like because I need joy to even create, otherwise the beats would be real dark.

Hans: Yeah. And the idea of musical I mean, music is a cultural activity that has been commodified, first. It's not a commodity that creates culture. The idea of musical labor is only 600, 700 years old. When you go back to courts hiring musicians to play. Before then, it was just an expression of community, an expression of culture, an expression of being alive. And that seems like that's what keeps you going, what keeps you doing this.

Lazerbeak: Totally, and you know during Covid, it was helpful, actually. I mean, I didn't love it, but it was helpful to watch all the money go away, to really kind of face myself in the mirror and be like, why did you get into this in the first place? Are you still into it for those same reasons? That check was really helpful for me. It was really hard. It was, like, real struggle, but it was really helpful to be like, okay, right, yes, I'm still in it, and I think I'm always going to still be in it.

Hans: So yeah, I think we covered a lot today and yeah, like you're saying, I think things need to change. Do you have any closing remarks?

Lazerbeak: I'm thrilled to be sitting. I'm being warmed by a fire right now, I got a great coffee in me. No, I'm just grateful for you having these conversations, and especially with your younger generation, I think there's a lot of hope for, like, hey, actually, this isn't working. And we've been seeing it not working since we can remember, so let's actually try to change it.

Hans: Exactly, and that's the thing with streaming. It's not the technology is the issue. It's how it's organized, how the economics are organized. And I think there's a real opportunity over the next ten to 20 years for artists to really just take some of our power back.

Lazerbeak: Yeah, I think so, too.

Hans: Not in “overthrow the government”, sense but no, seriously. Realizing that the music ecosystem centers around artists, you're the ones who make it work and have always made it function. And the ones who create the music should be the ones who benefit from it.

Lazerbeak: 1000%

Hans: Cool.

Lazerbeak: Thanks for having me. That was awesome.

Hans: Yeah, for sure. That was great. Thanks for being here.