Rick Beato: Video Games Killed The Radio Star

Post your first job FREE: https://linkedin.com/create Rick Beato is ‘Everything Music’ and more. He’s played, taught, and produced music for over four decades, and his unique expertise in analyzing songs and the people who play them has resulted in an extremely popular YouTube channel. But how do you get to the point where you casually and appropriately mention someone like Steve Vai? Rick explains his massive acquisition of stems from 20 years ago, and it turned out to be a fortuitous trade. He also gets songs from the actual source, because why not just ask? A little secret creeps out about the best way to prepare for interviews and videos… and it’s simply spending a lifetime thinking about it already. When Rick talks to a musician, he’s already been thinking about the conversation for years – and maybe even decades. One of his early musical passions was grunge, and now that he’s had over 30 years to ruminate on its songs and its artists, he recognizes it as a unique combination of experiences and people. Kevin thinks this means the notion of the ‘rock star’ is unlikely to happen again, and he’s probably right. Something weird is happening with the kids, though. They just aren’t listening to music. Rick says they’re playing video games, but they’re not sitting down and dedicating time to just listening to songs. It’s a tremendous societal shift that no one else is talking about, and there are serious implications for music and the other creative arts. Combine that with an algorithm-driven, carefully-curated experience and both listening patterns and discovery are completely different than in the past – and not in a good way. There really is something about life experience, and especially a bit of hardship, driving good art, whether it’s songs or movies. It’s not the suffering of a tortured artist, it’s just… life, and that’s changing. You also can’t fake it. It helps to grow up in an area that’s never sunny, but the three of us are biased. Rick answers questions about advice to a 20-something artist – and