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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Episode 630 – Why Chasing Algorithms Is Killing Your Music Career With Keith Jopling

On this week’s podcast, I speak with Keith Jopling about what separates artists who last from those who burn out chasing the wrong metrics. Keith spent 25 years inside the business, including time at Spotify, before interviewing 80 artists and bands to write Riding the Rollercoaster. The creative director model he extracted from that research […]

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Episode 629 – Erasing Leakage But Keeping The Drummer’s Performance DNA With Dr. Bill Evans

On this week’s episode, I speak with Dr. Bill Evans, audio scientist, producer, educator, and inventor of the Performance Restoration methodology. Bill believes that drum recording has always involved a painful tradeoff, but it doesn’t have to. Most engineers accept mic bleed as an unavoidable character of a drum sound, questioning whether removing it could […]

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Episode 628 – How Female Producers Regain Control With Xylo Aria

Female artists who hire producers risk losing creative control before a single song is released. On this week’s episode, Xylo Aria, founder of Music Production for Women (MPW), tells us how she learned this the hard way, by paying for sessions where male producers overrode her vision, leaving her with music she never put out […]

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Episode 627 – Elliot Easton Talks The Cars, Guitars, And Interesting Tours

On this week’s episode, Elliot Easton, guitarist for The Cars and Creedence Clearwater Revisited, takes us through his journey with the band and beyond. Easton looks back at The Cars’ origins, from getting a label deal the old fashioned way, to connecting with famed producer Roy Thomas Baker, to recording the band’s initial albums, to […]

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Episode 626 – The Latest Music Business And Production News

Is the music industry heading into another major reset? On this week’s solo episode, I break down the biggest shifts happening across the music business and music production. In This Episode: And much more. Chapters: 00:00:00 – Coming up… 00:00:52 – Why this music business update matters now 00:01:13 – Are streaming subscriptions reaching the […]

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