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Nevada System of Higher Education. You're tuned in to the 411 with SOS. I'm Sandra Smith, your host, and we today are continuing our conversation on the business of music. I want to remind everybody that you can hear our show here the second Sunday of every month at 830 a.m. right here on 91.5 Jazz and More. So as we continue talking about what it's like to make it in the music business, especially if you're an independent artist, my guest today is my friend of more than 30 years, Sam Weaver, who has programmed all over the United States. He is now working for All Access. He is collectively, I think we together have more than 60 years in the business of music, radio and entertainment. And today, Sam and I are going to have some dialogue about the recent conversation that's circling out there. Issa Rae is obviously an actress, everybody knows who she is, but she's also has jumped into the music business. She has a label distributed through one of the major distribution companies. And she recently did an interview whereby she described the music business as basically laden with criminals and sheisty individuals. Biggie already said that, so we know. And I'm sure she didn't mean it that we're all criminals, but for those that are not inside the business of music, I think it's something that's worth discussing to bring a little bit of clarity to perhaps what she was really saying. So Sam, welcome to my show. I am we've talked a little bit already, but I'm very anxious to get your take on that particular statement about our industry, the business of music. So welcome, Sam Weaver.

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Hello, hello. And so I don't mean to talk over you. By the way, I'm glad this isn't a Zoom call for once. I don't have to wear my Zoom shirt or keep the camera at a certain level. I like that.

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Right, yes.

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So let me qualify why I can do this. Besides programming, I'm the urban R&B editor at All Access, which is an industry trade magazine. Okay. And I do a lot of stuff, you know, I'm also a radio talent coach, and I give strategic advice to music artists. So this is a perfect thing that we're talking about. Okay? Yes. Quite frankly, you know, I figured it's an interview, she's got some stuff coming up, this is low-hanging fruit, so make this statement. Because other than that, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering she's coming from the music industry.

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Film!

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I mean, the movie industry. Yes! Seriously.

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Right!

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I mean, we can talk about, and if you want to characterize it that way, let's talk about other businesses. For example, the possibility of things we've heard about trucking, the financial industry, politics, based on what today is. And so you're going to say the music industry has all these terrible individuals. Seriously. But I'm like you. I think she said it. This is a PR thing. She said it in a moment. And keep moving. It's low-hanging fruit. I mean, it really is.

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Except for Sam, you know, so I really wanted to discuss this with you. And I've talked about it with a couple of other people. And the one thing that I'm always trying to put out front is that the music industry, just like the film industry, they happen to be closed industry, right? So correct me if I'm wrong, the people that are on the inside of the industry have a completely different understanding of how the industry works versus those that are on the outside and trying to get into the business, right? Am I right, Sam?

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You are correct.

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And many times, those just coming in get a little information, just enough to not know much of anything. And then they hear what I call phishing stories, and all these wild stuff that you hear that has happened, and why this record happened, or why this happened, or this artist management. And you hear all this wild stuff, and they start to believe a lot of it. Every industry has its quirks and it's a closed industry and things that go on. It's just the truth. You hear rumors about all sorts of stuff.

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To blatantly say, because, so here's one of the things that I'm also always trying to get across because, like you said, somebody recently, you know, when Drake started popping and became really big, everybody kept saying, oh, it's just because of payola, it's payola. Like, that is the one word that a lot of lay people know about our industry, and they throw it around. And a lot of people believe that all you need is money to influence people to make things happen. And that is not true, right?

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Not money to influence people, you need money to market. If you, I always characterize music as a jar of peanut butter. And I just tell people, how do you get that jar of peanut butter to the top shelf at the grocery store? There is a process to it. There is a process in the music industry. The outside world, you may not agree with the process. You may go, I don't know about that. Just like certain practices in the stock market, people go, what? How does that work with speculation? Look, there's a process. What you're saying is correct. There's a way how things get done, and it really is a business of music.

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And that is what most people like to forget, that it's the business of music. So I always say that people, you know, brand new artists who, because everybody loves to look at the end product and make all kinds of assumptions of how we got there. One of the things that I always explain to people is not only is there a process for everything but when a record label is in the, you know, because the labels are in the business of making money, right? They're going to invest in artists that they think are going to give them triple quadruple quintuplet return on their investment, right? They're financial institutions, that's what they are. But nobody wants to look at them as a bank. That's what the labels are. They are, in effect, a bank to front you the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you need to break your career, and they only do that if they are betting, what? On a sure thing, right?

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Well, and many sure things never work. That's why this industry, there's only so many people that have been stars, but there's been a lot of one hit wonders and two hit wonders. In fact, those are the ones that substantiate most of the industry over the years in every format of music that there is. So what you just said is so true and they don't want to look at them as financial institutions, but that's what they do. So when we get a loan, there's always an attachment and we have to pay it back. Okay, with the music industry, there is a dollar attached to everything. Even when you go on the road, if you have a budget, you can't go crazy and go way past that budget because they're gonna charge, it's called chargebacks. They always forget that.

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At the end of the day,

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that money is gonna come out of you and whatever past and above the budget that you were budgeted for. And you don't get that. Like, when you perform on the road, and let's say you decide to get an extra, head your folks, your road manager, get an extra limo, or let's get this, or let's, if that's beyond the budget, somebody's writing that stuff down among your road crew. And when everything gets done and added up, that's charged back to you and then you're going to yell foul.

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That's how it works.

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That's just straight business. I don't care what business you're in. It's just that you do something for free. Exactly.

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Well, the other thing is, when I was an executive, I would invite managers and a lot of times these managers were Pookie and Dem's cousins, or uncle or mom, who didn't really have any understanding again about how the business of music works and I would sit them down and say you have questions to ask me people would say no I said do you do you know how much money my department because people also forget I was the promotion department there's the marketing department as the video department as a PR department like there are all these different departments and we all get allocated a certain amount of money to work this project. And if you don't know what that money is, if you as your artist and the manager don't understand that my department has a million dollars, the next department has a half a million dollars, that's all your money. And I would try to explain to people, listen, you want to ask me certain questions. You want to know what is the budget that my department has. What is the budget? budget, no accountability because everybody would always assume, ìOh, the label is giving me this money.î No, no, no, no. The label is loaning you this money. Before you get check one of your royalties, the label will collect what they have spent on your behalf. And if you and your manager donít know what theyíve spent, how do you know that they ripped you off. You didn't ask all the right questions, right?

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I love something that Prince said once in an interview, I forget what late-night TV show it was on, but they asked about what he thought about Adele making 20 million dollars. He goes, okay, they gave her 20 million. That sounds like a lot. Not really. You know how much they made off that project? So if you put that, you know, and look at that in terms of she made, it looks like a lot of money on paper, but that should tell you how much money they made.

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Because they're giving you nothing. They're making an investment in you. And you know, some of the things that I know people get tight about that nowadays we have these deals called 360. You want to elaborate on that for us?

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That's a very easy one to explain the music industry always finds ways to make a buck You know at the end of the day music industry right now makes more money than ever Then ever understand. Well, they make it three ways you mentioned of 360. Okay, watch this one No, this thing we call it streaming, which is what it is Downloads so you have DSPs you have the digital area, okay? And service agreements with the music services that you're making money. Then, okay, now there was a time that when you were on the road, you were making that buck. When you sign these contracts on these three sixes, what you're really giving up is a part of your revenue from concerts, merchandising, and various other things. This is another way the record company's gonna make a buck. It's just straight out business. And I try to explain to people the most important thing, and I know you do too also, Sandra, the most important thing is you need good entertainment law representation so you can understand the business portion of it. Someone has to take care of that. You have the final say on your background, but you have to have somebody to rely on to give you the basic information. You have to understand you have two roads to travel today to make money, okay? I mentioned the digital, DSPs, and you still have the record industry. People are like, oh, nobody. Everyone wants to do everything like everybody does. No, it's not everybody does this and every, it's a lot of people do this and a lot of people do that. At the end of the day, the formula, for example, for streaming, the formula to get paid as an artist for streaming isn't great for an individual. Which is true, however, and I agree with that, however, for the record company, who is dealing in bulk product up there in the world, they make a ton of money. But at the same time for the artist, I'd say, okay, publishing and writing still exist. There's sync licensing. There's more ways now than there ever were for artists potentially to make a buck.

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Agreed.

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But it is a business.

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And we always come back to that, right? And the other part of it is, to go back to her point, I think one of the things that she also said was that it's basically that it's criminal, right? Well, he who has the gold makes the rules. And the other thing that we always forget to talk about is you have the option to not accept the deal that's being offered to you. conversation with Maxine from En Vogue not too long ago and I specifically spoke to her about the contracts that En Vogue was in because they were in a terrible contract, right? And she said to me, yes

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we knew that the contract was predatory but we also knew it was the only way for us to get our foot in the door. And so I've heard of that before. I've heard that a But everyone wants to be a star and they think they're going to be that, like movie time, the one exception to the rule. And that's how things happen. And when she says the word crook, hey, what do you mean crook? What do you mean criminal? Tell me exactly. You may not agree with the practices of how the business operates or is done, you want to see some real potential crooks or the financial industry. Oh my God, the savers and loan companies.

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The payday loan companies.

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Oh my gosh.

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I mean, that's what I'm saying.

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Get out. So I didn't take offense outright, but I felt a certain kind of way and I really wanted to address it because for the people that don't really understand how the business works and for somebody like that who is got a lot of standing in the community and got a lot of credibility you know her saying something like that is just for people to go yes I know you see even she agrees and she's in the business well she just got into the business right she's a soundbite she's a soundbite my point Sam was my point that I wanted to make was yo your people are in jail. Them people in the film industry are in jail. Our people aren't really in jail for doing anything criminal.

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You can say you heard this or I heard a rumor this guy held this guy out the window by his fingertips. You hear all these stories. We have. And a few people, we know a few people who are in jail, you know, and for really bad stuff, okay?

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Right.

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But for the most part, you can only assume I heard, did you hear, or we heard.

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Well, I only heard of one person that's in jail in the music business. I'm sorry. So we got Suge, and we know the story there.

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Yeah.

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Right?

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And then we got, what's his name?

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Guilty until proven guilty. Guilty, I mean innocent until proven guilty. Well, he's saying, hey, Snoop was in court for a while for something that had nothing to do with the music business. All right. That was political, though. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it was, he's innocent. No problem. I love Snoop. And I love her. I mean, what she said was a soundbite. And she's trying to get in the industry. And a lot of stuff is probably like flying past her. But at some point you watch, she probably hasn't yet. But we'll recognize certain things of the music industry might be similar to some practices in the movie industry, behind the scenes. It is what it is, Sam.

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So, the thing that we have to also remember, because one of the things that she touched upon that I thought was interesting was also the corruption of the Grammy process, right? Well, I think that one of the things that we should also remember is these institutions weren't set up for everybody to be a part of, right? Well, no, and it's a voting situation, it's a popularity contest. But the people that are deciding who's popular is not the buying public per se, right? Because the Grammy's... No, it's a closed industry, it's people in the music industry. Again, it's a So when you get upset, like I was telling a couple of young people that, you know, when they started, when the Grammys finally started to open up and allow hip-hop, you know, they gave it some little bit of credibility. Do you remember how they would give out all the awards before the show aired? And then we would be told who won, but they never televised those people because they weren't ready to make that a credible format.

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Well, they're also not only past that reality check, they can only be on TV for so long, they still run over time. And I always give credit to the late Dick Clark. Dick Clark, who, by the way, when you said that word, payola, earlier, I laughed, because back in the late 50s, when there was a huge payola scandal, right? Okay. Dick Clark was indicted. It's easy, you can go read. However, Dick Clark, who was a great businessman, he had parts of record companies and various things and this and that. Guess what? He paid his taxes on that income. Right. Consequently, those people who Paola. They were convicted of tax evasion. They weren't convicted because of... So after that, then we start with the Paola stuff, but Dick Clark paid his taxes and all discretionary funds coming from other areas. He never lied about that. That's why he was never... He didn't go to jail. No problem. Well, yeah, because he didn't do anything wrong. He said, this is what I do. So the people with this stuff, and I lost track of where I was going with this. Sorry about that.

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No, no, no. We were talking about the Grammys and I was saying that now...

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It's a closed shop. It's a closed shop. It's the music industry voting on things. Nick Clark, American Bandstand. I mean, American Music Awards. When they came on the scene, they forced the Grammys to start the changes.

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To open up.

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Yes. Because one, Nick Clark believed in playing music. He always broke music. And if Dick Clark was alive today, he'd be the biggest cheerleader of hip hop that there would ever be.

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Because that's who he was.

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He was always championing anything that was new. So, American Music Awards triggered the Grammys, who were boring back then, to get their act together. But they've always been slow to come around. But you know what? In fairness to Grammys, society and people in general are slow to anything that's new. Especially the younger generation. And this goes back to every generation, forever, no matter what it is. Oh, that's terrible. You can even point over to the gospel when they thought Mary Mary was just blasphemous and terrible. Oh my, and now there's standard gospel music.

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Mainstream.

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Traditional. Right. Everything changes, people are slow to catch on to anything that's new. And automatically, music industry, when streaming first started, they were suing Little Jimmy and Aunt Joan for swapping stuff on the internet.

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Yes, Napster.

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They were suing them.

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They could see, yes, until they figured out,

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well, wait a minute.

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They can't put the genie back in the bottle. That's what they figured out. If they had embraced that kid from Napster instead of suing him for 10 years, the industry wouldn't have lost as much money as they did. And so again, I always say they should find him and thank him because as a result of that, the music industry is now making more money than

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ever. But what you said about the Grammys, reflection of society, every society is Extremist societies in the current, in the now, like right now, they're always floated new change and things and how they are and how they're going to respond to it. The Grammys are no different. Anything the people, and the funny thing is we say the Grammys, they're not an outside thing. These are

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people in the music industry. That's what people forget, that the people voting on these awards are people in the industry. But I guess what they're really saying again, you know, because Drake went ahead and he pulled his nominations because he's, you know, he's a little tight with them. The Weeknd had a great album two years ago and didn't get any nominations, right? So he came out, he was one of the first person to say, you know what, this is not reflective of what's really popular

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amongst the buying public. No problem, but I'm not worried about the buying public. You need to talk to who? Just like the Academy Awards. You gotta talk to, you wanna Oscar, you gotta talk to people in your industry to get them hip or to bring them along. Because you're gonna have different factions. And as time goes on, factions start to win out because people die and go away. It's just the truth. So at a certain point, you're gonna look up one day and half the Grammys in X amount of years is going to be hip-hop. But by the time they do that, there'll be a new type of music going on in hip-hop, which is already an older format that you can split down the middle of new artists and previous artists, as I like to call them. It's been around forever. So it all goes in cycles and catches up to each other. But again, buying public is over here. It may not be reflective of the industry. And the buying public, a certain segment of the buying public, then it becomes a generational thing.

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True.

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Okay? Look at, hey, look at BTS. They don't even speak English. Do they care? All I know is whatever they've watched and whatever they've done as entertainers and what they do, kids are phenomenal.

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Yep.

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Hey, I only go and the public seems to like them. They love to categorize them. They don't know where to put them. True. Better figure something out. They don't care because they're going they're going to the bank. Exactly.

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Exactly. You know, I find it fascinating.

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So I love all these statements by like like her and what Drake did was great. Dude, you got to talk to the people that answer the hip to what's going on. But then they got to talk to the kids at Grandkids to figure it all out.

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But everybody also loves to oversimplify, right? Like everybody wants to oversimplify things, right? You know, it's like I made a record and it's a great record. I had Kathy Brown on the show last week, and she pointed out a reason why she does not accept music from independent artists, that she's not 100 percent certain is their product because she cannot risk putting the radio station at you know at a liability in terms of playing some music that's not really owned by the person who's presenting it right so

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people forget that because everything in every industry is about money you have to have certain protections right so you may think your music is the

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than they are, but the process is not dictating that that's where it is for the industry.

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In 93 and 94, when I was programming in Kansas City, I came to the station, the manager's smart as all get out and they're making serious money. Oh, Tech Nine.

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Okay.

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Incredible. You see, you know, when people would freak out, I go, how did this guy make 12 million? He's a businessman. He and his manager are about dollars and cents, which includes the music industry as part of the portfolio. That's not all the portfolio. It's real estate and all other stuff. He's smart. They're very smart. In 94, as an independent artist, he met all the criteria that I asked for, and he was only out of Kansas City, right? But he already had his stuff in the stores. I had ways that I could check his music, right? He along with his manager had learned the process. I mean, my god, he was going in the local high schools. He had his own marketing team back in

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94. He's a phenomenal machine, but the other thing that he is, Sam, not just that, no, no, no, it's not just that he's unique It's that he was somebody who bothered to understand how the business of music worked

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But what happened was because I know the guys right? Mm-hmm. His manager who didn't come from the music industry They're a partner's 50-50 on stuff. Mm-hmm. They learned the business. You're right They've been offered money over the years, but he did need major distribution. So he didn't want them to deal with that, but he did get major distribution for his product, which is smart, you gotta do that, or else you're selling stuff out the back of your car.

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But he had done that as well, so he built his way up.

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Yes he did, he learned, and so when people still to this day don't understand, but you know, has he ever had a top 10, no. Does he deal with the charts and music. Yeah, but he has a finite amount of money he's going to spend in this area and that's it. And it fits along with all his other objectives of what he's trying to do overall. That's what he does.

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That's it. That's what he did. I mean that was a genius of him that he again bothered to understand the business that he was getting into and he and he grew his audience from there Regionally and was a huge star regionally. He didn't bother to chase the national thing

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He was actually touring nationally. No, he's bright. He would learn the game. It wasn't just regional. He was already on the road

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No, no, and I'm not saying that he didn't go on the road and do concerts, but he solidified his base. He was completely in control of the region that he came from, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, all that area right there, but did not stop and complain and whine about a major label and couldn't get a deal and all these other things that you find so many other people doing. But you know what, Timmy? I have to wrap it up now because we've come to the end of our show.

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Well, there's a whole lot of stuff to talk about here.

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What the hell is this? I've been chipped! We will have you back for another episode Sam, because I'm doing quite a few of them. Well if they want to get some more information from you they could always hit me up at 888media.com and I will have your information about this show up there. I thank you my friend, I appreciate you making time in the middle of your day to come and have a conversation with us and to help us educate the audience on the business of music.

0:27:43
so so so so so so so so Thank you.