Episode
Ep. 249: Rick Beato | Songwriters Got Poorer. AI Is Next. So Where Is Music Going?
- Published
- May 5, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 5137
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Summary
Today's guest is a multi-instrumentalist, music educator, interviewer, producer, and songwriter. He is also one of the most influential independent music voices online. His real story isn't the channel he built after a 90-second video of his son's perfect pitch hit 80 million views overnight, it's his incredible value to the music community and the conversations he sparks online about the state of the music industry and his conversations with some of the biggest creators within it's orbit. This is one of the more unflinching conversations we've had about what's actually happening to music. Two musicians from different generations of the same fight, working it out in real time. Where do you stand when the rules of the music industry keep changing under your feet? And The Writer Is... Rick Beato! In this episode of And The Writer Is, we go deep on: How getting dropped in 1999 built a YouTube empire 16 years later Why Ringo would be a co-writer of every Beatles song in 2026 The Eli Mercer experiment: building a fully fake AI artist with Claude — and what happened when he uploaded it The NPR EDM stunt: 4 million monthly Spotify listeners, 6,300 followers, and what that math says about AI The 90-second video of his son's perfect pitch that hit 3 million views by 10pm and 80 million total "There's no two current artists with the gravity of Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder" — and Ross's case for their modern counterparts Who is the Michael Jordan of pop music? Queen at 3 billion streams enters the chat Why Ross is still bullish on songwriting — and what the Music Modernization Act got right that the No Fakes Act needs to finish And much more... Hit subscribe and turn on notifications. Every week, we go deep with the most interesting creatives in music. Follow us on socials:…