Explore every episode of the podcast Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast

The latest music business and production news.

For independent musicians: AI copyright lawsuits, royalty disputes, and changing listener habits are reshaping the music industry right now.

Bobby covers US recorded music revenue hitting $6 billion in the first half of the year, with CDs up 59%. 

He also explains what a San Jose Sharks arena crowd rejecting an AI goal song tells independent artists. . .

Universal Music Group is suing DistroKid for up to $150 million over undisclosed AI-generated tracks. . .

And a proposed mechanical royalty settlement would drop songwriter pay below the current 13.1 cents per song rate.


#MusicIndustry #IndieArtist #AIMusciCopyright #SongwriterRoyalties #BobbyOwsinski

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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 second son was born to produce The Empty Pockets in Abbey Road Studio 2. The indie band had spent nearly a year playing the songs live, then captured the full album in two days with no instrument overdubs.

He covers drum and piano placement to control bleed, his subtractive EQ approach, and what a room full of guests on day one taught him about pulling honest takes.

The Empty Pockets: https://theemptypockets.com
Bandcamp: https://theemptypockets.bandcamp.com/
The Empty Pockets – Abbey Road Mini Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp7RWLd3xfc

#LiveRecording #AbbeyRoad #NoOverdubs #LiveToTapeRecording #DanMcCormick

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Soundproof studio costs, common mistakes, and overlooked questions: acoustic designer Wilson Harwood tells musicians what building one actually takes.

An artist himself with a need for a personal studio, he first built his own 270-square-foot backyard studio in 2020. Wilson found he loved the work and the process, which eventually grew into a full design firm.

He explains why soundproofing and acoustic treatment are frequently confused, why mini-split air conditioners don't actually bring in needed fresh air, and why DIY builders routinely underestimate everything beyond the walls.

Website: https://www.soundproofyourstudio.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soundproofyourstudio
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soundproofyourstudio/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilson-harwood-1b523025/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soundproof-your-studio/id1618807531
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/harwoodwilson6/

#RecordingStudio #HomeStudio #StudioBuildCost #SoundproofingTips #WilsonHarwood

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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. He also unpacks why legacy artists need someone to remember what made them good.

Bobby and Miggs cover Canyon Studios Nashville and the 1968 Electrodyne board ZZ Top and Aretha recorded on. Miggs closes with his case for building an artist's world before chasing a hit.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-miggs-8b896420a/
Website: https://www.miggs.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/don.miggs
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donmiggs

#MusicProduction #LegacyArtists #NashvilleProducer #LetItBeRecording #DonMiggs

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Star Wars sound designers and audio post pros: Nick Peck breaks down how a veteran actually 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. In this episode, he explains why he moved from a Sound Devices 722 to a Zoom H4N, how Soundminer Radium allows him to perform sound design live to picture, and why respecting an established sonic vocabulary is essential when working inside an iconic franchise.

Nick also breaks down practical field-recording techniques he has used on recent horror and Star Wars projects, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how memorable sounds are captured, shaped, and brought to life.

Plus, Nick tells us about this vintage synthesizer collection and how he keeps decades-old electro-mechanical instruments still running.

#SoundDesign #StarWars #StarWarsSoundDesign #FieldRecording #NickPeck

Website: https://nicolaspeck.com/
Under the Big Tree: https://underthebigtree.com/wp/
YouTube: https://underthebigtree.com/wp/about/
Bandcamp: https://nicolaspeck.bandcamp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nipeck/

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Michael Morgan, a Mixing Business Coach with a background in product development, research, and audio-industry brand work, joins Bobby Owsinski to explore why building a sustainable mixing career requires a clear business system, not just great technical skills or the latest marketing tactic.

He explains why mixers often struggle when they stop doing the activities that originally generated opportunities, and why experienced engineers need to keep adapting, maintain their relationships, and stay open to new ideas as the industry changes.

Michael breaks down his approach around clarity, growth, and delivery, showing how mindset, positioning, pricing, outreach, sales, client experience, retention, and persistence work together to create momentum. 

For mixers, producers, and other audio professionals trying to create more consistent careers, this episode offers a practical way to look beyond individual tactics and identify where the real gaps in their business may be. 

Connect with Michael:
Website
Instagram

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Music producers and engineers navigating rapid changes in recording technology learn from veteran producer, engineer, and Grammy nominee Bruce Sugar 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 Walsh balance feel with perfection, and how his own workflow has evolved from cutting tape to in-the-box production, Atmos mixing, and AI-assisted songwriting. 

He also reflects on working with Ozzy Osbourne, the fast-paced Nashville session culture that shaped his approach, and how AI is changing both the possibilities and value of music production.

Throughout the conversation, Bruce explains why engineers should avoid letting technical perfection get in the way of a great performance, keep sessions moving, and make technology serve the music rather than dominate it. 

Listeners will gain a veteran engineer's perspective on adapting to an evolving industry while preserving the human emotion at the heart of great records.

Connect with Bruce:
LinkedIn
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Bobby Owsinski, author and host of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, breaks down how shifting ownership, AI adoption, and changing platform policies are reshaping the music business and professional audio landscape.

Bobby examines 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. 

He also looks at the growing challenge of defining and labeling AI-generated music, Spotify’s efforts to combat AI spam and synthetic artist personas, and what new AI disclosure rules could mean for musicians and creators.

For anyone trying to keep up with today’s music industry, this episode offers context on where consolidation, artificial intelligence, distribution, and new technology are heading, and why these changes matter to the people making, producing, and releasing music.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Tour management can burn through an artist’s budget fast when logistics replace leadership, and Ryan Goldbacher, a tour manager and front-of-house engineer, explains what the job actually demands when an artist’s money, crew, and reputation are on the line.

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 tour management run and may have cost the artist tens of thousands because he did not yet know how to settle shows correctly. 

The experience taught him that effective tour management is less about booking hotels and collecting checks than leading people, supporting the band, and asking for help before uncertainty becomes an expensive mistake.

That same discipline shapes his approach to live sound: start with the quietest and most important elements, especially vocals and acoustic instruments, build the mix around them, and treat the kick drum as a full-range instrument instead of simply a bass source. 

For artists, engineers, tour managers, and anyone building a career in the music industry, Ryan's story shows why taking the next step before you feel fully ready can open doors, but staying valuable requires humility, strong judgment, and people you trust enough to call when you do not know the answer.

Connect with Ryan:
LinkedIn
Facebook

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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 across major platforms. Songstats now serves 10,000 active artists and provides data to major booking agencies, distributors, management companies, and labels.

Oskar explains why playlist follower counts can be misleading, how Songstats evaluates playlist health through long-term growth, artist performance, refresh frequency, and what the company calls the “playlist journey.” 

He also reveals how machine learning made it possible to track 100 million songs across 50,000 radio stations and how the new Social Stats platform helps creators understand performance across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.

These insights matter because succeeding in today’s music business requires more than watching streaming numbers. 

Oskar argues that as AI makes music easier to create, artists who build a distinctive identity, story, and connection with their audience will be better positioned to turn attention into loyal fans, merchandise sales, and touring opportunities.

Connect with Oskar:
LinkedIn
Songstats
YouTube
DONT BLINK

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Indie plugin developers who want to launch a genuinely new synthesis tool will recognize their own blind spots in Evan Mezeske's story.

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 technical originality creates a marketing problem most developers never anticipate. When a product is genuinely new, the market has no category for it, and polished 3D visuals can trigger skepticism instead of excitement.

His path from that invisible launch to being discovered by Doom Eternal composer Mick Gordon and Star Trek's lead sound designer reveals what actually moves a tool without a genre.

Listen to how this totally unique approach to synthesis went from unnoticed to being on everyone's radar in this Inner Circle Podcast episode.

Connect with Evan:
LinkedIn
Anukari
Instagram (Anukari)
YouTube (Anukari)
“You do not need to know chemistry to enjoy fireworks”: Exploring the physics-driven thinking behind some of the most groundbreaking plugins

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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.

Andersson 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. 

Oeksound's secret is two people in a room listening for hours until the math feels right, a standard that quietly shaped the sound of a lot of recorded music without anyone outside the company knowing it.

When Soothe 2 went viral during COVID and overuse artifacts began appearing on Spotify and Apple Music top tracks, the team rebuilt the core. 

Knowing what a plugin is actually taking away matters as much as knowing how to use it, and Oeksound's other tools reflect that same standard. 

Bloom, the adaptive tone shaper, reads the entire incoming signal before processing, so a high-shelf boost for warmth automatically pulls back when sibilance arrives rather than amplifying it. 

Spiff began as a mouth-click suppressor for close-mic'd vocals and evolved into an adaptive transient shaper that Andersson also uses for frequency-specific stereo placement, boosting attack on one channel while keeping overall levels balanced. 

Every product is tuned through hours of listening sessions by engineers who also write, produce, and mix, because emotion is the only benchmark Oeksound trusts.

Connect with Hannes:
LinkedIn
Oeksound

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Song copyright protection for musicians who record ideas with a voice memo at 3am proves nothing in a dispute. That original moment completely unverifiable.  

Nadim Rahman built Songproof, a dual-blockchain platform, after recognising that musicians needed an irrefutable timestamp at the exact moment inspiration strikes, not after the fact. 

For 99 cents per song, Songproof issues what Rahman calls a birth certificate for your music, anchored to the blockchain, so that if a collaborator or label ever questions who wrote what first, the proof already exists and cannot be altered.

Songproof actually uses two separate blockchains for distinct purposes: Bitcoin handles the timestamp, creating irrefutable proof of when a song was created, while Polygon handles split sheets through smart contracts. 

Hear more about Songproof on this week's episode.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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 how UMG and WMG now redirect spending toward catalog acquisitions rather than new careers. . . 

. . . have made AI licensing deals explicitly designed to reduce artist relationships. . .

. . . and then kept the copyright settlement money those deals generated without passing any of it on to the artists whose music was used for training. 

I also looked at:

• TikTok trying to fill this development vacuum, but 59% of its new-user feeds are already AI-generated content, so even that alternative is narrowing fast. 
• Spotify's global top 50 fell from over 90% new releases in 2019-2020 to roughly 70% by early 2026, and by May seven of the top ten songs were more than two years old. 
• Luminate found that 56% of 13-to-24-year-olds regularly listen to music made before 2000, with 25% of that group favoring tracks from the 1990s or earlier. 
• Hip hop, which held roughly 30% market share at its late-2000s-to-2020 peak, has gone entire months without a single Billboard top 10 placement. 
• Suno raised $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation while battling UMG and Sony in federal court over training data. 
• Tidal announced it will pay zero royalties on fully AI-generated tracks and badge them for listeners. 
• The AFM's lawsuit against Warner and Universal over withheld AI settlement money gives artists a concrete legal precedent to cite when evaluating any publisher or label deal where royalty flow-through terms are left unstated. 
• YouTube's argument that uploading a video constitutes blanket consent to train Google's Lyria 3 model shows why reading platform terms of service before posting has become a practical rights-management step, not a formality. 

On the gear side:

• Dean Guitar's parent Armadillo Enterprises filing for Chapter 11 after a Gibson trademark loss illustrates how intellectual property exposure can collapse a company faster than market conditions, 
• while Höfner's acquisition by GEWA Music suggests bankruptcy does not always end a legacy instrument brand
• Royer Labs has a new home
• and a new honor for Jimi Hendrix in New York City

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Independent musicians sometimes upload masters that are too hot, so they lose transient detail the moment streaming platforms apply loudness normalization.

Mastering engineer Jeff Graves spent two and a half years measuring 214 audio fingerprints across 15 samples per genre to build a 24-stage AI mastering platform, and in this conversation he explains exactly why delivering at the target LUFS level protects the dynamics and clarity that make a song translate from earbuds to car speakers. 

His platform flags any process that compresses the loudness range by more than 1.5 LU, giving independent artists the transparency that black-box services have always withheld.

Jeff built LuvLang Studio after years of frustration with opaque online mastering services like Landr and eMaster, which he says run tracks through only seven or eight processes without explaining what they do. 

His platform applies 24 named stages, measures LRA pre and post chain, and rejects uploads where headroom is insufficient rather than attempting to salvage a bad recording. 

Users can choose single or album mode, blend a reference track via a percentage slider, and adjust a 7-band EQ. Three output tiers cover MP3, 24-bit, and 24-bit with full options, with bundle pricing for multi-song projects. 

The platform also embeds metadata with track titles formatted exactly as the artist specifies and links directly to distributors such as CD Baby.

For bedroom producers who have never had a mastering budget, the educational layer built into this workflow may matter as much as the output file. 

Every stage is named and visible, so each session teaches the vocabulary behind the decisions, things like why true peak spikes hiding between samples cause distortion only after a platform compresses the file, or why classical dynamic LRA typically falls between 10 and 20 LU while a heavily compressed master lands between 3 and 7. 

Understanding those numbers gives an independent artist enough grounding to judge when a result is trustworthy and when it signals a problem upstream in the mix.

Connect with Jeff:
LinkedIn
LuvLang Studio

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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 chart results as an independent artist.

Darlene, a veteran of over 1,000 studio sessions and 14 self-produced solo albums, separates creative and business calendar periods rather than blending them, because the mental demands of each pull in different directions.

On the chart side, she treats Billboard eligibility as a research problem: the weekly sales threshold shifts based on competing releases, so she tracks rule changes instead of targeting a fixed number.

Her vocal coaching draws on audio psychophonology, a listening-rehabilitation method developed by Dr. Alfred Tomatis, which she uses to address frequency deficiencies standard technique cannot reach.

These same principles of persistence, research, and structured execution are what allowed Darlene to chart and build a career without a manager or agent.

Of special note is the story where she served as the session contractor who hired the vocal trio for Pink Floyd's sessions with producer Bob Ezrin, and Ezrin asked her personally to coax David Gilmour out of the tracking room when the blend wasn't working.

Connect with Darlene:
Website
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Music career longevity is what separates artists who last from those who burn out chasing the wrong metrics.

Too many aspiring musicians hand control to social platforms, grinding out content as servants to algorithms while the industry gaslights them with success measures that have nothing to do with real longevity. Keith Jopling spent 25 years inside the business, including time at Spotify, then interviewed 80 artists and bands to write Riding the Rollercoaster, and the creative director model he extracted from that research shows musicians how to flip the equation: command the platforms, define your own hit, and build a career on your terms before the rollercoaster throws you off.

Jopling maps five routes to longevity: a hit song, a classic album, being dropped by your label, becoming a cult artist, and building your brand. The dropped-by-your-label route surprises people, but his case studies show artists consistently respond by making their strongest record since their debut, independently or on a new label. On the album question, he credits Taylor Swift's pandemic releases Folklore and Evermore with pulling fans back to long-form listening, and points to Charli XCX's Brat as proof an album can still become a genuine cultural phenomenon. Harry Styles launched a new album with listening parties in 40 cities, a Netflix special filmed at the Co-op in Manchester, reinforcing that the release cycle still drives touring and commercial momentum.

Jopling's most actionable insight is the creative director model: appoint someone inside the band, or bring in a trusted collaborator, to own the visual and commercial identity of your project from day one. Your manager handles the weekly hustle; this role thinks longer term, ensuring your photography and platform presence tell one coherent story. He also reframes the hit song entirely: forget chart position and focus on the song your crowd sings back loudest at every show. That is your hit, and that is what you build forward from. Both moves return control to the artist and away from the platforms and gatekeepers that longevity research consistently shows will not build a career for you.

Connect with Keith:
LinkedIn
Riding the Rollercoaster (Book)
Website

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

On this week's episode, Bobby speaks 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 actually alter the drummer's true performance DNA.

Bill spent seven years answering exactly that question. His concept of the Virtual Audio Workstation, involves a new audio file format that remains compatible with WAV files while carrying additional performance metadata.

The format separates articulations, preserves room information as an independent element, and provides what Bill describes as functionally infinite dynamic range, allowing details like hi-hat foot checks to be raised dramatically without introducing grain or artifact.

At the center of that work is PRISM, Bill's AI framework that converts audio to MIDI, edits it, and converts it back again, using the artist's own recordings as the sole training data rather than a generative pool.

The distinction is important. Generative AI aims for plausible. PRISM aims for what a specific musician would actually play.

One of the earliest demonstrations came during a Flying Colors session when seven seconds of guitarist Steve Morse's solo disappeared. Evans reconstructed the missing passage through PRISM, and Morse, known for being exacting about his performances, could not identify the recreated section.

The larger takeaway is a fundamental rethinking of how engineers approach drum recording.

By separating articulations and ambience into controllable elements, PRISM preserves ghost notes, cymbal strike positions, and subtle performance details that are typically lost in the production process, allowing the final recording to reflect the musician's actual performance rather than a substitute version of it.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Female artists who hire producers risk losing creative control before a single song is released.

On this week's podcast 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 and studios where personal safety competed with creative freedom.

Seven years building MPW taught her that the real barrier isn't technical knowledge, but confidence and the self-imposed belief that production simply isn't for women.

She shares how she dismantled those barriers and why owning your production is the only way to fully own your art.

Xylo started writing songs at 12, spent four years as a corporate accountant, then quit after a close friend died suddenly, moved to the UK, and launched MPW about two weeks after leaving a contract role.

The platform runs a year-long Master Your Music program, alongside free online and in-person events throughout the year.

Students range from complete DAW beginners to demo-makers with knowledge gaps, spanning electronic, folk, singer-songwriter, and sound-healing genres.

Xylo's sharpest takeaway from her years of teaching is that 70 percent finished is great. Stop tweaking, release, and move on because productivity compounds when you let go.

For women who have paid for sessions and walked away with music they never released, she advises to open the DAW now, build muscle memory across your own genre, and take the first step before you feel ready.

Waiting until you're further along is the trap, because every finished project you own outright is one where no one else controlled the outcome or the room.

Connect with Xylo:
LinkedIn
Website
MPW
Instagram
TikTok (MPW)

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

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 how his many influences shaped his solos in the studio.

He then tells us about his time with Creedence Clearwater Revisited, and the broken tour with The New Cars where bad management sunk a potentially good thing.

Finally we talk about Elliot's Rickenbacker 12 string and his signature Gibson Tikibird Firebird, which has become somewhat of a collectors item.

If you've ever enjoyed The Cars music and Elliot's playing, you'll love the ground that we cover in this episode.

Connect with Elliot:
Instagram
Facebook
X

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Music business professionals who still see major labels as career partners need to hear what Bobby Owsinski lays out plainly: Universal Music Group's pursuit of a $3 billion Spotify stock sell-off signals that labels have shifted from artist development engines into financial instruments that happen to license music. 

The failure mode is assuming the label is on your side when, as Bobby explains, artists are a line item on a balance sheet. 

His counterintuitive fix is to stop waiting for label validation and recognize that AI flooding submissions without capturing listeners, and stagnating streaming growth, are signals that independent builders have more leverage now than at any point in the modern music business.

Bobby walks through specific pressure points across the business. 

YouTube raised individual plans from $10.99 to $11.99 and family plans from $16.99 to $18.99, compounding recent hikes from Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon that together push subscribers toward cancellation. 

Universal Music Group's proposed $3 billion Spotify stock sell-off earmarks roughly $850 million for artists, but under an artist-centric model that concentrates payouts on Taylor Swift and Drake rather than developing acts. T

he BMG-Concord merger introduces private equity firm Great Mountain Partners at 33% ownership. IFPI data shows 837 million global streaming subscribers, doubled since 2020, yet growth in high-revenue Western markets is stalling.

Listeners leave with a clear-eyed framework for evaluating every major-label conversation. 

Bobby's evidence shows labels are optimizing for catalog margins and investor returns, not artist development, so traction you build independently is no longer a stepping stone to a deal but leverage you already own. 

Private equity now shapes both BMG and the UMG acquisition bid, compressing the window where a label adds more than it extracts. The practical move is to treat label infrastructure as a specific tool for scaling from star to superstar, and only if you are already there. Otherwise, the balance sheet math works against you before the contract is signed.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What matters more in the music business, mastering every plugin, or becoming the kind of person people want to hire again?

On this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby talks with songwriter, producer, engineer, and educator Gary Gray about music licensing, post production, rhythmic integrity, AI, immersive audio, and the character traits that keep people working in a changing industry.

Gary shares how his early life as a drummer, his music theory training, and his work alongside artists and mentors like Quincy Jones shaped the way he approaches production and problem solving. He explains why he often fixes rhythm first when a deadline is tight, why written music licensing briefs can leave composers guessing, and how You Score the Scene helps composers submit music synced directly to picture.

The conversation also gets into Gary’s work studying cinematography, shooting professional footage on an iPhone, the stigma around AI tools, consumer demand for immersive audio, and why “character counts” may be the most important business advice for anyone in music, production, or post.

Connect with Gary:
Website
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
You Score the Scene

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What can a 1956 recording console teach us about the future of music production?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby talks with Tom Camuso, Director of Engineering at The Les Paul Recording Studio, and Michael Braunstein, 3rd Generation Les Paul Manager.

They discuss the newly restored Les Paul Recording Studio in Los Angeles, Les Paul’s groundbreaking recording innovations, and why his original Fairchild based console still feels ahead of its time today.

Tom and Michael take us inside the restoration of Les Paul’s original gear, including his 1956 console, early multitrack machines, lathe, sound on sound system, and studio setup. 

They also explain why the studio is designed as both a working space and an educational resource, how Les Paul’s inventions shaped modern recording, and why today’s DAWs still follow many of the same ideas he was using decades ago.

You’ll also hear how the Les Paul Foundation supports music education, preserves Les Paul’s legacy, and funds hearing related research, including tinnitus research.

Connect with Tom and Michael:
LinkedIn (Michael)
Website
The Les Paul Foundation
“Les would be over the moon knowing his studio exists again.”
Les Paul’s Groundbreaking Recording Gear Gets Back to Work – Part 1

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What makes a compressor become one of the most trusted pieces of gear in modern recording studios? In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby talks with Dave Derr, founder of Empirical Labs and creator of the legendary Distressor.

Dave shares the story behind the Distressor’s development, including how early studio challenges, dead drum sounds, 1176 experiments, and real-world testing helped shape one of the most widely used analog compressors in music production. He also talks about the creation of Nuke mode, the thinking behind Brit mode, the evolution of the Distressor, and how products like FATSO, Mike-E, and Empirical Labs plugins fit into his design philosophy.

Along the way, Dave and Bobby get into analog saturation, transformer sound, plugin clones, trademarking knobs, Eventide, the Philadelphia music scene, favorite instruments to record, and why the 1980s may have been a peak era for audio quality.

Learn more about Dave Derr and Empirical Labs:
LinkedIn

Empirical Labs Website
Empirical Labs Instagram
Empirical Labs Facebook

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What does it really take to turn a good voice into a sustainable music career? In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby talks with vocal coach, singer, songwriter, and artist developer Patrice Peris about the voice, the business, and the habits that help independent artists move from practice room to real performance.

Patrice shares why today’s singers need more than technique, including branding, web presence, booking strategy, emotional delivery, and a real understanding of the music business. She also breaks down the differences between classical, musical theater, and contemporary singing, why pitch perfection is not the same as a great vocal, and how simple warmup habits can create real vocal improvement over time.

You’ll also hear Patrice talk about finding your authentic sound, helping artists stop hiding behind imitation, thriving after cancer, and her move into trailer music and sync placements.

Learn more about Patrice Peris:
Voice Studio
Website
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube 

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What happens to iconic guitar shops when the founders want to step away, and who makes sure those legendary brands do not disappear? 

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby talks with Ben Montague, Founder and CEO of The North American Guitar Global, TNAG, about vintage guitars, legacy music retail, trusted online selling, and the future of some of the world’s most respected guitar stores. 

Ben shares how he went from touring musician and guitar trader to building The North American Guitar, expanding into Nashville, partnering with Carter Vintage, and acquiring Norman’s Rare Guitars. Along the way, he explains why trust is everything in the vintage guitar market, how customer relationships still drive high-end instrument sales, and why preserving great retail brands matters to the entire music industry. 

This is a fascinating conversation about guitars, entrepreneurship, collectibles, and the people behind the stores that shape music history.

Guest links and episode links:
LinkedIn
Carter Vintage
Norman’s Rare Guitars
YouTube
TNAG Global acquires Norman’s Rare Guitars

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What does it take to keep a commercial recording studio thriving as the music industry keeps changing? In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby talks with Tom Weir, Grammy-winning engineer, producer, mixer, and owner of Studio City Sound, about how his studio continues to grow by expanding beyond traditional music recording into ADR, voiceover, livestreaming, Dolby Atmos, podcast production, and AI augmentation sessions.

Tom shares how Studio City Sound adapted from its longtime location into a larger North Hollywood space, why commercial studios have to diversify to stay competitive, and what he is seeing firsthand as more artists bring in AI-generated tracks that still need real singers, players, instruments, and engineering to sound right. He also explains why he still mixes through his Neve console, what analog gear continues to earn its place in every session, and how a working studio survives by staying useful, flexible, and sonically excellent.

If you care about recording studios, analog mixing, Dolby Atmos, AI in music production, and the future of the music business, this conversation delivers a real-world look from inside the control room.

Connect with Tom:
Studio Website
LinkedIn
Instagram

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What happens when a world-class mastering engineer tries to replace himself with AI, and fails? On Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby sits down with Jonathan Wyner, mastering engineer at M-Works, professor at Berklee College of Music, head of artistic technology initiatives for BEATL, and past president of the Audio Engineering Society, for a sharp, eye-opening conversation about AI mastering, music production, education, and the future of human creativity in the studio. 

Jonathan explains why AI mastering still cannot match the listening pass, judgment, and intention that a human mastering engineer brings to a record. He also shares why he spent years trying to automate his own work, what today’s tools can actually do well, where they still fall short, and why music creators need to think carefully about controllability, quality, copyright, and the role of mentorship as AI becomes a bigger part of the creative process. 

This episode also explores Berklee’s artist-centered AI music summit, how AI is reshaping music education, why mixing remains a much harder challenge than most people realize, and where the next breakthroughs in music technology may come from. If you want a deeper look inside music production, mastering, AI in music, and the future of creative workflows, this episode delivers exactly that.

 Guest links:
 Website 

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What is the biggest problem in mixing right now, and why are so many modern sessions making that problem worse? 

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby sits down with multi-platinum mixer and engineer Richard Chycki, known for his work with Rush, Dream Theater, Aerosmith, Mick Jagger, Alice Cooper, and Pink, to unpack what is really hurting mixes today. Richard explains why too many recording decisions are being postponed, how immersive audio changes the way mixers create space, and why clearer standards are needed if Atmos mixes are going to translate in the real world. 

Bobby and Richard dig into the realities of mixing legacy artists in immersive formats, including the challenge of preserving the original intent of a classic record while adapting it for modern playback. They also talk about why dense sessions with hundreds of tracks can actually slow down decision making, how bed versus object choices affect impact and glue, what makes Sony 360 different from Atmos, and why emotional intent still matters more than technology. If you care about mixing, immersive audio, Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, session management, and modern music production, this conversation is packed with insight.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Can compressor presets really fix a weak vocal, or are most mixers solving the wrong problem first? 

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with author, musician, and lecturer Craig Anderton to unpack the art and science of vocal production, from performance psychology and gain envelope “microsurgery” to why a single vocal can connect more directly than a doubled one. The conversation also moves into inside out mixing, recording vocals flat, plugin minimalism, DIY creativity, and the mindset required to keep evolving with music technology. Craig Anderton is an internationally recognized authority on music technology, has written more than 1,000 articles, authored over 50 books, and continues to publish through Sweetwater while sharing educational resources at craiganderton.org.

Craig explains why great vocals start before the compressor, why performance still beats presets, and how subtle gain moves can often outperform heavy processing. He also shares stories about learning from top engineers, working with voices like Martha Davis and Chuck D, building bigger sounding vocals without the usual tricks, and finding creative freedom by using fewer plugins and following what the song actually wants.

Connect with Craig
Website
Sweetwater articles
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What does it really take to stay relevant in today’s music business when private equity is reshaping pro audio, viral success is far rarer than people think, and YouTube keeps gaining influence? 

In this solo episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby breaks down the latest music industry news and production trends, connecting the dots between business shifts, platform power, legacy gear, and loudness myths so artists, producers, mixers, and music creators can better understand where the industry is heading.

Bobby digs into Native Instruments filing for insolvency, what that could mean for users of Native Instruments, iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx, and why private equity continues to create concern in pro audio. He also looks at AudioTonics acquiring more respected audio brands, the sale of Norman’s Rare Guitars, and why not every acquisition is bad news.

From there, Bobby tackles the reality of going viral in music, why slow growth often creates a stronger long-term catalog, and why YouTube may be the smartest platform for artists who want sustainable traction. He also explains why YouTube views no longer count toward Billboard in the same way, why that matters less for indie artists than many think, and why platform relevance is shifting right in front of us.

The episode also celebrates 75 years of the Fender Telecaster, with Bobby explaining why its design still matters today, before wrapping with a practical breakdown of LUFS, streaming loudness, and the new laws affecting video streamers. If you want a sharper view of the modern music business without hype, this episode delivers exactly that.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Is AI really coming for your gig, or are most musicians worried about the wrong things entirely? In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, author, musician, and lecturer Craig Anderton breaks down what AI actually means for working artists, producers, and songwriters, and why the real advantage is still the human fingerprint that machines cannot touch.

Craig unpacks new listener data that shows real pushback against AI-generated music, why fans still want to support human artists, and how musicians can stop trying to “out-computer a computer” and instead double down on feel, emotion, and creative risk-taking. He also shares where AI tools are genuinely useful in the studio, from vocal comping and demo production to research and writing, and where they fall apart on nuance, vibe, and context.

You will hear Craig’s take on legal and copyright minefields around training data, the difference between influence and imitation, and what K-pop and modern fan culture can teach every independent musician about building deeper connections and putting a unique “fingerprint” in the music.

Connect with Craig
Website
Sweetwater articles
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What role do commercial recording studios really play in today’s home studio world? In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with Sam Rudy, founder of Pro Studio Time, to explore whether studios are still necessary for modern music production, or simply a creative luxury. From writing camps and residential studios to AI disruption and changing booking habits, this conversation dives deep into how artists, managers, and labels are navigating studio choices in 2025.

Sam shares insights from working with over 130 studios globally, explains why so many studio inquiries never turn into bookings, and reveals what artists actually look for today, which is often less about gear and more about feel. If you have ever wondered whether high-end studios still matter, or how to choose the right space for your next session, this episode delivers answers.

Guest: Sam Rudy
Founder, Pro Studio Time
https://prostudiotime.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/pro-studio-time

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Studios are perhaps not a necessary part of the production anymore the way they used to be, but they are still a place where people can get together and collaborate
• High quality audio is still very much a thing and necessary
• Most studio inquiries do not turn into bookings, often only 20 to 40 percent convert
• Many artists book studios not for the gear, but for how the space makes them feel
• A pair of speakers and a decent vocal chain is sometimes all you need
• Daylight and atmosphere are increasingly important factors when choosing a studio
• Residential studios have gained popularity due to flexibility and creative focus
• AI and new technology may disrupt parts of the industry, but past tools like drum machines and autotune ultimately expanded creativity
• Lowering the barrier to entry for music creation can lead to more artists eventually seeking professional studios
• Success in any field comes down to volume of iteration, doing it as often and as long as possible

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What if immersive audio is not about the future at all, but about going back to how music was always meant to be heard?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with Adrian Weidmann, CEO and founder of Immersive Design Labs, to unpack why Dolby Atmos and immersive audio have left so many engineers scrambling, and how the real breakthrough is not technology, but clarity. Adrian shares how his background in test and measurement, studio microphones, and live capture shaped a radically simple philosophy, accuracy over novelty.

From designing a preamp to be “the electrical equivalent of effectively a 12 inch piece of copper wire” with no coloration, to building a 7.1.4 array that mirrors Dolby’s speaker layout, Adrian explains why immersive audio should feel natural, not futuristic.

If you care about sound, space, and the emotional impact of music, this conversation will challenge the way you think about recording.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Dolby Atmos came out of cinema and now engineers are scrambling to figure out what to do with it
• The biggest challenge with immersive audio is clarity, not technology
• The preamp was designed to be the electrical equivalent of a 12 inch piece of copper wire with no coloration
• Immersive audio should capture musicians playing in a space, not chase novelty
• The IDL array replicates the positioning of a 7.1.4 Dolby speaker configuration
• Embrace the bleed, the room itself should become an active instrument
• Each song should be affiliated with its appropriate acoustic space
• A microphone is a transducer, and anything other than an omni is a compromise
• Focus on the song, capture the emotions associated with the interaction with the musicians
• Success advice from outside the studio, I show up

Connect with Adrian Weidmann and Immersive Design Labs:

Adrian's LinkedIn

Immersive Design Labs Website

Immersive Design Labs Facebook

Immersive Design Labs LinkedIn

Immersive Design Labs Instagram

Immersive Design Labs YouTube

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What if the biggest thing holding musicians back is not talent, but mindset?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with DJ Bander, Zach Schnall, CEO of Bander Productions, to explore how artists can build real career momentum in today’s music business. From jazz roots to electronic dance music success, Zach shares how he transitioned genres, built a brand, invested in marketing, and developed the business skills most musicians ignore.

This is a deep dive into branding, social media strategy, financial literacy, EDM production standards, and why waiting to be discovered is no longer a viable strategy in the modern music industry. If you want to learn something about the music business that you never knew before, this conversation delivers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Musicians struggle because they are waiting to be discovered instead of building leverage
• Labels want to see that you are already basically on the 80 yard line
• Investing in your brand is essential, trying to find the cheapest way can hurt your career
• Dance music requires concise structure, professional edits, and release ready production
• Downtempo allows more compositional freedom, EDM demands technical precision and relevance
• Marketing success depends on long term commitment, not short timelines
• Bringing in an audience is only part of the equation, artists must actively engage
• Financial literacy is critical, advances are often debt and poor management can derail careers
• Mentorship accelerates growth in ways YouTube and AI alone cannot
• The best artists trust the love they have for their own sound while being their most honest critic

Chapters: 

00:00:00 - Coming up...
00:01:15 - From jazz piano to electronic music
00:03:15 - Becoming DJ Bander and learning to DJ
00:04:54 - Why EDM is technically harder than it sounds
00:06:52 - Release-ready production and commercial standards
00:08:56 - Edit justifications and structure in long tracks
00:11:24 - Staying relevant in a competitive EDM market
00:14:11 - Building capital, investing in brand and ads
00:16:58 - Waiting to be discovered vs building leverage
00:19:01 - Financial literacy and managing advances
00:22:40 - Branding your name with intention
00:25:08 - The mentorship mistake young artists make
00:26:53 - The best advice he ever received
00:28:28 - How to connect with DJ Bander

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Is the gig economy really built to support musicians and freelancers, or is it setting them up to fail?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby talks with Ben Ikwaugwu, CEO of SoundCheck Live, about why the freelance economy is growing faster than the tools designed to support it. Drawing from his background as a professional vocalist and supply chain professional, Ben explains why fragmented communication, lack of systems, and one time execution pressure make it harder than ever for musicians and gig operators to run a sustainable business.

Ben also shares how SoundCheck Live is being built as an operating system for the gig economy, and why understanding people, workflows, and relationships matters more than technology alone.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• “Companies are operating more and more with freelancers, but they want to act like they’re enterprises.”
• “The number one pain that we’re eliminating right now is the fragmentation of managing gigs and freelancers.”
• “You don’t get a performance review in the gig economy. You have one time maybe to just screw it up.”
• “Musicians turned business owners are some of the best negotiators, but some of the worst at building systems.”
• “We’re building an operating system for on demand teams.”
• “You have to be really good at your job to keep getting jobs.”
• “More than half of the US economy will be freelance.”
• “We don’t have infrastructure built for people who don’t operate nine to five.”
• “The world is built on relationships and how you treat people.”

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Coming up...
00:01:14 - Meet Ben Ikwaugwu and the gig economy problem
00:03:21 - Learning systems through supply chain
00:05:08 - The idea behind SoundCheck Live
00:07:37 - Fragmentation in gig management
00:11:50 - Why the gig economy gives you one shot
00:16:10 - Education, AI, and building your own tools
00:21:14 - Leadership lessons from supply chain
00:26:19 - Building teams and company culture
00:29:00 - Advice on balance and staying grounded

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What really matters in music production when AI can generate songs, demos, and arrangements almost instantly? 

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with legendary Nashville engineer and producer Ed Seay to unpack how AI, modern songwriting practices, and changing production tools are reshaping the music business. From demo studios being bypassed to why human instinct still cannot be replaced, this conversation offers an inside look at where music has been and where it is headed.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• “90% of the people in the world aren’t pros. It’s all about the song and the singer.”
• “You give it the prompts and then it spits it back at you in like five or six seconds for different versions.”
• “They’ve analyzed everything from Bach to now.”
• “They don’t know what you’re thinking of tomorrow or next week.”
• “If somebody can create a demo, you just eliminated the players that were going to play on it.”
• “The sum of all the stuff sounds great, but the individuals don’t.”
• “If it sounds good, it is good.”
• “I remain the boss. I don’t let it become the boss.”
• “Everything is moving really fast and interesting to watch.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Why Do Musicians Still Struggle to Grow a Fanbase in 2026?

This week on Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Prospect Hill drummer and FanFlowy co-founder Mark Roberge reveals how the music industry still lacks the systems that every other business takes for granted. From cost-per-acquisition to automated fan engagement, Mark shares why most artists burn out - and how FanFlowy was built to fix that. If you're serious about building a music career that scales, this is a must-listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• The music industry lacks core systems like cost-per-acquisition tracking
• Why so many talented artists give up before making it
• How FanFlowy automates fan engagement, growth, and nurturing
• The role of DMs, funnels, and targeted ads in fanbase building
• Why Spotify and YouTube followers are harder to grow than monthly listeners
• How conversation trees inside Instagram helped convert fans
• Why “real” content outperforms polished production in ad strategy
• The importance of mental toughness and staying power in music
• How Indie Artist Compass maps the path to real income from music
• The dangers of relying too much on AI-generated music

BEST MOMENTS
00:00:10. “That’s Mark Roberge, rock drummer and co-founder of FanFlowy.”
00:00:19. “They’re losing because the workload is so crushing.”
00:01:44. “It’s not just make your music and then go play live. It doesn’t work like that.”
00:03:01. “Every other industry has this and the music industry did not.”
00:05:14. “The hardest one to grow is the follower count on Spotify and the subscriber count on YouTube.”
00:06:02. “They went from a ghost town to hundreds of messages in their DMs.”
00:10:56. “The migration thing is a big deal. Do you have a way to do that?”
00:13:20. “I want all the marketing to happen as well.”
00:21:08. “I just gave you the foundation. Get the foundation laid, get it set up.”
00:30:23. “If you really want this bad, you have to be all in and you have to take the hits.”

Also, a video version of this podcast is now available on YouTube as well.

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What happens when a lifelong audio engineer suddenly can’t work in a studio anymore?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with Luke Delalio, engineer, educator, cognitive artist, photographer, and creative force at Korneff Audio. Luke shares the deeply personal story of how tinnitus changed everything, forcing him to step away from music production just as his career was thriving.

But what began as a devastating setback became the catalyst for an entirely new creative life. From theater to photography, plugin design to painting, Luke’s journey shows how curiosity, experimentation, and a refusal to follow the rules can lead to surprising breakthroughs.

If you’ve ever had to reinvent yourself, or are curious about the mindset behind some of the most innovative audio tools today, this is a must-listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• How tinnitus forced Luke to abruptly leave the music industry
• Why boredom can be a powerful driver of creativity
• How Luke helped shape Korneff Audio's unique plugin philosophy
• The engineering story behind Chocolate Milk and the Siemens W295 EQ
• How real studio problems inspired new plugin workflows
• Why Luke believes experimentation is central to audio innovation
• The hidden history of the Sound Techniques console
• How photography and theater helped rebuild Luke’s creative identity
• Why he’s skeptical about AI’s impact on the future of creativity
• The one piece of life advice Luke regrets not following sooner

BEST MOMENTS:

00:03:18. “It just never stopped. It's been my one true love.”
00:04:56. “Dan showed up at my mom's funeral and said, I'm setting up Cornford Audio. You want to come along?”
00:06:01. “That is pretty much mapped to Dan's thinking big because he was always a tinkerer.”
00:09:09. “That's like the real fun of being in a recording studio, was all the experimenting.”
00:17:09. “Tinnitus is audible anxiety.”
00:22:09. “I'm writing about that, and I'm trying to figure out what console was it mixed on... Sound Techniques.”
00:33:16. “The things that really get under my skin are the moments when I've been unkind.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Can one sync placement change your entire music career?

On this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, I’m joined by Chris SD - producer, engineer, songwriter, and founder of Sync Songwriter. Chris has helped artists get $30,000 placements, land Billboard features, and book world tours through sync licensing. In this deep-dive conversation, he breaks down how sync really works today, why connections matter more than ever, and how indie artists can win big in film and TV without major label backing.

If you’ve ever dreamed of getting your music into movies, shows, or commercials, this episode is your ultimate roadmap.

You can find out more about Chris SD's Art Of The Song Pitch program here - https://www.syncsongwriterprograms.com/a/2148209546/o6RJ27FZ

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• What a music supervisor actually does
• Why sync licensing is the last place for massive music exposure
• Why indie music is often preferred over major label tracks
• Why you need to write authentically, not “for sync”
• How AI is affecting sync, and what it can’t do
• What supervisors look for in an ideal track
• Why relationships are more valuable than random pitches
• The difference between stems, masters, and what’s really required
• How The Art of the Song Pitch program works
• Why now is the time to act, not just learn


BEST MOMENTS:

00:01:32. “A music supervisor is someone who is hired by movie studios, TV studios, ad agencies to go and find music.”
00:02:57. “Indie music, that's exactly where indie music comes in.”
00:04:37. “Every single story I've heard, even the ones that look like people just went viral, there was someone involved who was connected in the industry.”
00:06:18. “Music supervisors are the new A&R.”
00:10:07. “Nora Ryder won five Oscars... the genres were jazz and Russian hip hop.”
00:14:06. “You can't legally place an AI song in TV and film right now.”
00:20:32. “You're certified. You're ready for me to introduce you to music supervisors.”
00:31:08. “It wasn't for the money. The money is amazing... but the reason I got into it was the exposure.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What does a life in music look like when you follow curiosity instead of chasing titles? In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, 7-time Grammy-winning producer, engineer, and songwriter Brent Maher shares a remarkable journey across genres, generations, and creative mediums. From recording legends like Elvis and Duke Ellington to discovering The Judds and inventing a new format - a musical novel - Brent’s stories reveal how passion and patience can outlast trends and change the industry from the inside.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Success is doing what you love, not chasing recognition
• Brent’s path from engineer to producer to songwriter was guided by curiosity
• How a surprise moment led to Tina Turner recording one of his songs
• The unique way he discovered and developed The Judds
• Recording Duke Ellington and how it fulfilled a lifelong dream
• Why he never actually met Elvis despite engineering his last #1 hit
• How Brent produced an entire Elvis track from Jungle Room rehearsal tapes
• Creating the world’s first musical audiobook, Night of the Orphan Train
• The untold story behind America’s Orphan Train movement
• A touching story of how a stranger helped him buy his first Gretsch guitar

BEST MOMENTS
00:02:43. “I couldn't really go to sleep... I wound up writing a song that evening.”
00:04:10. “Tina can't get that song out of her head. She wants to cut it.”
00:06:54. “Naomi Judd was a registered nurse... and Diana loved her.”
00:09:15. “We wound up with three songs that were quite different, but there was something that would weave them all together.”
00:13:16. “I engineered Duke Ellington’s... maybe his second or third last record before he passed away.”
00:20:10. “Every time he quit singing, you'd hear the other band. This was pre-automation.”
00:22:51. “It’s a musical novel... a fictional audiobook with songs woven in like a musical.”
00:35:35. “She said, I will co-sign this guitar as if I'm your mother. That woman changed my life.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What does the future really hold for music in 2026?

In this solo episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast, Bobby delivers a rapid-fire rundown of where the industry is headed, and what musicians, producers, and music pros need to prepare for right now. From AI-generated music to streaming platform shifts, gear market slowdowns, and major label controversies, these predictions cut through the hype and hit the heart of what’s changing.

If you care about the music business, you can’t afford to miss this one.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Streaming prices are rising as subscriber growth plateaus
• YouTube is quickly becoming the #1 music streaming destination
• AI slop is clogging platforms and turning off listeners
• Major labels are cutting deals with AI music generators, often at artists’ expense
• Human musicianship is making a comeback
• Another round of venue closures is coming
• Big music gear consolidation and fewer product releases ahead
• Social media fatigue is real, artists are quietly pulling back
• A Grammy nomination for an AI music designer is highly likely
• NAMM and other major industry shows continue to shrink

BEST MOMENTS:

00:01:02. “There will be a revolt against AI, yes and no.”
00:02:07. “I predicted a new artificial reality experience... that didn’t happen at all.”
00:04:28. “In 2025, I predicted the TikTok ban in the US would hold.”
00:08:39. “Private equity investment in record labels, yes, this did come to pass.”
00:11:08. “Fintech for musicians takes off.”
00:15:23. “Let’s get to 2026 predictions.”
00:16:45. “I predict AI slop becomes intolerable.”
00:18:13. “Artists will leave major labels over Suno and Udio deals.”
00:29:10. “I predict an AI music designer will be nominated for a Grammy.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

2025 was wild. Is the music business finally changing for good?

In this solo edition of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby breaks down the most important developments across music, audio, and tech in 2025. From AI-generated hits to Spotify insiders cashing out, this episode is packed with sharp insights that every music creator, producer, or business insider needs to hear. Whether you're trying to keep up or stay ahead, this annual year-in-review will leave you better informed and ready to thrive in 2026.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI-generated artists like Velvet Sundown gained massive traction - before the truth unraveled
• Major labels settled lawsuits with AI platforms instead of protecting artists
• Streaming growth has stalled, and Spotify execs are quietly cashing out
• Gen Z is consuming less music, with a shift toward video platforms like YouTube Shorts
• Copyright rulings now require human authorship to qualify for protection
• Touring is becoming unaffordable for 82% of independent artists
• Live venues face financial collapse, despite the boom in live music revenue
• New immersive audio format “Eclipse” launches from Samsung and Google
• The DAW Project exchange format could finally fix cross-platform session sharing
• TikTok’s fate remains uncertain, and its music influence is fading fast

BEST MOMENTS

00:01:13. “This was a big year for AI and especially AI music.”
00:02:00. “We’re trying to show the flaws in the streaming distribution system.”
00:03:00. “It underscores the importance of authenticity.”
00:04:00. “They settled - because they want more money in their pockets.”
00:07:07. “If there’s no human author, there is no copyright.”
00:08:06. “You are now an AI music designer.”
00:10:29. “Now your mailing list and brand matter more than SEO.”
00:13:05. “Daniel Ek is a founder of a European AI military company.”
00:21:01. “The state of live music is indeed fragile.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

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Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Is your music really yours in the age of AI?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Marc Gray, CEO of SonicOrigin, dives into the future of audio verification. From watermarking that survives TikTok filters to tracking AI-generated content, Marc shares why authentication is becoming essential in today’s music and media industries. If you’re a creator, label, engineer or just curious about where music tech is heading, this episode will open your eyes to the tools that may soon become standard.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Why people no longer trust what they see or hear online
• What makes content “copyrightable” when using AI tools
• How SonicOrigin’s watermarking survives pitch, speed, and format changes
• Why mastering engineers are ideal for embedding watermark tech
• How new California laws will impact AI content labeling
• Differences between watermarking, signal injection, and fingerprinting
• How multiple payloads allow metadata to be private or public
• The role of distributed ledgers in proving content provenance
• Why industry-wide buy-in is essential for adoption
• How watermarking could extend into advertising, podcasts, and deepfake detection

BEST MOMENTS

00:02:23. “We have created the most resilient watermarking technology ever created.”
00:03:03. “It survives pitch changes, speed adjustments, stem separations.”
00:03:55. “Most AI-generated content will soon be required to carry a watermark.”
00:04:49. “The minute one artist hears one artifact, you’ve lost all credibility.”
00:08:47. “You cannot escape the underlying code.”
00:10:15. “Only works if there are maybe one or two watermarks, not 85.”
00:12:22. “Nobody trusts what they see on the Internet anymore.”
00:14:04. “The commercial aspect is stopping piracy. The other is deepfake detection.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What happens when a teenage house party promoter takes on one of the biggest forces in live music?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with Tommy Dorfman, a veteran club promoter and founder of Juice Entertainment. Tommy shares how he built a powerhouse promotion empire from scratch, packed out venues across New Jersey and New York, pioneered the East Coast house music scene, and went head-to-head with Live Nation. His story dives deep into the grind of promotion, the mafia encounters, and a David-versus-Goliath lawsuit that could reshape the live music industry. If you've ever wondered how the live music machine really works, this one is unmissable.

Key Takeaways:
• How Tommy started promoting events at age 15 to pay his own rent
• Why house parties were the gateway to building a nightlife empire
• The moment Tommy packed 1,500 people into a club on a Wednesday night
• Inside the gritty hustle of street-level promotion before social media
• How Tommy ran Myspace’s live events division on the East Coast
• A firsthand account of mafia threats and how he stood his ground
• How Live Nation allegedly forced him out of a major festival deal
• The 15-year legal fight against Live Nation and what’s at stake
• Why ticket prices are skyrocketing—and who’s really to blame
• What Tommy hopes to change for fans, artists, and independent promoters

Best Moments:
00:00:07. “I started off throwing parties because of a necessity. We lived in houses of my own. At 15 or 16 years old.”
00:01:02. “People were like, yeah, this is awesome, man. You just get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to chill with celebrities and drink champagne. Nah. You work your ass off for it.”
00:02:52. “I do my first successful solo party in New Jersey, like in 1997. Packed it out with over 1,500 people. On a Wednesday night.”
00:03:35. “Then I started on a Thursday party packing that was one of the most successful parties in New Jersey history.”
00:04:14. “We started promoting side parties, sometimes a night, six nights a week… up to 10,000 people.”
00:07:03. “The Mafia let me keep doing business because they wanted to make money.”
00:12:20. “They came in like animals. ‘We’re going to kick you the fuck out of your contract.’”
00:16:24. “I ended up going homeless. I went from drinking champagne with Snoop Dogg to going homeless.”
00:24:00. “Your kids and my kids go to college… they read Doctor Richard Barnett’s book. He confirmed this.”
00:31:40. “If you believe in something and you work hard enough for something, I think you can accomplish anything.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What makes a brand partnership truly authentic in music today?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, Bobby sits down with Katie Nowak, VP of Marketing and Partnerships at TBA Agency, to explore how meaningful collaborations are redefining success for artists. Katie shares behind-the-scenes stories about building the “Here and There” festival with Courtney Barnett, partnering with brands like Microsoft and Levi’s, and using creative strategy to connect niche artists with deeply engaged audiences.

Whether you're an artist, marketer, or industry insider, this episode reveals the power of authenticity, community, and strategy in today’s evolving music business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• The origin and mission of the “Here and There” festival with Courtney Barnett
• How TBA Agency built brand partnerships with Microsoft, Levi’s, and more
• The role of AI in enhancing, not replacing, artistic expression
• Why niche artists can offer deeper engagement than mainstream acts
• How to pitch brand partnerships around authenticity and connection
• Insights into building private and corporate event activations for artists
• Katie’s personal journey through major industry roles and companies
• The evolution of her role from tour marketing to strategic leadership
• Why social media and PR require constant experimentation and community input
• How being nice and staying true to yourself drives long-term career success

BEST MOMENTS:
00:02:49. “Levi’s created custom denim jackets for all of the artists that participated in the festival.”
00:03:42. “We uploaded all of Courtney’s drawings into Microsoft’s AI tools... it was a love letter to each city.”
00:05:12. “This was a way to show that humans using AI can still make something creative with human hands.”
00:06:51. “Microsoft was very open to any and all ideas... they trust your creative mind.”
00:08:06. “These are niche artists... they bring a certain edginess that makes the brand feel cool.”
00:10:15. “I grew up doing musical theater and performing… I’ve always been in the arts.”
00:14:32. “Being at TBA and building it from the ground up has allowed me to grow into the best version of myself.”
00:19:01. “The things that do best on social are new signings, big press looks, and artist moments at Coachella.”
00:27:17. “Being nice and being yourself is going to yield the best results.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

Is high-end studio gear still worth it today?

For this milestone 600th episode, Bobby welcomes back fan-favorite Dennis Moody, a world-renowned studio and live mixer who’s appeared on every 100th episode since the podcast’s launch. In this revealing conversation, Dennis opens up about the biggest shifts he’s seen over the last decade in music production, gear, touring, and what truly matters when it comes to crafting a great sound. Whether you're a seasoned engineer or just gear-curious, this episode will change how you think about tools, tone, and tech.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Vintage mics aren’t essential anymore
• Knockoff gear quality has drastically improved
• MP3s still don’t match WAV file quality
• Touring travel strategies for pros
• Studio vs live mixing philosophies
• Managing loudness requests from artists
• Smart tech choices can rival big-budget gear
• Why stage volume is lower than ever
• The power of mixing through preamp adjustments
• Why Dennis is choosing creativity over money

BEST MOMENTS

00:02:26. “Yes. Because I wanted to be, but... hoping to be even a little more level up, which seems to be now.”
00:03:16. “I'm seeing a lot of really, call them knock off companies, like, my favorite warm audio.”
00:07:26. “That's amazing. The difference. But people, that's just the way it is now.”
00:10:18. “Thing's been around, circumnavigated the globe at least 12, 14 times.”
00:15:29. “Once the show started, it just was the most fun ever.”
00:21:25. “It turned out perfect. There were 8500 people there, and it was just absolutely amazing.”
00:27:31. “I would have done more of that for me. More for my stuff, you know.”
00:33:50. “If you want to have an interesting life, you have to make it interesting.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What can a nightclub DJ teach you about running a business?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, we sit down with DJ, author, professor, and speaker Amani Roberts - also known as DJ AMRo - to unpack how his pivot from corporate America to the turntables led to a purpose-driven creative career. Amani shares insights from his book DJ’s Mean Business, his work teaching music business at Cal State Fullerton, and what DJing can reveal about reading a room, adapting under pressure, and staying relevant in the age of AI. This conversation is packed with wisdom for artists, educators, entrepreneurs, and anyone curious about the modern music industry.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Why R&B groups disappeared from the mainstream
• The connection between DJ sets and business growth
• What every artist should know about music publishing
• The biggest misconceptions about gear and DJing
• How AI fails to match human connection on the dance floor
• Why the imperfections in music are what make it timeless
• The reality of teaching Gen Z students post-pandemic
• How to protect your business and brand as a creative
• Essential advice for aspiring music industry professionals
• The #1 mindset shift that helps creatives actually finish things

BEST MOMENTS:

00:04:01. “It was my thesis in grad school. I was deciding between this and why there are no longer any saxophone solos.”
00:05:01. “There was a week in July 1997 where 14 out of 20 songs on Billboard’s Top 20 were R&B groups.”
00:08:23. “You gotta figure out how you’re going to market yourself. Grow your email list. Learn the business.”
00:12:36. “Each 15 minutes of a DJ set relates to growing a business.”
00:14:27. “Reading a crowd is only acquired through being in person and being around people.”
00:18:32. “They said I might have 12 students. First class? 34. We've been running like that ever since.”
00:24:36. “AI will never know heartbreak. That’s why it can’t replace artists.”
00:31:02. “Done is better than perfect. Most people just don’t want to get in the game.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

What does a $44 million video game sound like?

This week on Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, game composer Tim Larkin breaks down the high-stakes world of e-sports music. From scoring Dota 2 tournaments with 100-piece orchestras to building adaptive music systems that respond to gameplay, Tim reveals what it takes to create soundtracks that elevate the gaming experience. If you’ve ever wondered how music in games works or how orchestras fit into digital worlds, this episode is a must-listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• How Tim Larkin scored the $44M Dota 2 International tournament
• The structure of dynamic, reactive video game music
• Why game concerts feel like rock shows
• The shift from writing jingles to scoring blockbuster games
• Real orchestras vs samples in game scoring
• How Valve supports creativity in music production
• Recording with orchestras across Seattle, Utah, Budapest
• The realities of composing for long vs short dev cycles
• Tim’s transition from live trumpet gigs to game soundtracks
• Advice for aspiring game composers in today’s flooded market

BEST MOMENTS
00:01:52. “Every year we put on what's called The International, which is kind of like the Super Bowl of e-sports.”
00:02:12. “We peaked out at a prize pool of about $44 million for a video game.”
00:03:44. “The audience knows the music. So it's like doing a rock concert in a way.”
00:04:27. “The first company that came up was Broderbund… they hired us basically on the spot.”
00:05:06. “In video games, the music is reactive. It’s dynamic.”
00:06:06. “With Dota, as the action intensifies, so does the music based on layers.”
00:07:40. “You're talking $20 to $40,000 maybe for an orchestra. It's a small part of a multimillion-dollar event.”
00:14:15. “My goal in college was to be a session player. I tried to learn every type of music possible.”
00:27:17. “You’ve got to listen to good music. If you can’t reach that bar, don’t try to approach it.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek

🎙️ Is AI the biggest disruption the music industry has ever seen?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby welcomes Matt Adell, COO of Musical.ai, a trailblazer in bridging the gap between rightsholders and AI developers. With a career spanning Napster, Beatport, and Native Instruments, Matt offers deep insight into the seismic shift AI is bringing to music - bigger than file sharing or streaming. He explains how attribution, fair compensation, and licensing are being redefined for a new digital era.

This episode is packed with hard-earned wisdom, music tech history, and a clear-eyed look at where we’re headed next. If you want to understand what’s really going on in music and AI, this is essential listening.

Key Takeaways:

• Why AI’s impact on music is bigger than file sharing or streaming
• How Musical.ai connects rightsholders and AI companies in licensed environments
• Why artists should get paid based on how their work influences AI outputs
• The dangers of unmanaged AI training on copyrighted content
• Why creative outputs are easier to attribute than factual ones
• The oversupply of music and its economic implications for artists
• Why music's shift to streaming wasn't a loss—it was a win for consumers
• The future of fair licensing in AI-driven content creation
• Matt’s unique career path from punk rock drummer to tech executive
• His personal message about sobriety and finding balance

Best Moments:

00:02:05. “AI does not think. It is a giant calculator.”
00:04:03. “Unmanaged, it was an existential threat to copyright owners, to musicians, to composers.”
00:06:37. “Depending on what someone output, it's going to be more or less similar to each piece of training data.”
00:08:34. “Our technology works the same way no matter what. It's model and modal agnostic.”
00:12:13. “Music is usually on the cutting edge, but AI is moving fast.”
00:14:07. “We went from a couple hundred new releases a week to over 150,000 every day.”
00:18:04. “Imagine if everyone who played golf thought they deserved to get paid to play golf.”
00:28:06. “I'm sober now for 160 days... if anybody else is concerned about their own drinking or drug use, there's a place they can go.”

Ad link: Explore The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for modern mixing.

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

📌 Explore Bobby’s best-selling books

🎙️ Nail that pro vocal sound: clear, upfront, and mix-ready. Learn how in Bobby’s Vocal Mixing Mini-Course

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Bluesky

🎙️ New episodes release every Tuesday at 9AM Pacific on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

Music. Business. Creativity. Straight from the Inner Circle.

Produced by APodcastGeek: https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek