Episode 645 – How An Indie Band Affords Abbey Road Studios ft. Producer Dan McCormick

On this week’s episode, how does an indie band from Chicago afford to record at the legendary Abbey Road Studios? You record live, of course. In this episode, producer Dan McCormick explains exactly what it takes to record a live album at Abbey Road with no overdubs. McCormick flew to London three weeks after his […]

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Episode 644 – Wilson Harwood Tells Exactly How To Build A Truly Soundproof Studio

On this week’s Inner Circle Podcast episode, acoustic designer Wilson Harwood tells musicians what it actually takes to build a personal studio, including soundproofing costs, common mistakes, and overlooked questions. An artist himself with a need for a personal recording space, he first built his own 270-square-foot backyard studio in 2020. Wilson found he loved […]

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Episode 643 – Producing Dolly Parton And Other Legends With Don Miggs

On this week’s episode, Nashville songwriter and producer Don Miggs explains how he built a career connecting legacy artists to the music that made them great. Miggs details how he brokered the relationships that landed him as a producer on a new “Let It Be” with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Mick Fleetwood, and Dolly Parton. […]

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Episode 642 – Sound Design And Vintage Synths With Nick Peck

On this week’s episode, Nick Peck shows how a veteran audio director builds iconic effects from field recording to final mix. Nick has worked on hundreds of Star Wars projects since 1998, including serving as Audio Director on Star Wars Battlefront, and in this conversation he explains the practical decisions behind that work. Many sound […]

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Episode 641 – Mixing Business Coaching With Michael Morgan

On this week’s episode, Mixing Business Coach Michael Morgan explores why building a sustainable mixing career requires a clear business system, not just great technical skills or the latest marketing tactic. Michael has a background in product development, research, and audio-industry brand work, as he explains why mixers often struggle when they stop doing the […]

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Episode 640 – Engineer/Producer Bruce Sugar On Working With Ringo, Joe Walsh, And Ozzy

On this week’s episode, veteran producer, engineer, and Grammy nominee Bruce Sugar explains why staying relevant means embracing new tools without sacrificing the feel and emotion that make music connect. Bruce shares how a short engineering gig with Ringo Starr became a working relationship spanning more than two decades, how artists like Ringo and Joe […]

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Episode 639 – Music Industry News And Views With Bobby Owsinski

On this week’s episode, I break down how shifting ownership, AI adoption, and changing platform policies are reshaping the music business and professional audio landscape. I’ll examine major industry moves involving iZotope, Plugin Alliance, Native Instruments, Dynaudio, and DistroKid, alongside the Hollywood Bowl’s immersive sound upgrade and D’Addario’s controversy over undisclosed AI use. I’ll also […]

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Epsisode 638 – Tour Management And FOH Mixing With Ryan Goldbacher

On this week’s episode, Tour managers and artist teams: see why logistics without leadership burns an artist’s budget, with FOH engineer Ryan Goldbacher. Ryan traces his path from Blackbird and Dark Horse Recording, including setting up microphones for a young Taylor Swift in 2006, to Shooter Jennings, where he admits he struggled on his first […]

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Episode 637 – Why New Platforms Can No Longer Access Spotify’s Artist Data ft. Oskar Eichler

On this week’s episode, reliable music data is getting harder to access, and Oskar Eichler explains why the artists and companies that know how to interpret it now have a serious advantage. As CEO of Songstats, Oskar has helped build a real-time music analytics platform that tracks streaming, playlist, chart, radio, and social media performance […]

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Episode 636 – Meet Anukari, The Totally Unique 3D Physics Synthesizer ft. Evan Mezeske

On this week’s episode, indie plugin developers who want to launch a genuinely new synthesis tool will recognize their own blind spots in Evan Mezeske’s story. Evan left Google after 11 years building large-scale fraud systems to create Anukari, the first commercially available 3D physics modeling synthesizer that runs in real time. He discovered that […]

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Episode 635 – Oeksound’s Hannes Andersson Talks Soothe 3 and More

Audio plugin developers who assume machine learning is the right tool will find the process used by Hannes Andersson and the team at Oeksound genuinely surprising. Hannes is CEO of Oeksound, the creator of Soothe, the dynamic resonance suppressor that became so dominant on Spotify’s Top 50, yet it’s team rebuilt the algorithm from scratch.  […]

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Episode 634: Why Your Voice Memo Proves Nothing in a Copyright Dispute ft. Nadim Rahman 

Song copyright protection for musicians who record ideas with a voice memo at 3am proves nothing in a dispute. That original moment completely unverifiable. On this week’s episode, I speak with Nadim Rahman about Songproof, a dual-blockchain platform that recognizes that musicians needed an irrefutable timestamp at the exact moment inspiration strikes, not after the […]

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Episode 633 – Labels, Streaming, YouTube, And Gear News And Views

Music industry professionals still betting on major labels to develop artists should know the system has structurally exited that business. On this week’s episode I break down the data showing UMG and WMG now redirect spending toward catalog acquisitions rather than new careers. . . . . . have made AI licensing deals explicitly designed […]

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Episide 632 – Jeff Graves Talks LUFS Mastering

On this week’s episode, mastering engineer Jeff Graves talks about what happens when independent musicians upload masters that are so hot that they lose transient detail the moment streaming platforms apply loudness normalization. Jeff spent two and a half years measuring 214 audio fingerprints across 15 samples per genre to build a 24-stage AI mastering […]

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Episode 631 – Session Vocalist Darlene Koldenhoven Tells How She Charted Without A Manager Or Label

On this week’s episode, session vocalist Darlene Koldenhoven tells us how her music hit #4 on the Billboard classical crossover chart with no manager or label. The common assumption that a major-label infrastructure is required to chart is exactly what her story dismantles, and she walks through the specific decisions that produced number-one worldwide radio […]

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