Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. We continue to hear more and more all the time about AI, Artificial Intelligence, and how it is changing our world, including our jobs, how we get our news, what our devices can do for us, and how students are learning in school. And of course, all of these AI developments have impact on the world of music. We’re talking today about what AI means for music and musicians. One organization that is at the forefront of this subject is ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP is a performing rights organization PRO founded in 1914, it was the first PRO in the US, and is the only one in the US that operates on a not for profit basis. It was founded by and continues to be governed by members, ensuring that every decision the board makes is in the interest of ASCAP members as a whole. I had the privilege of interviewing ASCAP board member Alex Shapiro in Episode 142. Alex is an amazing composer and was incredibly informative and articulate in explaining more about what ASCAP is, the many resources that it offers to members and to the general public, and the many ways that ASCAP champions the rights and well-being of musicians. I’ll put a link in the show notes to that episode. So it was no surprise to me, then, when I started seeing and hearing about ASCAP initiatives related to AI and music. Joining me today is ASCAP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Digital Officer, Nicholas Lehman. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Nick.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:01:55] Thank you. Mindy. I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:58] Yes, I’m so looking forward to this conversation. I was explaining to Nick right before we started recording that my college age son, who’s a computer science major, just returned home for spring break as we’re recording this and was asking me right before this interview with the topic of the interview was and I said, it’s on AI and music. Actually, I think you would be really interested in it. So I’m really looking forward to this conversation so I can report back to my son afterward.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:02:25] Absolutely. Well, I think listen, music, I think is a topic that’s of interest to pretty much everyone. And I think these days AI is a topic that’s interesting to everyone. So put those two together. And I think we we definitely have a lot to chat about.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:37] Good point. Well, starting out, can you just give us some context and perspective on how AI has influenced the landscape of music creation, distribution and consumption? Can you give us just an overview of the opportunities and challenges that AI presents for music creators and industry professionals?
Nicholas Lehman: [00:02:57] Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. I think, you know, it’s interesting that, you know, there’s so much interest in this in this area over the last year or two, but I think the what’s what’s also important to note is that AI is nothing new, right? I the technology itself has been around for decades, right? Probably since the 50s in some shape or form. It’s kept evolving and there are lots of different uses over the last couple of decades. But I think it’s really come to this moment and this sort of the forefront in the last two years, really, with kind of the mass consumer adoption of ChatGPT. I think that has been, as I think a lot of us know, probably the fastest adopted technology in the history of humankind. Right? I think the the stat is 100 million users and two months when it first kind of, you know, came, came to light and all of a sudden everyone was talking about AI. But it’s really it’s really nothing new. And it’s certainly an area that ASCAP has been paying attention to and a lot of our members have been experimenting with. But it’s certainly coming to a head right now. And and to your question, I believe, and I think ASCAP believes that AI has influenced and really will continue to influence pretty much every aspect of the music industry and the music experience going forward.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:04:12] I think if you think about it from the creation point of view, there are lots of tools that have been used in the past that incorporate various elements of AI, things like even autotune. Think about something like that, or even drum machines. You know, over, over time, there’s been different instances of AI and machine learning that have been incorporated into technology the lots of creators use. And then I and obviously that’s that’s progressing to a new and even more advanced place over the last year or two. I think on the flip side, or maybe in a compatible way, distribution and consumption has been very influenced by artificial intelligence. Look at something like the TikTok algorithm, right, which has been a driving force in music distribution, music experience, experience, all driven by machine learning. So I think, you know, there’s no question that those elements, those dynamics have caused major changes in the music industry over the last couple decades and really accelerated in the last couple of years. And I think we at ASCAP really believe that AI, therefore has the potential both to cause what I’d say really massive disruption, but also great opportunity. There are two sides of the same AI coin, and I would say, and you know, and that’s that’s what’s both exciting and terrifying about this at the same time.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:05:35] And I think why we’re all talking about it. And from an opportunity point of view, if I were just going to, you know, speak to this very broadly at the moment, you know, I see we see AI is really this, this potential of a as a co-pilot in many ways for creators. It allows creators to do what they do faster, maybe more even, you know, faster and more distributed ways. It allows them to maybe take out some of the more mechanical or mundane things that they don’t want to do that they that maybe doesn’t play. Their strengths, some of the business aspects, some of the, you know, sort of more, um, logistical things it can help them do it can certainly help them on the creative and what is often referred to as the generative side as well. But I think the opportunity and what we love about AI is that it potentially allows music creators to focus on being really human and do the things that humans do best. And so that’s kind of the opportunity on the challenge side. There are a lot of them, and that’s the scary part. I think what is often referred to as AI training.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:06:40] So that is what I would describe as these big AI platforms or engines ingesting lots of content, often not legally as we believe, and then learning and training on that content so that it can then generate new music, new content, often without typically licensing, without compensation, without consent, without credit. And we don’t think that’s fair. We think that’s actually infringing of the intellectual property of our members. And that’s that comes at a huge cost to them. It comes at a huge opportunity cost, a huge potential cost, even in terms of competition. Right. If you think that essentially there is a there’s a technology out there that’s using your content to generate new content that then competes with you, that potentially floods the market with other content that can drown out your content, that can drown out your music, potentially, you know, draw revenue that you should be earning. That’s a huge challenge. And so these are the things we’re trying to balance and help our members navigate, which is how can ASCAP, um, how can we stand up and really try to protect the rights of our members against these challenges, but also educate our members so that they understand creatively, how can they utilize it to their best advantage?
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:00] Yeah, I love the the phrase and the terms that you’re using about using AI as a copilot and using it to help humans do what humans do best. I love that a lot of what you’re talking about with taking copyrighted material and using it for training machine learning without giving due representation or recognition or compensation, that’s really been in the news a lot. It seems like in the author book publishing realm, like I know Stephen King has been really outspoken for authors rights. I feel like I’m not hearing as much of it in the music realm, but more and more of it. And I certainly think it’s going to be we’re going to be hearing more and more about it, rightfully so. Yeah, I.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:08:44] Think it’s partially I’m sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say, and it’s complicated. Right. And they’re very different points of view on this. You will hear a very different viewpoint from the technology companies. From the AI companies, you will often hear them refer to this concept of fair use, which is a legal principle that allows technology companies to use certain types of content in very specific parameters without compensating the intellectual property owners. That is not the case, and we can talk a lot more about that. And we have spent a lot of time advocating in Washington with the US Copyright Office really stating the case as to why that should not be, uh, considered for, uh, vis a vis music and, and artificial intelligence. And it’s something that the US Copyright Office right now is really grappling with. And as you may know, they they started a process last year. They call their NOI process a notice of inquiry where they basically when when the Copyright Office is trying to set out new guidelines or new regulations, they ask everybody in the industry, what do you think? Give us input so we can try to, um, you know, we can try to issue new guidelines or new regulations or new law that apply that we can apply fairly. And so ASCAP took really a lead position among pros and wrote, I think, a approximately a 70 page, 60 or 70 page document with all of our input, with all the different reasons why we felt like we needed to protect these rights for our members and, and also offer a solution to the technology industry, which is really as simple as what ASCAP does right now is.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:10:26] You may know, ASCAP issues what we call blanket licenses. We collect all the rights of our almost million members, and we issue one license. You know, we license now, I think about almost 700,000 different companies. And for whatever, you know, uh, fees that they pay us, they have a very broad range of how they can utilize the music, the repertory of our members, and specifically from a performance rights perspective. And it really actually has enabled many companies to innovate very dramatically. So we actually think the way that we license can be a great solution in the industry for AI companies. And, you know, we’ve been able. To. Based on how we’ve invested in our tech stack, we’re able to track, you know, every musical performance on Spotify, on Netflix, on every DSP. So if we can do that, we can really work with the AI companies to track what’s utilized in AI and get our members and other music creators paid as well. So we think there are some great solutions that we’ve advocated for in Washington, and we can talk much more about that. Well, I.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:32] Know someone from Washington, from the Copyright Office was on your AI symposium panel, and I saw him on the highlight reel, and there was somebody else on that highlight reel who was saying something to the effect that if the potential opportunities and challenges about AI in music don’t excite and terrify you both, you don’t fully understand what’s going on. Yeah. Both. Yeah. I know Ascab has been at the forefront of supporting music creators in every way, shape and form from the beginning, and collaborations between humans and AI are becoming increasingly common in music production. Tell us a little bit about how ASCAP envisions AI’s role in empowering artists and composers to succeed in this digital era that we’re in.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:12:21] Sure. I mean, I think in terms of empowering them, as I mentioned, you know, we really see it as another tool in creator’s arsenal of creative tools. You know, going back many years, it might have been a thesaurus, it might have been, you know, it might have been a drum machine, it might have been a synthesizer. It then became a digital audio workstation. You know, the technology keeps evolving, but essentially they tend to be tools that allow our members and music creators to be what they are, which is creative, um, authentic, uh, music songwriters and composers and lyricists and, and, you know, artists, frankly. And so we really just see AI as another one of those tools, um, if used ethically, if used responsibly. And that is really, you know, and the responsibility to do that that way, you know, I think sits with the technology companies just because you can create, uh, technology that that leverages intellectual property without paying people for that doesn’t mean you should. Right. And so we believe there are very clear ways in which the technology should be deployed and in, in ways in which, uh, you know, government institutions like the US Copyright Office should create parameters by which they should operate. Um, but I think going back, going back to your question there, there’s so many different ways, both on the creative side, on the sort of mundane, logistical side. They’re terrific opportunities to use AI around signal processing, stem splitting, you know, all sorts of things that can take creators a lot of work and maybe aren’t exactly kind of focused on their their creative, you know, the creative moments in their output. But there’s a lot of the mechanics, a lot of the mundane day to day that can take a lot of that out of it.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:14:13] It can also be creative inspiration. Right. We’ve talked to, you know, we I think you mentioned and and we can talk more about this. We’ve done a lot of education for our members. We have run now three different artificial intelligence symposia for our members in LA in New York and then in Nashville, most recently at the end of last year. And we had two, you know, two different, uh, ASCAP, uh, writers, uh, talk about some of their experiences, um, Curtis King and Anna Voss. And they both talked about using ChatGPT just as an inspiration. Right, to help them with lyrics. When you get stuck, when you’re trying to solve for something. And again, it’s no different in many ways. And how somebody might have used a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary or, or friend or, or talked about it with their son who’s home from college. Right. So there it’s just it’s just the next tool. Um, but it has some dark sides and it has licensing challenges and it has some other, you know, issues that we need to deal with at the same time. So we really again, we see there’s a real dichotomy between the opportunity ways to inspire creators to be more creative, to be more productive, and lots of other ways in which we see this evolving, but also a real threat to their rights, to their intellectual property and to their business potential. And so we really as ASCAP, we need to look at both. And we’re really trying to solve for both together with our members and with our board.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:36] Sure. Tell us, are there any specific AI related programs or initiatives that ASCAP has rolled out? I know the answer is yes, but tell us about some of those initiatives.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:15:46] I’d say I’d say yes, yes, yes and yes. And this is, you know, again, we really took a lead on on AI. You know, we started this several years ago as we saw this coming to a head and becoming really part of the dialogue in the industry and something that our members were grappling with. Um, and so I’d say we, I’d say the first thing that we really started with. It was research, right? So as you mentioned early and thank you for mentioning this. You know, ASCAP is the only pro in the US that is non-profit. It’s the only pro that is governed by writers and publishers who are our members, who are elected members. So it’s kind of the only democracy that’s really operating in the US in the performance space right now. And so as such, we listen really carefully to our members. We are constantly in dialogue with them both on a, you know, personal 1 to 1 basis anecdotally. But then also we do a ton of research, qualitative and quantitative research. So going back to June of last year, we did our first really in-depth study on AI and music creators. And that was the first piece of research I think, that any pro did on this. Since then, a number of of our other, you know, pro and society siblings have done some other research, but we learned some really fascinating things. The first thing that we learned was only about 40.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:17:03] And this wasn’t just associate members. This was all music creators in the US. We learned that only about 40% of creators really even understood how AI and songwriting or composing might work. And so that was problematic in and of itself. But we learned about half of them really, really believe that I was going to be a threat to their livelihood. Seven out of ten wanted the ability to opt in or opt out to having their music used for training. Ai’s eight out of ten felt like I needed better regulation, and nine out of ten believe that music creators ought to be compensated if their music was used in AI content. So, and I guess on top of that, most, if not all of them wanted their pro to help them understand new technology. So with all that in mind and listening very carefully, as we always do to our members, we decided the first kind of big initiative that we rolled out around AI was to set out our principles. Really kind of what did ASCAP, what did our members, what did our board believe about AI and how could we use those as guiding principles going forward, whether it was in terms of legislation, litigation, you know, education, all those good things. And so I can quickly sort of tell you about those, um, but we could spend a lot.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:21] Yeah. And just out of curiosity, tell me, what time frame were these principles set up? Sure.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:18:27] So the board the board unanimously adopted them in June of last year. So June 2023. Um, and so there are basically six principles. The first was, and this is always the most important to us human creators first, so we believe as the source of all creativity, whether it’s whether it’s as executed through humans or through AI and other technologies, humans are the source, right? So we have to prioritize their rights and their compensation for our human members. So that’s number one. The second principle, as we call it, is transparency. Transparency is something that is near and dear to ASCAP as a whole, but is specifically important in the world of AI. And when we say transparency, what we mean is, um, training that happens like we were talking about before, when AI platforms and engines utilize other content to learn and therefore create their output. We believe those engines, those platforms have to be transparent about how their training methods work. We also believe that they have to retain any data on what works have been ingested into their systems, and also therefore what works might influence an output. Right? So if they produce a new song, they can track what actually what were the influences, what was ingested, and they should be transparent about that. And then lastly that they should also be transparent when there is a new work that AI has been utilized. Right? It’s like, you know, it’s like we want to know what’s in our food. We want to know what’s in our in our music as well. And so that’s.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:03] More of this in news too, when news articles are being generated using artificial intelligence, it’s um, it’s helpful to know that because it does make mistakes. I’ve used AI sort of, you know, here and there and it I found it to be a little hit or miss. And so if I’m, if I’m taking the time to check a news source, I do want to know if it’s generated by humans or not.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:20:28] Absolutely. And it’s just like as if you if you were writing a piece of a research study or, or an essay, you would cite your sources. Right? Sure. This is just like citing your sources. If you were taking a sample of a piece of music and using it in a new derivative work, you would give credit and compensation and all the things I’m going to talk about now, but it’s no different. And and there’s no reason why why technology companies can’t be transparent. Sure. The third principle is consent, right. So if you’re going to be transparent, if a, if a user, a member or a creator knows that their work might be used in, in another new. Ai generated work, they should have the right to be able to say yes or no, whether or not whether or not their works can be used for training, and we as ASCAP, can help support them in that and do that at scale. But we absolutely, absolutely believe consent is critical here. Consent then goes hand in hand with the force fourth principle, which is compensation. If you’re going to utilize any of our members or any music creators, content and intellectual property creators deserve to be paid fairly when their work is being used in any way by AI.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:21:41] There is no fair use when it comes to this from our perspective, and we also think it’s really important. How does compensation work? We think compensation, and this is an ASCAP, uh, you know, broader principle, uh, compensation should happen in a free market. So and we think that’s the most efficient way for this to work. So when you have a willing buyer and a willing seller, the willing seller being music creators, the willing buyer being an AI company, right? And you bring them together, you negotiate. This is what ASCAP does all day long. 700,000 different licensees were really good at doing this and really helping all those licensees, um, be creative and innovative and, and grow their businesses by utilizing music. What we don’t think should happen. And this is often discussed, and I think we’ll hear more about this as well. We don’t think what should happen is what’s called compulsory licensing. And that’s when the government steps in and says, hey, we think the price of this piece of music should be X, and here’s how you should get paid. And we’re going to set something up to do that. We don’t think that’s efficient. We don’t think that’s free market. And so we’re big free market advocates here. The last two principles and we can go on from there.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:22:53] But really importantly, if you get consent, if you get compensation, music creators should get credit. Right. Anybody whose work is used, they deserve credit in the new work. And lastly, and this is this one’s a complicated one, but we believe that global consistency is really important because we live in a totally interconnected global. You know what I call music and data ecosystem. If we don’t have consistency in our laws and the way that data is governed and the way some of these business rules work, you know, things are going to slip through the cracks, maybe not even slip through the cracks. There will be big gaps in how this works. And so intellectual property may get exploited in one part of the world and then distributed in another part. And so we really are working very closely, you know, not just with other other, um, sort of, you know, rights holders in the US, but broadly speaking, with our, you know, with the, with Cisac, for example, which is the broader coalition of societies around the world to make sure we can try to apply as consistently as possible these principles and other things that we think are important to protecting the rights of music creators. So those are our six principles.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:01] Yeah. Well, in that last one, global consistency makes so much sense when you’re dealing with digital investments or digital assets because it is so accessible, no matter where you are in the world. It’s not like a piece of physical property or land that’s tied to a geographic location. So yeah, I love those six principles. Yeah, yeah. And I know you’ve done go ahead.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:24:24] No, I was gonna say so that was sort of the basis of everything we, we’ve done. And I can just kind of briefly tell you about them. How have we taken those principles and put them into action. So the first is, you know, we’ve gone very hard at the advocacy side of this. So as I mentioned before, we put together this, this big document in, in reference and sorry, in response to the US Copyright Office’s call for input. Um, and explain to them kind of how we see the, the, the future working and why we think we need to protect our members rights in the way that we do. So that was sort of the first thing. We then took these principles and everything that we had, uh, you know, generated from a suggestion point of view for the US Copyright Office. And we took it to Congress. We took it to Washington. So back also in June, we brought our entire board of directors and a lot of our very high profile members, and we did what we call walk the halls of Congress. We met with 28 different members of Congress, explain these principles to them, ask for their help and supporting, uh, you know, creators rights and got an incredibly positive response. And, and you’ll see more and more of the results of that in terms of our supporting various bills that various Congress people are putting out. And and they’re working with us. And so that was incredibly important to go and show lawmakers how important this is.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:25:44] And, and for them to hear about it, hear about how it was affecting our members straight from their mouths in their offices. And so that was incredibly effective. So that’s really been a lot of our focus on advocacy in the last year. As I mentioned, we do a ton of education. We’ve had all these symposia. If your listeners are interested in sort of reading through some of this or watching some of the videos, we put it all together in one. One place on our site at ASCAP, BMI, so you can go and find a lot of this. There is really easy sort of hub around AI, but then in addition to advocacy and education, we feel really, um, strongly that we need to work with the technology companies as well. So we have tried to not only work with and dialogue with the big AI companies, but we’re really trying to make a big effort to work with the startups, right? The ones who are really kind of pushing the boundary and doing new and interesting things with AI. And we feel like if we start really early with these early stage startups, we can not only educate them about how music rights works work and how royalties work, and how we believe intellectual property of our members and music creators should be respected, but we can learn from them as well, and we can find ways to collaborate and create a better and brighter future for everyone.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:27:00] So we launched, uh, a couple of years ago. We actually launched something we call the ASCAP lab, and the ASCAP lab is our innovation program that houses a whole bunch of different initiatives. But one of the most exciting initiatives is that every year we run an accelerator program for startups, and we call that the ASCAP Lab Challenge. And this past year, we, uh, we launched our it was our fourth year of running the challenge, but we incubated five different AI startups that were all working in the music space. But we specifically picked companies that were working and that we thought could benefit music creators versus challenge them. So we had amazing companies, and they come in and they they work through our 12 week program where we mentor them, but frankly, they mentor us as well. And at the end of that, um, you know, they’re really able to kind of take their businesses and their efforts to the next level. We’ve learned a lot. They respect music rights, and we think that’s part of the way in which we can shape what I call sort of the future of the music industry today is by working with, you know, the very early stages of of AI and technology development. It’s not just playing catch up, it’s also playing collaboration with people who are who are coming up with these ideas and bringing our members together with them to brainstorm different applications of it. And it’s really exciting stuff.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:18] Oh, it sounds like it. And it sounds like some really symbiotic relationships that you’re very intentionally nurturing and developing with some of these different stakeholders, which is really exciting.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:28:29] That is absolutely our hope. And again, it just it brings everyone into dialogue around this versus, uh, into conflict, which is where we are with a lot of the industry right now. And I would mention also that we’re right in the process of we’re premiering a sort of little, what I’d call mini documentary about this cohort that we incubated this year. So again, if you go to our ascap.com/ai page or our ASCAP lab.com page, you will find this mini documentary and view it on YouTube, which not only details the process by which we mentor these companies, but most interestingly, the technologies that they are all creating and really offers up different types of tools and approaches and methods that creators can use or will be able to use in their work, both creatively and distribution wise and monetization wise, all of which we think can further the industry and create some really positive change.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:25] And I’ll for sure put links in the show notes to these different websites that you’re referencing and whether listeners are music creators, music producers involved in that whole process or just curious about it. You do put all of this information out on your website. It’s really intriguing to read about it. You can read all about your advocacy work there. As you mentioned, there’s full coverage of your, uh, symposium, the AI symposium there. So reader or listeners can go there and learn more about that. I think you’ve managed to answer just about every question I had on my list, without me even having to specifically ask them. That is really impressive.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:30:03] Well, happy to try to do it. And as well as to talk about any more detail. It’s something that again, we have we spent a lot of time really trying to understand from all different perspectives and figure out how we can make progress in this, this intersection of all these different forces for the industry. And and ultimately, at the end of the day, to benefit music creators.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:22] Yeah. Well, I love hearing what you’re doing, how intentional you are about doing it, and not just seeing this as a us versus them. This is a threat type of a thing. But really, like, hey, how can we work together and collaborate here together? And how can we work with those who may not understand where we’re coming from, as on the musician side, maybe they’re purely on the technology side. Let’s work with them and educate them to what where we’re coming from, what our rights are so that we can work together. So love that collaborative type of an approach. Do you have any advice that you want to give to aspiring musicians or composers on how to embrace AI, while maintaining the authenticity and uniqueness of their individual artistic expression? I know there’s lots. Of um, resources on the website. Anything else that we haven’t already mentioned that you want to recommend?
Nicholas Lehman: [00:31:12] I you know, I would just say, you know, I guess my advice would be utilize AI or explore AI in the ways in which it will allow you to do what you do best as a creator allows you how it may allow you to be the most human, to be the most creative. And that’s that’s important, I think, not only to be authentic in what you create as a as a writer or composer, but also I think it’s hopefully prudent because we do believe that the US Copyright Office will issue new guidelines probably later this year, and there probably will be some elements around what can actually have a copyright and what may not have a copyright based on how much human involvement there has been in a specific work, and that certainly what the US Copyright Office has issued in preliminary guidelines. And so the point being, the more human that you put into your works, the more likely and more fully you may be able to protect and monetize those works. We’re not saying shy away from utilizing AI again, it’s a great tool, but make sure you put you into it. Make sure you put the human into it because that will help you. We think both creatively but also business wise and protection and legal, uh, legally wise.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:29] Sure, absolutely. Well, like I said, I think you managed to answer most of my questions. Have, have. Is there anything else that we haven’t already touched on that you really want to make sure that you get in anything on that intersection between AI and music, how it’s shaping the future of the music industry, or any initiatives that are especially exciting to you that ASCAP’s rolled out that we haven’t already touched on, that you want to make sure you squeeze in before we close things out?
Nicholas Lehman: [00:32:55] Yeah, I think, I think we really hit everything. So thank you for for prompting all the right, uh, all the right questions and topics that I think we care a lot about. Maybe the last thing I would close with is I mentioned, you know, we we just had this amazing cohort of five companies in our ASCAP lab challenge. We’re also in the process of of starting our next cohort, which will also be on the AI side because there’s so many companies doing so many exciting things. We decided to do AI again this year, but we’re also looking for companies not only that necessarily create tools for creators, but also that can help ASCAP and other parts of the industry on the back end. And that’s something we didn’t talk a lot about. But AI is not just a creative tool. It’s a tool for every, frankly sort of sector of the economy and any type of process. And so we also think the real opportunities and a lot of which ASCAP is exploring right now to utilize AI on the back end, on our infrastructure, on our processing, on our payment tech, on our matching, like we’re looking at lots of ways in which we can make the industry and our sector in particular more efficient, more productive for our members while they do the work on the creative side so we can. So that’s that’s the other piece I would mention that I think there’s a lot of opportunity there, too. And and, you know, hopefully our members, uh, will know and hear that that is something we’re really pushing forward, uh, for their benefit as well.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:20] Yeah. If listeners are listening to this and thinking, wow, this sounds so intriguing and I want to learn more, but I’m a little overwhelmed and don’t even know where to start. I would encourage you to just go to ASCAP’s website and sign up for their regular email that they get. This is something that I talked about with Alex in our conversation. I love your email because it’s just I want to say it’s just once a week and there’s not an overwhelming amount of information in there. It’s very manageable, but it gives the highlights and there’s almost always something in there that catches my attention. In fact, that’s what led me to this conversation with you today. Was seeing information in there about the AI symposium. And so there’s always those links that I’m like, ooh, let me click on that, learn a little bit more. So I encourage people to sign up for those.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:35:07] Yeah that’s great. I’m so glad that’s worked for you. We really try to, you know, make sure that we’ve got a bit of a digest for people to to dive in as much as they want or can’t or can. Yeah. Um, but it’s a lot it’s a lot to digest. So, um, we try to make it digestible.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:22] It totally is. I mean, I get some email newsletters like that where I’m just scrolling constantly. I’m like, oh my goodness, what am I going to get to the bottom of this? And the ASCAP one is not like that. It’s very manageable.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:35:34] Good. I’m so glad to hear that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:36] Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Nick. For all of this intriguing information and all you’re doing to enhance lives with music through your work at ASCAP. As you know, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or a story that you can share with us today in closing?
Nicholas Lehman: [00:35:59] Yeah, I thought, well, you know, since we since we were talking so much about sort of the future forward aspects of music, I thought maybe I’d talk about something. Very meaningful to me. That’s actually quite ancient in terms of music. And that is, you know, the practice of sound meditation and sound healing. You know, something that’s very important to me in my personal and professional life is is sound meditation. And for and, you know, and when I first came across, if your listeners or you’re familiar with sound baths, you know what a sound bath is, is basically, in the words of actually one of my teachers, Sarah Oster, she defines a sound bath as a deeply immersive, full body listening experience that then uses sound to nurture your mind and body. And that’s often it often involves, you know, relaxing while you listen to something like a singing bowl, a Tibetan, uh, bowl or other instruments, um, where you can. Then it has all different sorts of therapeutic benefits. And so just, you know, just to give my experience with this, a couple of years ago, I happened to be out in California in Joshua Tree, a beautiful part of the world, and happened upon this kind of odd looking, uh, what seemed like a tourist attraction called the Integratron.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:37:11] And little did I know that this integratron is actually one of the meccas for sound baths in the world, frankly. Oh, it’s an incredible place where they they have these acoustically really incredible space, and they and they have sound baths. So I went in to try something like this and was one of the most mind blowing, head blowing, soul blowing, uh, experience I ever had, whereby listening to this, uh, this sound healer or sound facilitator play these bowls, I really had such a transporting experience that also really grounded me at the same time. So it was a really it was a real wake up call for me. Of what? Of the role that sound and music can play in my life. And you know how it can take me out of places, how it can bring me back to myself, and most importantly, how sound and music really allow me to be very present in my day to day life. And these are practices that, again, not only I find fulfilling for myself, but also that we’ve incorporated into things like our ASCAP wellness program. So ASCAP is actually the first, uh, US pro and one of the few pros in the world that actually has a comprehensive wellness program for our members, for our creators, which we could probably talk about on a whole on another podcast.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:38:23] Uh, right. We do lots of events, many of which have been sound baths. Um, and I think, you know, something that we think is incredibly beneficial for artists, for creators and, and every one of us. And so, you know, it’s something that’s important to me, even in my day to day work life, I keep a a crystal singing bowl in my office and often in between meetings, you know, we’ll all kind of stop and take this pause for a moment and listen to the bowl for, you know, anywhere from 10s to a minute or two, really, just to to put that pause into our day, I’d say to give resonance to what may have come right before that, to bring us fully into that moment and then also recalibrate us for what is next. And that’s that’s what I love about sound healing. And these types of instruments. And it’s been very, uh, you know, a really beautiful passion of mine that I care a lot about. And, and also try to share through our work at ASCAP as well.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:17] Well, I’m really intrigued. I’m going to have to check these bowls out. Sure. I listeners can’t see we we’re on we’re on a video call so I can see can I see your your bowl.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:39:27] Sure.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:29] Oh, there it is. Okay, so it’s.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:39:30] Made out of quartz and they’re all attuned to different frequencies. And so this is one that this is one that I keep in my office. And they’re played typically with a striker. This is a felt striker. Um and usually you’ll play a number of them together. I actually trained to become a, a sound facilitator myself. But it’s really just something that anybody can do. It’s really it’s really very straightforward. But um, and and if you play.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:56] It now, can we hear it? Sure.
Nicholas Lehman: [00:39:58] We can try. Let’s see if the microphone will pick it up. I’ll give it a shot. Let’s see. Okay.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai