Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast

Artists and music industry newcomers: how Tamar Kaprelian got dropped by Clive Davis, burned out at 24, and built the support she never had.

She refused a Lindsay Lohan recut Davis pitched her and lost the deal. She later launched Nvak, a company with a label, artist services, and a nonprofit that educated over 5,000 women in emerging markets.

Tamar and Bobby cover direct-to-fan strategy and why radio still pays in Germany but not in Armenia. The throughline is simple: grit is what keeps artists in the game.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamar-kaprelian-75138215/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tamarkaprelian
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamarkaprelian/
Website: https://www.tamarkaprelian.com
Company: https://nvakcollective.xyz
Resource: https://nvak.org
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamar_Kaprelian

#MusicIndustry #IndieMusic #GettingDropped #NvakMusicCompany #TamarKaprelian

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Coming up...
00:01:07 - What it was like competing at Eurovision
00:02:05 - How Tamar became Armenia's Eurovision contestant
00:04:14 - What it was really like being signed by Clive Davis
00:06:54 - Working with Jimmy Iovine and leaving the music business
00:09:00 - Why Tamar built Nvak Music Company
00:12:13 - Focusing on emerging markets and what the label actually does
00:14:39 - Are major labels still necessary, or can independents compete?
00:15:46 - How radio performs in emerging markets today
00:18:53 - How to run a discovery campaign when social media targeting is broken
00:23:41 - The best piece of advice for surviving the music business

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:
https://sholink.to/bobbyowsinskibooks

📘 The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for nailing that polished, pro mix sound: https://sholink.to/themixingengineershandbook

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

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses: https://sholink.to/bobbyowsinski

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BobbyOwsinskiBiz/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyo/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobbyowsinski/
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bobbyowsinski.bsky.social

🎙️ 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

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

Sync composers: Robina Ritchie-Barker explains why finishing catalog admin early is what keeps your music ready when a brief arrives.

Robina co-founded TrackStage after missing a sync opportunity because a piano track she finished four years earlier was never cut down to the required length. TrackStage moves a final mixdown to fully tagged and cataloged in under two minutes, replacing up to 15 separate tools.

Bobby and Robina also cover AI keyword analysis, split sheet automation, and how strategic pitching through one platform can replace a stack costing anywhere from $30 to $500 a month.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinaritchie/
Website: https://robinaritchiebarker.com/
Company: https://trackstagepro.com
Resource: https://mytrackstage.com/promo/onboarding-sales2401.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robinaritchiebarker/
Songtradr Profile: https://www.songtradr.com/robina.ritchie-barker
Bobby Owsinski Inner Circle Podcast Episode: https://bobbyoinnercircle.com/episode-463-trackstage-founders-tidal-new-royalties-canned-and-the-importance-of-studio-furniture/

#SyncLicensing #MusicCatalog #SyncComposer #TrackStage #RobinaRitchieBarker

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Coming up...
00:00:59 - What Track Stage actually does for musicians
00:02:12 - How frustration with spreadsheets led to building Track Stage
00:09:52 - What changed with Track Stage 3.0
00:12:19 - How Track Stage solves the metadata problem
00:15:11 - How AI keyword analysis expands sync opportunities
00:18:58 - How Track Stage supports strategic pitching
00:21:05 - What brings most musicians to Track Stage for the first time
00:22:47 - Why sync is a numbers game and versioning one song 27 ways
00:26:04 - What the sync industry still gets wrong about standards
00:29:51 - Every tool you would need without Track Stage
00:33:15 - Her unexpected claim to fame as Princess Jasmine

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:
https://sholink.to/bobbyowsinskibooks

📘 The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (6th Edition), the go-to guide for nailing that polished, pro mix sound: https://sholink.to/themixingengineershandbook

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

🎧 Discover more mixing and production courses: https://sholink.to/bobbyowsinski

📲 Follow Bobby for more tips, insights, and updates:
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BobbyOwsinskiBiz/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyo/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobbyowsinski/
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bobbyowsinski.bsky.social

🎙️ 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

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

Musicians curious about AI robots: Georgia Tech's Gil Weinberg shows how technology expands what players can do without replacing the act of playing.

Weinberg built Shimon, a marimba robot with eight arms hitting 20 notes per second, and a prosthetic drum arm for amputee Jason Barnes using ultrasound sensing for finger-by-finger piano control.

His app HearMe blocks audio downloads and delivers notation and tabs instead, so players learn from the AI.

The episode also covers the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition where musical instrument inventors show their latest ideas, and why Weinberg now calls himself a decelerationist.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weinberggil
HearMe App: https://hearme.music
HearMe Album: https://www.gilweinberg.com/hearmealbumnew
Georgia Tech: https://music.gatech.edu/gil-weinberg
Website: https://www.gilweinberg.com
Shimon (Singer and Songwriter): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOck0kPtlfk
Robot Music - featuring Shimon, the robotic marimba player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9OUbqWHOSk

#MusicTechnology #AIMusic #MusicRobotics #ProstheticMusician #GilWeinberg

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

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

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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

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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

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:

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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 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:

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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

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:

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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, 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:

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

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:

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