Joe Rogan - Steven Tyler Takes on the Music Industry

Go shows. You got more notes? I do. I just wanted to finish that thing about MMA. I want to ask you about Lil Tay. Yeah. About Lil what? I did that for Jamie. Lil Tay is a nine year old shit talker who flashes money and talks about her bentleys and Rolls Royces. Five years old? Nine years old. It's fake. Her parents talk her into her. So, but anyway, MMA for me is a music modernization act. So about five, six years ago, Dean Lilapolton and I just started looking at that and she's a beautiful blonde lawyer, woman, great woman. Very smart, very intelligent. Speaks over here at Brandeiser somewhere. She's my lawyer, was my manager for the longest time, but she and I decided to go to Washington and start flashing this shit around saying, what's fair and what's not? Why are musicians not getting paid? So I just thought MMA is the same thing. Music modernization act. So I won't forget this. I sometimes forget it because my... But that you can't forget. So to attain fair market value royalty rates and treatment for music creators in the digital era. The digital era right now is where if I... They can play my music because it's digital over air, you know, Spotify. And I don't get paid. The artist, fuck me. I got enough money. I'm the happiest guy in the planet. I got beautiful kids. I go to sleep fucking with a smile on my face. I get to do Joe fucking Rogan. I'm happy. I'm in a band named Aerosmith with Joe Perry. I'm happy as can be. But I look at these poor fucks that don't... You gotta hear this. Well today too, they have to give up merchandise. They have to give up a piece of their concert sales. They have to give up everything. Well, yeah, that's what's going on. Because there's no more money in actual record sales. It's called a 24-7 or some kind of bullshit like that. It's some crazy thing where they have a piece of everything you do. Because managers see it and they want your money. Right. Well, they also realize that their avenue of revenue is gone. So then they locked on to merchandise. They locked on to ticket sales, which used to be all yours, right? Yeah. Like when you used to do concerts back in the day, you used to get paid for your record. Even if you got fucked over, you got some money from the record. But then you would get all the money for the concerts, right? But well, not unless we were own managers. 90-10 means we take 90% out, 10% of the gig goes to there. So you make $800,000. But now the record company gets it. Oh God. That's different, right? Isn't that a different thing? Well, the record company gets publishing with all these digital outlets. Of course. And then the record company decides to give whatever is left to the artist, which is usually little to nothing. Smokey fucking Robinson. My dear friend, I go up to this guy and I go, I don't like you, but I love you. See that guy, all these songs. Phenomenal. This fucking guy went to the Digitals, said you owe me $250,000 with proof. They offered him, they offered him for his music being played over the last five years. Why do they owe him that specific cloud? Because he was getting nothing back. Nothing was coming to him. He's going, shit, the coffers are empty. You know, it says, what the fuck? I'm Smokey Robinson. I hear his music is covered by thousands of people. The guy knew legally $250,000 was owed to him. He was offered $12,000 and he was said, if you don't like it, sue us. Now Smokey, you don't have that kind of money. So what we've done is- How crazy is this? Smokey Robinson doesn't have that kind of money. So you think that Smokey Robinson should be just wealthy like a king? And this is not to say he's not. If he had no money at all, he's one of the happiest guy and his wife is his sweetest. And maybe he's attained something that you and I don't recognize yet, or the mass media. But he's got something. He's rich. But when it comes to him getting paid actually for his songs, that's really fucked up. So what did he do? What did he decide to do? I don't know. I don't know where it's going. I got to talk to him. But David Israelite, the president and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association, and Dina, we went to Washington. Imagine this beautiful blonde and this fucking guy. Now we're in Washington and me saying, what's up with this? This money is going right out the window and knocked at the artist. These new artists are getting nothing. So we decided to do something. For the first time, songwriters will have representatives overseeing administration of mechanical licenses and administration. So someone's now at least not only can he complain, but there's someone watching that goes, no, no, no, you do in fact legally owe him 250,000. Smokey, come here. Sit down. And for the first time. So this is something we're trying to get passed in the next. Don't you think it should be that? No, I do think that's the reason why we're not on that. We're not on Spotify. And the reason why we're not on it is because it didn't make any sense. They were like, we want to put you on. It's going to be great for you. I'm like, how's it great? Yeah, you guys are going to make money. Like you guys are making money. You don't give us any. It's a, it's a, that whole streaming thing is this weird smoke and mirrors song and dance. They put on, you're going to be a part of something big. But what are you selling? All you sell is artists work. You don't have anything to sell. And I say to them, the artists get paid so little. So little. So where's the money going? Because there's all these in their fucking pockets, public companies and they're traded and they're worth millions and billions. Like where's all that money? Where's it going? What's generating it? The only thing to say to them, what if I'm bigger than you or a motherfucker motherfucker? Well, 1909, what are you saying? The laws were written. Check this out in 1909 on track and not paid attention to. Okay. Till fucking yesterday. Yesterday. I mean, you know, five, five years ago. So we're trying to get this shit going. Music Modernization Act gains momentum in the Senate. Oh, Smokey Robinson. Powerful. Yesterday. Jesus Christ, Jamie, you're on the ball. Wow. So this is it right here. I mean, you know, it's just. Well, yeah, there's been some fuckery. There's been some legal fuckery and, you know, it continues. He created magic. This guy, I said, I said to him, what do you mean I don't like you, but I love you. Seems that I'm always thinking of you. What the fuck did you come up with that line? Like I've said to Paul, you know, what was what was this? You know, he says, well, I was sent to New York to do some kind of publishing thing with lawyers and I was sitting in a hotel in New York right before I went in and I thought I wrote those lyrics. Somehow him being a young black man with songs 50 years ago in New York with lawyers, probably white, not just saying he was put in a situation where he had the magic. He had the magic. He wrote a paper. I don't like you. I love you. Seems maybe the hate that he had for what was about to happen created the opposite. I don't know, but that's what he told me. He said, I was down there and waiting to meet my lawyers and I said, that's let me ask you. You never know when when Napster came along. I fucking hated that prick. Yeah. He's so much you say they started stealing our songs. Yeah, great. Take all the albums we've ever done. Take all the albums, Nuno Betancourt, make all the albums that fucking, you know, the Rolling Stones ever did put them in a box over there. Now all my friends can have access to that box. Right. Anybody can do it. It's peer to peer. Everyone's sharing songs. And I'm sure people are listening to me and say, what a prick. He's fucking rich old fuck. Right. But what's happened is, is it's become the norm. Well, it's become the norm is that people recognize that you can't do that with movies, right? They recognize that if you're stealing movies, it's illegal. Like if you get caught with a bit torn account, you got a bunch of movies on there and you're letting people download them, you can get prosecuted. Yeah. Let me ask you why so much for that and not for somebody's songs? Well, there is a thing with songs too, but it's just not as common. Right, Jamie? Is that the case of people have been sued for having tons of songs, right? Haven't they? Yeah, but I think for sure the movie industry has gone after that. They go after you. If you're dubbing their movie. Yeah. It's just songs for whatever reason after Napster became something that people think that you should just be able to get for free. Yeah. And then you get like Apple Music and Spotify. And what's the other one? Spotify? What's the other? There's another one. Say titles getting in trouble right now. Who is title? The company that Jay-Z owns with a few other they get in charge for streaming too. Faking streams and not paying people. I mean, it's just, think about some new band. My daughter, Chelsea, she's in a band with John Foster, her husband. They put something out and it's ridiculously great. Where's the money go? Well, this is what I'm saying to you. When Napster came along and then things changed, do you think that's when the music business really got crazy? That's when they really say, look, we got to start, we're not getting money from record sales anymore. We're in the record business. They can do this digitally. We got to get a piece of that concert sales. We got to get a picket piece of those tickets. We got to get the merch. We got to get everything. We got to solidify and we got to make it still make it a big deal. And then the pricks and the money grabbers from artists just rethunked it. Yeah. Streaming. They rethunked it. And streaming seems like a more hostile version of it. But let me ask you, who do you think gets the money at the end of the day? Somebody, executives. You bet your ass. It goes somewhere. You know, when I watched this movie called vinyl, you see that? It's a documentary on whatever. It went, it was out for a bit. Mick Jagger and uh, Martin Scorsese. They did a pretty good job. They just got too into the character's brain going fucking crazy and not enough of what was really going on. It was the New York dolls. Mick Jagger's son was called the, the squeaky parts or the nasty parts. And it showed the managers snort and blow and thinking how they could fucking take this and that. It was so easy. All the money was coming into them. They were making deals with the, with the nasty parts weren't even signed to the label, but you hear that they were signed to the manager and the manager had a secret deal with Sony. But you hear that about boxers having shitty, creepy managers. You hear it about musicians, comedians, everything. It's like, I hope there's kids out there right now listening to this that want to become lawyers and say, I'm going to, it should be the wild, wild West with these nasties. A new type of lawyer.