Michael Walker: Yeah. All right. So I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Paul Goldman. Paul is the founder and CEO of Muserk, which is a company that's revolutionized global rights management using AI-driven solutions that recover lost royalties across digital platforms. He has a proprietary fintech-inspired platform called Blue Matter that processes millions of data points in minutes to ensure that artists get paid what they're owed.

He's a Berklee College of Music graduate, award-winning entrepreneur, and has spent decades shaping the intersection of music, media, and cutting-edge technology. So I'm really excited to have him on the podcast today and to talk a little bit about what it means to be an artist advocate in today's day and age—what should artists be thinking about, focused on in the midst of such huge technological revolution. And in particular, your genius zone really kind of comes from this area of how do artists make sure they get paid what they're owed from their royalties.

So, looking forward to connecting today, and thanks for taking the time to be on the podcast, Paul.

Paul Goldman: Yeah, it's great to be here, Michael. Looking forward to it.

Michael: Absolutely. So, to kick things off, maybe you could start with a quick introduction for how you started Blue Matter and you started getting into the world of music and collecting royalties.

Paul: Sure. Like most entrepreneurs who do multiple companies, I never, 20 years ago, thought I'd be doing this. I started—I was a creative like everyone else. Like you mentioned, I was a Berklee College of Music graduate. Decades ago, I moved to New York City to try to make a living in music—studio stuff, whatever I could.

And I ended up falling into being a TV composer. Fast forward years and years later, I started working in TV and became a pretty established composer myself. So this just leads me—and I like to explain to people, like I was a creative, I wasn't a music business guy. I didn't know anything about music labels.

I was a Berklee guy who loved studios, and I wasn't really into bands and becoming famous. I just wanted to make a living. And the jingle guys were doing that as a day job—it’s really cool studios. And I loved it.

Fast forward 20 years later, at the top of my career, doing all the biggest shows in the world—the MTV Music Awards, Video Music Awards, Movie Awards, the I Love Ray Js, all the TRLs, everything you can name—working either doing original music, sound design, and mixing as well.

I was getting paid for those up front—pretty good creative fees. A friend of mine came up to me and said, "You must be making a ton of money on your publishing." And he was in the label business, and he was writing a book. At those days, independent music was the first kind of incarnation of indie rock.

And he was writing a book about independent—like how to deal with publishing. Like, "Independent Publishing 101" for this new category called independent music. So he asked me, "You must be making a ton of money in your publishing." And I tell everyone this—I thought he was talking about book publishing.

And I was running a fairly large—one of the largest music production companies in New York City. I was just in a different world. Fast forward—so I go to ASCAP once I dug in a little bit, and I go, "Wow, I own 50% of every little two-second, three-second thing I did on television," which were in the thousands—things being played all over the world.

And they were starting to air on this new platform called YouTube—right when things were being thrown up there. And sure and behold, ASCAP had nothing. They didn't know anything existed. I had to prove my case—it was impossible.

So, at that point in my life, I was actually looking to get out of the studio. Believe it or not, I kind of had enough, and I was like, "What can I do? A new thing?" And it was really about things I knew about music, but I wanted to expand my business background, and I wanted to expand my technology background.

The tech startup scene in New York City was exploding about 10 or 15 years ago. So I just started digging. And one layer led to another—one onion peel led to another. And here we are a decade later—we're managing 15, 16 million copyrights with a piece of technology.

Michael: Wow. That's a pretty cool story—I mean, how it kind of started with your own realization of like, "Wow, I'm sitting on treasure. I'm sitting on a gold mine." And now you're able to help artists kind of reclaim what's already there.

Paul: Yeah. You know, my founder story is very interesting—even when you're raising money for companies. But I have to say, my music was built out of anger, which sometimes is good if it's directed—kind of like angst, like "I'll show them."

I never recouped any of that money. I joke with my wife when we pass another house and I say, "That vacation house—that could have been our weekend house or college money for our kids," you know, that kind of thing. Like, we laugh about it now, but still, there's still a little bit of that.

Sometimes it's good to have that fire, especially when you go to start a business. You need something that drives you. And I just really leaned into that to this day. Whether it's about music or not—we do a lot of advocacy stuff.

I don't necessarily have to do that for the business, but I'm super into even lecturing people—to shake them out of their creative thing and say, "Get your business together with your copyrights." Even if I have nothing to do with it, I just get super wrapped up in it.

Michael: Cool. Yeah, it is kind of a funny balance, isn't it? Of the tension—I think about this in terms of the tension between goal-setting and wanting to grow and evolve versus being satisfied and kind of happy with the present moment. And you kind of need both to be plugged in.

As you're running, you need that drive, need that—whatever it is that drives you—that pain, that dedication, that attention.

So, as an artist advocate and as someone who's harnessed that type of energy to be able to create magic, I'm curious what your advice would be. You've worked with a lot of artists at this point.

Right now is a unique time to be making music—especially as an independent artist. What do you think are sort of the biggest challenges of the time that you see artists struggling with right now?

And then from there, we can go into a conversation of how you recommend that they overcome those challenges.

Paul: Okay. So, I mean, they have a lot of challenges, and we work with a lot of big publishers. Like I said, we work with huge publishers, and in that data are artists' copyrights. I'll just speak—there's many. Being a creative, I understand the mindset of just writing music and kind of like, "Oh, I'll take what I can get." In the early days, I'd write a piece of music and they'd be like, "I'll give you 1500 bucks." It was like, "Fine, I'll take it."

But the world that I come from now is the world that needs the most—what people—an artist doesn't need to learn how to make music or have fun in the studio and the creative process. It's the business side. In this new world of when your music is distributed into whatever platform it's going to, the world, and you'll never get it back. And it can be distributed not by you, and it's legal. If I take your music and throw it into Spotify, it's legal. You can't get it back. They have compulsory mechanical licenses that they don't have to ask you for. It's extremely unfair, but it just is the way it is.

So the idea of an artist—they think they're going to be famed. If an artist thinks, "Okay, my goal is to write music, be creative, make a living, be successful," whatever that is—it could be fame, it could just be making a living, whatever that is—they have to think way down the road and prepare for that success. We all know the chances of failure. Our relatives tell us. Anyone who gets into music is well aware of what they're getting into. That's why I tell people, "You don't have to tell me. I know the chances, but I'm still doing it anyway."

But you really have to prepare for the idea, "I will be successful," which also helps your mindset, in my opinion. "I will be successful, but I have to start preparing now, even though I won't see any fruits of that labor today."

And with what we do, that could be, "Hey, I'm writing songs with people right now in the studio." We have to decide right now—and this is very difficult—"Hey Michael, are we splitting that song 50/50?" We're best friends and we just wrote a little demo. We're working our side jobs. "Do we agree that's 50/50?" "Yeah man, that's 50/50." Write it down on a hand piece of paper. Go to ChatGPT—it can be one-pager, just so it's there. Or is it, "Well, I just helped you with the beat. How's 20%?" That's cool. Just data.

Michael, your first and last name. Are you associated with ASCAP or BMI? Sign up with these organizations, even though you're going to collect no money then, for years. Get in the registry. Because what happens is, when your music goes out in the ethos and it starts collecting—basically people start consuming it, think about clicking it—it ends up in YouTube Shorts videos. It ends up wherever it ends up, whether it's in Finland, Spain, Japan, the United States. It's coming off of one database platform, whether it's Spotify or YouTube or what have you. That stuff is not already in the system.

You are technically—when people are clicking on it—just think of ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching for you. It could be fractional, but let's just think in theory: ka-ching, ka-ching. That money falls into the—whatever country it was listened to—into, let's say, a bucket. And nobody knows where that money belongs to. It goes into like a lost and found. They call it industry black boxes—it's a term you'll hear a lot. Are you familiar with that? I don't know if your listeners are, but—

Michael: I heard of that before from a few other—

Paul: So black box is where the uncollected money goes. And there's billions in the MLC here. It's not necessarily Spotify's fault. There's no data attached to it. Now, if you're registered—that song—and everyone had their splits, and Michael owned 20% of that song, and the 20% had Michael's name, it would fall into Japan's performance rights organization, which is JASRAC. That would be sent to ASCAP, if you're an ASCAP member, and that would be delivered to you as a member.

See how the connection works now? That connection has a lot of problems. That's maybe another podcast. But in theory, that's how it works in general.

So you could see, by just not having that conversation in the studio early, you are already disconnected from money all over the world. And this is 99% of people. So one of the things that we do in Muserk is: how do we now go back and find that stuff? Because it's sitting there, and it's not going to sit there forever. So the money will go away eventually because it has to be redistributed to these organizations. It's just not going to go to you.

And the way we like to think of it—or I like to make a distinction—I think in your opening, correct the distinction. We're finding—it's not money. Most people think we're finding the money they've earned. You've already earned this money. Okay? You're currently earning. This is money you earned last month. It's like getting a paycheck that gets sent to you in the mail and never gets to you.

So I don't like artists to think like, "Oh, they're finding money." This is money that you've earned already. You've done the work. The person has consumed it. These platforms have made their advertising revenue off it. It's a done deal. This money's for you.

So I like to separate that in artists' minds. Because in my mind, artists and creatives have been trained—including myself, years and years ago—to think that because what we do is, quite honestly, a cool job, people feel like it's not worth it. "Well, you know, you should get what you get. I mean, your job's so fun." Which is part of it, but I chose this path for a reason. I knew maybe I could have become a doctor, made more money, whatever. But I chose this and knew the balance. I wanted to be an artist. It would be hard. There's a huge chance of failure.

So I really like to get the artists to think about things. Like, it gets them kind of mad too. Because sometimes you have to get them mad and let them think, "You mean, yeah, I already made this money? It's not like I'm earning it? Like you finding it is not earning it? You finding it is an industry that's broken," which people are trying to fix.

Michael: It's—

Paul: This is money earned. It's definitely yours.

Michael: It's like it's being stolen from you.

Paul: Yeah. It's just not being delivered.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, that's every time I hear someone like yourself who is a lot more intelligent than I am in this world or more experienced describe this, it always leaves me a little bit awestruck. Just like, wow, this is the state of how the system works. There's so much uncollected revenue just sitting there.

And like you said, it's not necessarily all to blame on the platform like Spotify, but maybe it's just the structure overall, but also the end user—like the artist—not declaring what it is. But it's like, whichever way you get there, it just seems like, yeah. What? It just seems like it's such a broken system where a lot of this is uncollected.

Which makes sense. Like, I don't know, before the internet and before we had systems that could actually track this really easily.

But I mean, I'm curious, what's your perspective? Do you think that there's going to be a do-over at some point where everyone comes together and we're like, "Hey, you know what, we can really improve this. Let's just sweep everything clean and start over"? Or do you think it's restructuring the existing system, but not like... how do you think that that change—

Paul: Yeah, it's a good question. I'll try to make it a simple answer. It's a complicated question, but the answer is no. There will never be a do-over.

I know what people are thinking out there—blockchain. Years ago, blockchain was huge in our industry. There were panels about it. Blockchain works for this kind of thing. It will never work in the music industry for specifically collecting royalties. It can work for other things in the music industry as a technology.

It's because there's no shared central database, and there won't be because companies are not going to share their licensing deals and information. It's proprietary. It's what makes Sony different from Universal, from an independent.

And at the core of it, it is a broken system. When the music industry used to sell—let's just go back to CDs or albums—they would sell a pallet. Tower Records, you remember those? Would get like, you know, they'd say, "Okay, we sent Tower Records New York City 5,000 of these CDs. They sent us back 2,000. We sold 3,000. Here's the money for it." It's a trackable, tangible thing.

But when they transferred into digital, the music industry was very slow. If you remember, there were a lot of lawsuits. Meanwhile, the television and movie industry just moved right into it. While the majors were not owners of Spotify at the time, trying to shut them down, Netflix was already up and running. We were already watching licensed movies on TV, on planes—airplanes—which means they licensed it. It wouldn't be on the airplane otherwise.

They were moving forward. The music industry was 10 years behind. Now, they're fully on board, but they're still 10 years behind in the whole big landscape.

The data is so bad that what happened was when the doors to digital opened, companies just threw in all their messy data into these systems. So the core of what it is—
 It would be like making concrete for a building that was cheap. You can put as much steel around it, but there's still an element of your building that can never be replaced. You cannot undo that.

So although there's been great strides, and for sure, we're making huge connections, it can never be redone from what you're talking about—which is essentially having a core central database where every company in the world pulls from it.

You still have the problem of artists putting stuff into the database, which is one of the biggest problems. One of the problems is definitely the industry.

Look, artists know—these guys are winning, and they are miles down the highway. Everyone who knows knows that. And we're doing our best. But artists are responsible for a piece of that, absolutely.

So a modern-day artist, as you know—and I'm sure a lot of your listeners know—

Anyone who's doing anything is a businessperson as well. They're no longer just playing in a band hoping to get a record deal at a bar one night and go on the road. They're very savvy with business and marketing. Even if they have a record deal, they're very involved with it. They understand what kind of social media footprint they want. They understand it all.

So that's a good thing. And that's the modern musician. And if you don't want to do that, then don't go into popular music. You have a 0% kind of chance, right? It just comes with the game now.

It's like when I was a musician at Berklee, my only focus was getting really good at music and learning as much as I could about composition. I just wanted to learn as much—not just to get good—but I really wanted to become a talented... whatever my skill set was.

So I think the artist is to blame a little bit, but they're definitely not the major player here.

What happened is, technology platforms are so far down the road. If anyone follows the current lawsuits with Spotify bundling and things, they're doing everything they can to just drop how much they pay.

Although the PR might say "we're there for musicians," what they're saying is, "We help you, so for that, we get to not kind of pay you." It's kind of like giving someone a job and saying, "Well, I just gave you a job at a restaurant. I'm going to give you some free food, so I don't have to pay you a wage." Well, that's against the law, right?

You have to pay a minimum wage. And the reason why the government has those laws in place is so companies can't take advantage of people who don't have the advantage—people who say, "Well, I have to take what I get."

The music industry kind of doesn't have that.

And also, one more thing I have to say is, Spotify is not a music company, okay? A record label is a creative entity, as everybody knows. They deal with people, artists, and they're super passionate people in the record industry that truly love music and try to create the balance.

Publishers create songs. They invest in people who write songs. They help promote the songs.

Spotify is a database. It's a database. You click on an app, and it serves you up a file. Now, that file is a music file, but they didn't create it. They didn't have anything to do with investing, finding you in a bar, driving you around, believing in you, and the ups and downs. They didn't do any of that.

So people need to stop thinking of Spotify, Apple Music, whatever, as labels with humans. They are servers. Your music gets put in there. Their job is to create an interface around the world where you hit a button and say, "I want to listen to Michael Walker's track."
 I listen to it. I click that button. It goes in my headphones. The deal's done.

So when you start thinking of it as a database—and keep in mind, they're public companies—again, people have to stop thinking of these things as fun little companies. They're public Wall Street companies. So is Universal. The whole shift is on.

So I think artists need to change their mindset. Not to say, "big companies," but "I'm in the field with..."

If I'm going to be digital, I'm going to be going through some of their ethos in some way. They need to get in that mindset, which I think is cool. I think for an artist to say, "Hey, man, it just makes it more exciting. You're learning more about business." For me, that's kind of exciting, but some people see it as a burden.

Michael: Man, I love this stuff. There's a lot of good things to unpack there.

It sounds like what you're saying is that one thing that is different now than what it used to be is that the independent artist doesn't necessarily need the forces that be or the established record label industry in order to distribute their music.

And even these platforms like Spotify or Apple Music are just a database. The power is kind of in the independent artist.

It's just that these databases are used by people, but they're not actually the source. The source that's coming from it is the independent artist.

And in that world, it's not enough now as an independent artist to just focus on being creative. But you have to be creative, and you have to be an entrepreneur. You have to learn how to be savvy as a business mind as well, which is fun. If you take it with the right mindset, if you actually take it as a challenge—something to be creative about—you can have a creative business.

Paul: Have control, right?

Let me just say—Spotify is just a database, but they do have promotional tools. They do create label services as well. So the database thing is a general thing, but there's no question that they do help promote music.

So that's where the double-edged sword comes with them. People feel like, "Well, without Spotify, what would the music industry be?" It becomes this whole complicated... like talking about where space ends. Is there an answer? I don't know.

But yeah, I think independent artists now—

The interesting thing is, in the old days, you'd sign a record deal. Even before my days, like in the '70s, you'd sign a record deal and you were just a person who got driven around, put on stage. You hear about those old record deals. They own like 1%.

But now the interesting thing is that you really would have control.

We hear many now major Grammy-winning artists who really—

They might have major label distribution, but that's all they have. They really have their own management company. Their friends brought them up. They're really controlling their ecosystem, which is important.

The team—they're a company. They're the CEO. Maybe not the CEO, maybe the manager, but they're the main product. They're head of product. They decide what kind of music they want to be, what their vibe is—everything about it, or at least most of it.

That, to me, is a really interesting way to look at it.

And how exciting is that?

And how many artists from the early days who became huge would give anything to be in that position, knowing what they know now?

To me, that's the mindset. But it's still difficult.

But I mean, you don't become a musician because you want it easy. You want it easy, I don't—

Michael: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's a great point. Man, what a time to be alive in general, but also, for musicians, it's definitely the best time ever from a standpoint of having control and ownership of your own path. So with that in mind, I'm curious what your advice would be for an artist that's listening to this right now, who's maybe somewhat early on in their journey, and maybe they're both inspired by the fact that they have control, but they also feel kind of overwhelmed.

Maybe they aren't super, I don't know, tech-savvy or business-savvy, and they know they need to learn these skills, but they're just feeling a little bit overwhelmed. It's not really their forte. How do they get started with pursuing their music career as a business, and how do they cut through the noise in a saturated market?

Paul: Well, the good news is a lot of this stuff exists publicly. You can find it online, but it's very hard to learn online. Let's be honest. That's why people go to school. It's why you take lessons as a musician. Sometimes you could self-teach, but you need, "Hey, these are your lesson plans for this week."

It is frustrating, but my thing is it's all going to be confusing to you until it's not. Meaning, just keep learning stuff and say, "I really don't understand the label side versus a publisher. What does a publisher do? What does a label do? They've seen a master recording of publishing." It's okay if you don't understand it. Just keep learning, because what happens is, you have all these pieces, and then you're at a conference, you're talking to someone, and then this one—it's just like when you're learning music—clicks into this. "Oh, how did this scale work over that key?" Then all of a sudden, a year later, it starts clicking.

So my thing is, don't let great get in the way of being good. You could be frustrated, but that's okay. It's okay to be frustrated. It's okay to stay in the state of confusion, but just don't stop taking it in. You'll maybe pick up three out of ten, and that will be enough. Then you add to that.

There are plenty of things online. If you go to—we don't do a lot of public-facing stuff—but there are plenty of resources. If you said, "What is a publisher? What does a music publisher do?" I bet you get a ton of links. If you're past that level, there are tons of conferences, independent music conferences around the U.S., A2IM, there are organizations.

Again, if you have the budget for that, it could be really worth it, spending a little bit of money and going to these conferences. Not to mention, you're going to meet a lot of people not from your hometown that can really help spread your network.

It's like learning a language or learning an instrument. In the beginning, did you really know? You're learning these chords, and then it just starts to come together. And then I think you have to say, it's okay. Even I am confused a lot in our industry. I work with probably the best team in the world who knows deep rights management. We didn't even talk about the complication of laws in every country and UGC platforms, streaming and playlists—it gets really complicated.

But you got to look at it like it's doing a puzzle. I used to have this thing—and I've said it on podcasts before—about how we hire. I said, I hire people who like to do puzzles. That's it. And I use this example—I don't know if this will resonate with people listening—but sometimes when you rent, like, a cabin or something for the weekend, or a rental, they'll have one of those little things you buy at Target where there's a rope and a loop and a ring. It's like one of those 3D puzzles, and you got to get the ring around the loop and the ball.

There's always someone who stays up a little later trying to figure that out. That's the people we like to hire. And if you don't have a mindset—first off, if you go in the music industry—you have to have a mindset like you're not going to give up, and you're not going to get too frustrated with things. Or, you get comfortable in the state of frustration. We like to say that too—you have to be comfortable in the state. This is the norm, and it becomes not that big of a deal then.

But I would say, to get back to your original question, there's a lot of online resources. Just the beginning. So just go Google, "What does a music publisher do versus what does a record label do?" Honestly, the information is pretty straightforward. I think you'll pick that up, and that'll lead you down the next. Then you read about a company. A lot of platforms—even ones I don't work with—like TuneCore, some of their services are good, some are bad—we won't get into that. But they definitely have good information pages. Like, "What is this? What is this royalty? What is a publishing royalty versus a mechanical in the United States or in Europe?" Or, "How do I collect my YouTube money in Europe or Asia?" Things like that.

When you get to a high level where you're actually earning money with your music—a good amount where it becomes a living—then you'll probably have a manager. You might sign up with a company like Muserk. Then you start to build your team. And that's where you become a company.

In the sense of a one-person company going to—think of it as employees. You're hiring a company like Muserk, where we're your rights administration division. You're hiring a manager—he might be your tour or live music division or handling your deal division. You might be working with a producer. You have to think of it like a company. And if it makes money, it's structured like any other business.

You might want to take out an LLC or an S Corp or do things that will help you save taxes. Your equipment might become write-offs. All these little things might save you a little bit of money every year. You're driving your car to gigs—that might turn into gas money that’s tax-deductible.

There's no way you're going to become a big artist without getting into this eventually. And the less you have control of this, the more people are going to rip you off. Or, you will get into deals that—you won’t be happy with. You'll say, "Wow, I wish I knew more about what a real manager's rate was. I'm paying like 5% too much." Or, "I wish I didn't sign up for this four-year administration deal with this crappy company, because now I'm stuck for four years before I can move to a company like Muserk or Sony," or wherever you're going to move.

And if you don't know your business—there are people that, like in any field in this world—they know the people who don't know. And those are the people who are being disingenuous—they're looking for those people. So I always try to just think of it that way too. And I know that doesn't sound great, but this is the world we live in. My job is to help protect people, so I have to tell them some of the truth.

Michael: Yeah. No, I appreciate it. One of the themes I feel like is kind of coming back here is the willingness to sit with confusion or sit with discomfort, or sit with unsettling truths. Be willing to embrace the reality of this is how it is, and learning how to swim in the ocean of that discomfort.

It reminds me a little bit of—yeah, I like this analogy sometimes—everything’s kind of like music, and everything's vibrating at different frequencies. And it sounds like what you're saying is that at the beginning, like anything, if you don't know how to play an instrument, if you don't know how royalties work, it's going to be kind of confusing. It's going to sound a little bit like noise. But if you keep listening, you keep learning one step at a time, keep researching, keep asking Google, ChatGPT, then it starts to make sense. You start to hear the pattern through the noise, and then it all kind of clicks in place. It creates your resolution. And there's still going to be ups and downs and learning lessons as it evolves. But at least you're in resonance with the state of what's...

Paul: Yeah, I mean, your piano playing was an excellent and very unique example, but it was spot on. When I used to play guitar a lot in the early days and I was learning jazz theory—that kind of stuff I was interested in—there were times they'd say, "Just memorize these arpeggios. Here's the major arpeggio. Here's the minor." And in high school, we just memorized it. I knew what it was called. I knew the notes.

When I went to Berklee and started understanding, "Okay, these are the four notes of this seventh arpeggio. This is the triad." I'm like, "Oh, that's the same. Oh, that's like the chord." It starts tying together. And I remember my teachers telling me, "Just don't worry about it right now. Just memorize it. It's going to come together." Because first you have to memorize it.

So I do take that with me in life. Most indie artists I know are into learning this. They just need a little bit of help leading them to the water. "I know you're thirsty. Oh, by the way, there's the river." And they say, "Okay, I got it from here." I just try to get them going.

But it is complicated. And if you do get lucky enough to start making substantial revenue, it won’t just be you at that point. Then you hire, then you'll have professionals. But you do have to get to that first layer of the atmosphere yourself, for most people.

And yes, you could say, "I'm just going to focus on my music and my music will get me there." Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But my attitude was, "Wow, don’t I just want to increase my chances?" And it definitely doesn't decrease your chances—it only increases your chances. And I promise you, if you hate it now, 10 years, 15 years down the road, if you were to look back and say, "Do you regret learning about—now you own a 50-song publishing catalog worth 10 million, which is yours," or "you own 51% of it because you knew not to sell..."

Over the majority, like little things like that. And now you tell the publishing company what to do with your catalog. Like they can't sell the music on certain things, or these little things matter. And if you don't know them when you get to that level... So I don't know when to tell you to learn these things, but if you have the mental attitude like you're going to learn, you won't hit them all, but you'll hit a lot.

It'll just increase your chances at so many things down the road and keep you with good people who are legit. And that's a big thing with artists. You hear about it every day, like signing bad deals, doing this thing. It's—right—the artist signed the bad deals from the oldest movies in the world, right? It's like a cliché.

Because what we do, we love so much that we would be kind of doing it for free, which is part of the reason why people think we kind of shouldn't be paid for it, which I'm very against, obviously—that mentality. But that's kind of what people think. If you were digging ditches, they'd say, "Wow, that's hard work. You're digging ditches. You for sure need to be paid for that." But did they say, "You wrote that song? I mean, I don't know, you didn't collect your royalties, but it's just a song." I mean, you did it on the weekends at home—not how the world works. It's intellectual property. And it's just not how—artists need to understand that.

We've been kind of trained into that, I think. Artists have been kind of dumbed down in that to say like, "Well, you should be happy with what you're getting. You get like a fraction of what we get. We're like a big platform—you'd be nothing." And the artists say, "Well, we also write the music." And it's not even like a 50/50. It's really off-loaded, right? Or off-center.

So it's going to be a battle, but I could tell you that if the music industry is not—or the people who represent, let's say, intellectual property of music, copyrights and labels—have to constantly have a push against this wall. As soon as they let go, like an inch, that wall just comes back an inch. You have to have constant pressure.

Again, there are things like Spotify bundling, which is a big thing right now. It's kind of a complicated thing, but Spotify made a move and offered a bundling for audio, where you can bundle books with music. So that took people's music into a subscription model. That changed the amount of royalties they make—the rate of it—by a legal law. So essentially, the mechanical world in the U.S. dropped like 25 percent three months ago. Huge drop. Yeah. And a judge just threw it out. So it's not even going to go to court. Now, there are other publishing organizations that are going to sue them.

It's not my field of expertise, but it affects all the publishers and everything. So they're doing things like these things and they say, "Oh, we're just doing it for me." It's like, again, YouTube, Spotify are public companies. They have the smartest economists in the world—Harvard graduates, the smartest brains in the world—figuring out ways that they can make more money on the bottom line. It's not like a label, where it could be a small group of people—creative. They're really advanced.

So they are important. Of course, Spotify, YouTube are super important. They're partners of ours. How they derive their money is not the departments we work in. Those are legal areas. But they need to be there. I just think there needs to be more of a fair trade.

Michael: Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I think probably most of the people that are listening to this podcast are on the same page. In fact, I feel like most of the world—maybe I have like a biased subset for obvious reasons—but it certainly feels like everyone that I know that's a music fan kind of gets it. Like, yeah, musicians—we think that they should get paid more. Like they should be making more of the pie. So it certainly feels like there's a shift that's happening right now.

Paul: Yeah, I think the shift is—it’s give and take. Because the things that happen on our end, nobody knows about. They're really deep. It's like how banks make money. It's very complicated, right? People don't really understand how Chase really makes money and things like that. It's complicated.

On the artist side, it's more simple. Like it's a tangible product. You go to see a live show. You pay X amount for a ticket. That's a tangible—you paid X amount, the ticket goes into the thing. They get a piece. They have stage, they have things they're paying for—travel. That's a little more one-to-one.

I mean, I do think that—I do know fans from a moral standpoint absolutely say, "Do you think artists should get more money?" They would say yes. I think personally they could do more because they have a lot of power as consumers, but that's like in so many things in the world. Consumers have so much power. Sometimes if they were just to exercise it in a group, it could make a difference. And it has in things in the world before.

But at the end of the day, they feel like they're overpaying for subscriptions—which maybe they are. And so their story is also kind of complicated. But as a moral issue—do you think artists are making enough? They would say no. From their hearts, I really think they believe that. But then you say, "Would you want to pay $5 more a month for Spotify?" They say no.

Michael: Of course. Right. Everyone, everyone has—

Paul: Cancel Spotify? It just wouldn't happen. So I think it really has to come from laws, advocacy from the inner workings. Because how royalty rates are generated—it's really about the rates of the royalties. How much they make per click, per se. Sometimes those are set by government standards, which are really outdated.

And then also artists who do make money—not up-and-coming artists, because they're not breaking revenue yet, but they're getting there—but let's say artists who are already playing and have royalties to collect have to learn how to find the money they've already earned that is not necessarily in the bucket right in front of their face in the United States, like in ASCAP. Meaning, what if they're making money in Japan, or what if they're in Europe, or what if they're in South America making money? They have to understand that that money has to somehow go from Brazil and find them in the United States.

And that's usually done through SESAC here, GMR, things like that. And they also have their own. Now, ours are super advanced—we are the United States. Brazil's are kind of advanced, but not really. Japan's is super advanced. Thailand's is not.

So you're dealing with—some companies have hundreds of employees—and then getting money from companies and countries that don't have maybe the government funding for their copyright music societies that the United States has, or parts of Europe are super advanced, obviously.

So you're dealing with this global player network—these companies that are globally webbed together. Some have massive resources with technology. Some have no technology. How are they transferring data with massive amounts of reporting? "Hey ASCAP, here's a million dollars from us with all the little pennies that goes to all your members." How do they do that?

So we're in that kind of circle. And that's a big part of how the money is earned and doesn't get to that person.

Now again, if the artist never registered—they don't even know—no one's looking for it in the first place.

So what Muserk does is we do try to reverse engineer some things where we can find songs somewhere, let's say in a black box. And we look for the top earners. And then, if there's some sort of data—something that we can find them—the name, the country, maybe they're connected to another song that has all their data in it. We can reach out to them and say, "Hey, by the way, we have X amount of money for you here. Would you like it? And this is the service."

So with the technology play again, there's a lot of reverse engineering. And because we can, with our technology Blue Matter, sift through billions of lines of data, we can quickly rifle through that. It's not like a bunch of people at a desk going through files, which some companies do have. I mean, it's a bit drastic, but it's pretty much manual—so 20 things a day.

Because our system can scan—if I say "Michael Walker," looking for Michael Walker—the name Michael Walker—I don't know where you're from, but let's say you have an address. We put some data points in: Michael Walker, member of ASCAP. There's a lot of Michael Walkers, I bet. Your name’s—you know, it's common, I guess.

Michael: Very common.

Paul: Thing—we're going to have thousands of Michael Walkers. Which Michael Walker? Oh, this guy’s in—whatever state you're in. This guy’s in this. Maybe it's him. Oh, we noticed, "Wow, these songs are almost spelled the same: My Sunny Afternoon, and this one’s My Sunny or My Afternoon." You know, it could be the same song.

So our system starts looking at these deal points. This is part of the AI, and it starts matching things. And then it remembers what it did. And then it goes through all the other stuff, remembering the problems that just solved for that one. And we start sifting through billions of lines and connecting—50 there, 5 there, 2 there. "Oh my gosh, Michael, you have like $18,000 sitting for you." I mean, that's a lot. But that's how it's done.

And that's where the technology comes in. And that's where the AI technology comes in as well. It's a lot of databasing, actually—not that complicated—but it's complicated to build. And also build specifically for rights management. And our technology is patented. We have a U.S. patent, now applying for global patents.

So again, this is not out-of-the-box stuff. We wrote it over the last—we've been building this for eight years, this Blue Matter system. It's piece by piece, adding things onto it. And it's very specifically written for rights management, music-style database, things like this.

Michael: Cool. Oh man, that's awesome. I'm so glad that tools like this exist to kind of have an eye out for the independent artist.

Yeah, you're talking about how, from like a moral and ethical standpoint, most fans, of course, are like, "Yeah, of course we want musicians to be making more money," but do I want to pay more for a subscription? Not really. I feel like that's a great point to bring up for artists or listeners right now—that the world is sort of, you know, this is one of those harsh truths. We're all self-interested. That's just a fundamental part of how we operate—we're self-interested beings.

And therefore, even if—it's almost like, I don't know—if I had a handyman coming to build my house and I knew that I was just getting a steal, I knew it was like, man, this guy is worth so much more, I would both agree, "Yeah, this guy's worth a lot more," but I wouldn't be like, "Hey dude, you should charge me more," because then I have to pay more for it, right?

So there is a bit of that self-interest. And who's responsible for it? Well, ultimately, he is. He needs to speak up for himself. He needs to say, "You know what? Actually, I am worth more." And that's part of where it needs to come from.

And also, yeah, I think that it's great that companies like what you've built with Muserk exist. Of course, it's a business, so there's something in it for you as well. I'm sure there's a good compensation model that aligns interests with the artists and with this collected revenue.

But I do think there's an important lesson in there for artists that are listening to this, and just across the industry too—to speak up for themselves and to be able to increase their self-worth and understand that if they don't ask for what they're worth, they're not going to get it.

Paul: Yeah, I mean, you're right. I don't want to say you have to be an advocate, but when I say I'm the CEO and founder of Muserk, I do tell people, "Look, I'm not just running a company—I'm an advocate as well."

Sometimes I don't want to be an advocate, quite honestly. I speak on panels all the time. It's music-related, but it's not like a Muserk panel. It's just an organization. And once I get riled up, I just can't stop, quite honestly. I almost snap out of it, like, "What did I say?" But it was great—it’s just something that comes out of me.

I do want to make it clear, so you don't get any bad comments: most of the problem with what artists get comes from the platforms. I don't think that users need to spend $5 more per subscription—that's not the fix. The real problem is they don't pay a fair trade. Or their opinion is they do—artists say they don't. That's where we're at.

I find it interesting how much money, in a modern day, people spend. They write an article about Spotify's subscription going up by $1, and people are up in arms. Meanwhile, people are buying 12 Pabst Blue Ribbon canned beers here in East Nashville at a bar. That is like $0.99 beer to drink, but they have no problem with that.

So look—99% is on the platform side. I think the consumers pay, and they should get it. But on the advocacy side—yeah. I mean, look, most people just saw the Grammys the other night. A lot of speeches were advocacy speeches—nothing to do with their music, right? These people are advocates. Whether you agree with them or not is not what I'm talking about.

When they got up to win the award, they didn't really talk about themselves. They talked about this group of people or that group of people. So I think, by nature, most creatives are advocates—or they tend to lend themselves into that category, which is great.

So I don't think it's a big stretch. I think you hit on it earlier in the interview, which is—it’s hard to learn new things. I have a list of so many hobbies I want to do and learn for fun. It's hard sometimes to go home after work and get going on this stuff. But it is a thing of, once you get going, it does start to roll.

With artists who are starting out—I'd assume they're younger if they're doing this for the first time—they have a ton of energy. And again, I think most artists I know are super excited about that business mindset of an artist.

Think of it as your company—your label. Your label is about you becoming famous and playing. But if you're writing music, you are now a publishing company. In your head, a publishing company is different than a label. They don't even speak to each other, which is another problem in the music industry.

But you have to start learning—okay, I know I'm an artist, but am I writing my music? Oh, forget about that—I may be writing songs for someone else someday. Many artists write songs—look it up—for major artists you’d never know. Songs that you think they wrote or co-wrote—oh, that was written by this huge artist. Oh, Chris Stapleton gave that song to that person.

There are so many hits. So this is a very common thing that people don't understand until they get into it. It's a business, and people are trading their songs—they're a commodity.

Like if I made pottery plates and sold each one for $10 at a stand, I would say, "Hey Michael, you want 10 plates for your house? Here, I made these." Great. I'll buy them. Your music—you write a song—it's a copyright. Someone might want to buy it.

Think of that as a product—your own art. You can get on stage and be an artist, but you should think of that piece of music as a thing that has a price on it. And if someone wants it, they should buy it. Or you might give it to them. But that's a choice—that’s a different trade. You should think of it as something that’s worth something. It is intellectual property protected by copyright law.

And another thing I'll advocate—this is kind of old-school USA, but it’s true—one of the things that led the United States to being one of the greatest… well, again, I'm not a politician—but as a country, we are an economic superpower. When you look at the numbers in the world for decades, it was the idea that we were one of the early countries that came up with intellectual property laws.

Michael: Mm.

Paul: And organized them. So it led us to invention. The Industrial Revolution led to invention. Meaning—if you put the time in and invent a motor, invent a car, invent a thing, invent a process, invent an artistic logo—you can intellectually copyright that. And it becomes a thing that you can buy, and you can sell.

Without intellectual property—that's what built our economy during the Industrial Revolution, 100%. So I think of music as just a copyright—an intellectual property. Just like if you said, "Hey Paul, I just invented this engine. It runs on water and it totally works," I'd be like, "Oh my God, that is a copyright. That’s going to replace all cars. No pollution." It falls under the same laws, to be honest. It’s an intellectual copyright.

So I think people should think of it as crazy things like that—because then it will get knocked down a little bit. But you still have that foundation, and you won’t let things slide the way artists tend to. Because quite honestly, it’s a tough road. They get beaten down. And it's not their fault. I understand it.

There comes a time when it's like, "Okay, I'll give you half a sandwich," or you can still fight for the whole sandwich. And you say, "You know what, I'll just take the half. I need to move on." And that's fact. And that's fine. But you want to fight that as much as possible.

Michael: Wow. Gotta get that whole sandwich. What kind of sandwich are we talking about?

Paul: Any good sandwich—whatever that is. I just had brisket tacos for lunch, so...

Michael: Whoever's listening—just imagine the best sandwich in the world you've ever had. And that's what's at stake here. Mm-hmm.

Paul: Well, it's just about, and there is—there's an element to all businesses, not just music—that if you present whatever you do in life as something special, people will start to see it as special. And I'm not talking—I'm not a vision board guy. I'm not getting into that hocus-pocus stuff. But there's an idea that when you talk about something, we all know how humans react to things, right?

You can tell them even lies—we see it every day in the media—and they'll just follow it if it's told enough. But what if you're telling them something really positive and special about what you did over and over again? And what if you really believed it? What would they start to think about it? They would start to move along. All their doubts would filter away.

And that's part of just being successful in any business, right? When you promote things—people that promote something that they feel is great and promote it with passion—definitely just do better. I mean, it's a fact. Look around. Look at people. And yeah, there are some negative people who make a ton of money, but just chalk it up to like, they scraped by, they got through the cracks. But maybe we don't know what their end is going to be. You know, maybe it doesn't end up well.

But most people—we've all met those people who are really positive and so passionate—it sucks us into what they're doing in a positive way. And that just leads to more success, right?

Michael: That's so true. Yeah, I've heard that said before. If you don't believe in it, if you don't believe in your music, then why would anyone else? You kind of have to really carry that torch.

It also reminds me of—this is true of any very successful entrepreneur or person in general—is exactly what you're describing. Like, they have to kind of champion this belief and this vision.

I know you hear things like Steve Jobs and his “reality distortion field,” how he would literally just have a belief or a vision in something so strong that it moved reality around him. Like, it made things that weren't possible happen.

It certainly seems like that kind of belief, that kind of vision—it can go above and beyond just sort of an idea. Like, it actually has a physical, visceral impact on the environment. It's part of what dreams reality into existence.

One of my mentors says he's “woo-woo compliant”—that's how he describes it. But I think there's definitely something there. Even beyond the woo-woo spirituality kind of stuff, like you said, there is a scientific basis. In goal setting, when you write something down or believe it... yeah.

Paul: It's kind of like the definition—someone was telling me the definition of karma. Nobody really knows what karma is. People use it all the time: good karma, bad karma.
 I read this thing—it was like, basically, if you steal something, you're most likely going to be around other people who steal things, right? And then you're going to have all these bad things happen to you because you're just around people who do bad things. And then you're going to say, “I have really bad karma.”

If you do something bad to somebody—most likely, then you do. If you do positive things, you tend to attract positivity.

It sounds very generic, and I don't know where—maybe it's a Buddhist thing—but this is really the definition of karma. It's not this magical thing like, “Oh, do a good deed for someone and something good will happen.” It's like, no, do a bunch of things. Talk about your music positively. Do things for people, and then good things happen to you because you're actually surrounding yourself in a certain environment.

You help people—those people probably help. It's just all this kind of thing. I know it's generic, but in the music industry—again, it's not the artist's fault—it is a very negative industry. I mean, there's a lot of negativity.

So you do have to have these mindsets to try to balance that out. If you just go with the flow and go with the river, it's going to take you. I mean, I'm sure you've seen a lot of good people who went in and came out not looking so good—not feeling so good about themselves.

So I do think the most you can do to prepare for this... And by the way, having control, learning about the business, helps you to feel safe. It's like building a raft in the river. You're no longer just in the river—you’re now in a boat. So you're still flowing, but you have some control, right? You're a little more calm. You can do things.

Making this analogy up, but it seems to be pretty good. I'm just such a fan of—there’s nothing bad that would happen to you. Now, will you screw up? Absolutely. Will you make mistakes? We have days where we think, “It's a done deal. I really messed this up. I almost had a record deal. I got too crazy in the negotiations and they dropped me.”

You do have to learn as an artist to persevere. You're going to have many, many days of failure. It's not a permanent failure.

Again, very generic, but the artists who are successful—ask anybody—there might be a weird couple, but they've all failed majorly before they hit it major, where they said it was over. But the thing is, they got up the next day. So when you show up to the game, at least something can happen, right? I'm a big advocate of that kind of stuff. You don't have to know what's going to happen.

You just have to know—just show up to the game. And when the ref blows his whistle, get in the game.

Even if you think you're going to get beaten 100 to 1—you just never know. But if you're not there, you have a 0% chance.

That kind of works out for people. And then perseverance. Some people get it on the second try. Some people might get it on the 20th. You just have to be prepared to go the distance.

You might not have to go the distance—but you should be prepared.

Michael: Good stuff, man. Yeah, this is super motivating. Hopefully folks who are listening to this right now can put some of this in a bottle and save it for those rainy days—those moments we all have, where it's kind of like going through the storm or going down that rocky part of the rapids.

And now they've got at least a little bit more of a secure boat around them, because...

Paul: It's still rocky, man. It's still rapids. No one's saying otherwise. So what happens is they think, “Oh, well, it's still kind of this,” but you have to think—no one said you weren't going on the rapids. Instead of just your body in the river getting battered, you're now in a boat. And yeah, you can still capsize and drown, but you've got less of a chance, and you have a lot more tools. The other thing I just want to leave some of your listeners with is—this is just core to what music does:

If you are writing songs—and I know you're an artist, that could be one thing—but most artists nowadays do write. Learn about music publishing.

Music publishing is also something you can do if you're not an artist. Let's say you decide you're going to be an artist, and maybe the artist thing doesn't work out, or you're kind of done with it. You could be a songwriter till you're 120 years old.

Check out Nashville, where I am now. I moved from New York after 31 years. In Nashville, you could be a songwriter. You don't have to be a live performer.

There are so many things musicians can do besides become famous or become an artist. There are plenty of guys like me who were kids and said, “It just wasn't the bands, but I love music.” I love studios. There are many jobs you can do in music. If you can't be a music lawyer—if you're like, “I don't know anything about music, but I love the field, and I want to help artists be successful. I want to be part of their company.”

Schools like Berklee, NYU—there are so many schools now that have music business. Please get into it. Because it's not really just the artists. It's the lawyers and the people working these copyright agencies—who are legal people. They change the game.
 The people in Washington—lobbyists who work on behalf of the NMPA, which is all the publishers in the United States—they’re the organization that changed the laws in favor of songwriters.

There are many things you can do in the music industry if you're not a musician, or if you're a musician who's like, “Hey, I'm just not famous,” kind of thing. There's so many things you could do to help everything we're talking about. Please be open-minded and look into that.

And if you're writing songs, become a member of a Performance Rights Organization. If you're in the United States, there's ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR—those are the majors.

You don't need to make any money. Just sign up. Because when you sign up, you'll start getting pamphlets, and they also have seminars and online things.
 You'll start to hang out—and this is—even Beyoncé is part of a PRO. Everybody’s in there. Every copyright person’s in there, big or small.

And I think that's a great way to get going. That's my spiel.

Michael: Amazing. Yeah, this is fantastic. Well, Paul, on behalf of the Modern Musician community, thank you for being an advocate for musicians and helping to share some of the lessons and experience from decades of experience being in the industry. For anyone that's listening to this or watching this right now who is interested in learning more about Muserk or diving deeper, where do you recommend they go to learn more?

Paul: Muserk.com is our website. We don't have a lot of public learning materials on there like maybe other public-facing indie sites. You can Google me. I'm on LinkedIn. You can send me a message through LinkedIn—that's a great way to get me. Paul Goldman—type in Muserk. You can Google Paul Goldman Muserk. Feel free to reach out.

Um, again, there's a lot of cool music stuff—Nashville, New York, seminars—they’re all over the place. Be proactive. No one’s going to do it for you, but once you get into it, it’ll really improve your chances.

Michael: Awesome. Like always, we’ll put the links in the show notes for easy access. And Paul, again, I really appreciate you being on the podcast today.

Paul: Yeah, thanks, Michael. Appreciate it.

Michael: Yeah! Woo!