Savan Kotecha | The Music Podcast: Western Music Culture, Songwriting, Pop Stars, Depression & more

so one day I get a call I'm 17 years old he's like listen kid I just signed this band out of Florida called Backstreet Boys I'd really love to take the song and have them record it so I was always seen by Americans as an Indian I always joke and say I was raised as if Indian in the 1920s a songwriter is pretty much Melody lyrics and chords like the music so as hip-hop got dominant producers started going wait a second if I've already created some music and you're rapping over it I should be a so

ngwriter as well pop stars some of them wrote songs some Sometimes some of them didn't Michael Jackson wrote some of his songs but then rod temperton and other people wrote other songs like Thriller and off-the-wall the way you're conditioned in American Business is you're not the artist you're the songwriter the artist is the person who sings the song it's because it's a celebrity culture in a country like Sweden there's 100,000 people signed up for their iprs here it's only 13,000 and creators

we just want to create we just want people to hear what we do all my dreams as a songwriter came true and I had crazy amounts of money coming in I could get access to any artist every award show I was going all that all the things that you think of I was miserable ideas are here they all float around us and if you can be a vessel for an idea what a blessing that is in the west if you have a big hit song2 $3 million if you have a mega mega smash you're looking at5 $6 million a Bad Bunny song in

Latin America is a Bad Bunny song in America The rhythms that's what makes it infectious to the rest of the world I think we can learn from K-pop especially when it comes to feeding a youth fan base no one will or should care more about your career than yourself achievement and self-worth should never be connected what's said in the studio stays in the studio HIIT indan sucessful s writer or especially Western World topal glob nomino mus award B award DJ Got Us Falling In Love With Asher can't f

eel my face by the weekend problem side by side no tears left with Arana Grande uh love me like you do with Ellie Golding What Makes You Beautiful with One Direction Justin Bieber Maroon 5 to name a few successful srit going to be a conversation in English translation use it it'll be fun you'll be able to learn a lot of things sa welcome to the music podcast and thank you for being such a sport U we just casually connected two days back yeah and here we are thank you so much for being here and c

ongratulations for you to be doing so much of work in the west and uh your parents are from Uganda yeah GTI is from Grand my grandparents were poor B they went to Uganda uh my grand fathers went first and then brought in everyone else um yeah they went through the idam uh idaman regime in the 70s when they got kicked out and everyone went my grandmother went back to India for a while everyone went to the UK to London and Leicester and Manchester and my parents were the only ones that went to the

US you know it it it feels great when you're the second generation who is not in India you're not born in India you're not raised in India uh but you still feel that Indian connection uh you call yourself as an Indian I'm beginning to see you know that looking back you know in America especially and I think in England it's so in a way segregated with race and culture so you're not an American you're you're where you're from so I was always seen by Americans as an Indian um and also the way we w

ere raised was you know when Indians came to America in the 70s they only they found found their Indian Community and that was their family so you're raised within an Indian Community in fact when my parents they worked for IBM at the time so when they would be transferred from IBM all the Indians that work at IBM would come together and collectively go say okay we want to be transferred here so then Indian Community would move together um so I was raised as if India we always joke and say I was

raised as if India in the 1920s right cuz my grandparents came over they raised my parents as if India in the 1920 and then my grand my parents raised me and my sister that way and very conservative so like the India today you know is very liberal compared to how we were raised and how a lot of the Indians you know second generation Indians of my my family friends and fans were raised you know so it's really it's really kind of fun to see you so you know U anyone who is working in India in the

music industry yeah um everybody dreams of doing something at an international scale yeah um somebody who's aspiring to be a musician also has that dream but somebody who has achieved everything in India also somehow has that dream you know of doing something but not too many people really have an exess or a clear information about how the system works in the west yeah and I mean I've been in the management scene for a very long time but we also have our own myths you know we have very limited i

nformation so I would actually request you to go to the very Basics and explain us actually how things actually works in the West in fact there are a lot of terminologies which we don't use in India so in India we typically uh know that there is somebody who writes the melody yeah uh we call him as a music composer or music director yeah uh there is somebody who writes the song lyrics he's called a Lyricist someone who lends his vocals is called a singer and who plays you know specific instrumen

ts are the musicians and recently in the last 10 years or so uh we have music producer who is not composing the melody who's working on the production of the song yeah and then there is a mix and master engineer you know these are some terms which we all understand but when we go to the rest we hear a lot of terms uh songwriter a record producer you know and uh a music producer uh how he or she is treated in India and in the west is a very different thing we also assume that all the songs are ac

tually composed and written by the artist who are featuring uh in the song I'm sorry I'm going like like in the little ABCD and the basic grammar but I think that's more important for everybody in India who aspires to go internationally what do each of these term means and how does the process actually work so obviously there's never set rules for anything but I'll go through the basics so in the States and it's and it has evolved over time so when I first started a songwriter we we we don't rea

lly separate it as composer and Lyricist necessarily um I think in Hollywood they still credit some things as that but you still put everyone on everything right um a songwriter is pretty much Melody lyrics and chords like the music um they're all mixed in as songr WR um when I first started that and a producer was very separated so um if you wrote a song and then someone was actually going to produce it put a beats to it and things like that those were separate jobs with separate payments as hi

p hop became dominant in America and Hip-Hop producers would be so hip-hop was done by producers doing the beat and like making what we call a backing track and then rappers would wrap over that backing track so as hipop pop got dominant producers started going wait a second well if you're rapping if I've already created some music and you're rapping over it I should be a songwriter as well so as that and the digital age developed where people were selling less albums during um during the Napste

r time when it was illegal downloading all in piracy um producers were saying like wait a second if we're GNA we're important in this process and we're earning less money and if you're writing to our music songwriters and pop started writing not all the time but started you know writing with producers in the room so the producers would do chords make a beat and then the songwriters would write their Melodies and lyrics on top of that so those producers were saying wait we have to be songwriters

as well because we're an intrical part of this process so they started taking songwriting credit it's gone a little overboard now where if somebody just does a drum beat to a song they want songwriting credit but that all happens because sort of hip-hop developed at least from my point of view um so now it's at a place where songwriting and producing producers are songwriters because they do the beat and the track um and then they'll get a separate fee for being producers looking after the files

and all of that stuff um so that's how it sort of works now in the states so you'll see a lot of people credited songwriter and producer that's because they did what in India you would just call the producer um but in America they also get credit as songwriters so songwriting is like a team effort in the west where there might be multiple people in it and do they get the royalties and the split in the equal uh manner like if there are like there's a beat producer uh there is a one who's writing

lyrics there's one who's making the melody does three of them gets an equal share or you it has to be divided accordingly so legally it's 50/50 um like lyric or 50 but that doesn't that's not practice at all so it tends to be and when you see a lot of names in the song Because Western pop music is super collaborative um you tend to if you have the same amount of if you have the same group of collaborators you tend to um split it equally just because you know one day you're doing most everything

and another day that person had the idea that you came off of so just to keep the peace people tend to do quite equally and then it'll be times where someone will come in and say oh that's really good but you should change this and then maybe that person you that that person you don't split equal with you maybe give like 5% of the song because they made one little change you know but if you at least me and my collaborators we tend to work that like okay if we started if we're in the room and st

arted the song um we're going to split equally because what we don't want is there to be that we don't want ego to get into the way and greed to get into the way so we don't want it to be like well well if I take his suggestion on the lyric if he has a lyric line that's better than mine I'm just going to say it's not because then he's going to take my share right so we've learned again at least my in my circle of friends and collaborators you know we've learned to just you you make it equal so e

go doesn't ego does not enter the room what the the best thing is what's best for the song and that's why I think sometimes you have six people in the song AB song yeah it's never really six people you know in the room it could literally be that the record company didn't think the production was right so they send the production to somebody else and the guy just changes some drum sounds and now that person says I won't change the drum sounds unless I'm also credited as a song as a songwriter so

that's that type of stuff is why you see um so and all of them become the songwriter and they get the royalty and and they get the royalty and they own a piece of the copyright um so in America that's a big difference just not paid for play that happens in music scoring but not like in songwriting so this buyout doesn't happen with American artists um it's um you get to keep your copyright and you earn royalties and success but then the downside to it especially in the streaming era is that you

only get paid in success so you know if the song doesn't work and you spent a week on that song you get nothing so other than maybe a few dollars here and there you mentioned two great very important things one the uh Lyricist yeah uh and the melody producer who who doing the melody they don't don't actually get paid a fees no uh and they only get money from royalties when your song is being played on Spotify or mostly radio and that's where you get the money from yeah and I mean you only you mi

ght be getting some money for the expenditure for sure you know the the expenses that you do while making the song no none at all no I mean if you travel a lot of times they'll pay for your travel but it's backwards that way in those places you know it's in the west it's you know if you do something for a film um you'll get a fee right but if you're working with if I'm working with a big American Artist and I'm in you know I'm going to go to the studio on my own expense and you know because they

're going to write a lot of songs or they're going to be a part of lot of songs and at the end they'll pick what makes the album so if your song doesn't make it that's tough luck that's how it works there and but the best part what you which you also mentioned is that all the songwriters owns the copyright of the song Forever yes so all the songwriters on the cop so the the good part of that is that in success if you have a big hit and if you're lucky enough to be the ones that have a hit or hav

e many hits the you know you can be set for a lot of your life with those hits and then you own them so if you ever wanted to you could sell them to a company or you keep them and you can pass them on to your kids so they continue to get royalties and that's the wonderful thing of that you know and uh in fact when you deal with the publisher because generally all the songw writers are signed to a publisher yeah and the the music label all only owns the recording of the master rights of that spec

ific product yeah but you own the underlying rights forever yes and when you uh deal with a publisher uh the publisher is also not taking away the rights from you they are just doing the administration in a way yeah so you can do what they call admin deals and just do Administration where they're basically collecting the money or you can do a full publishing deal which in America the standard is 2575 so there's if you split it it's 50% publisher and 50% to the songwriter you'll still keep 25 % o

f that publisher share so you do what they call a c-pub deal that's what it's called and so you co-own the publishing with the publisher and eventually you'll get those song you'll get the CO the piece that the publisher owns in most publishing deals depending on what you negotiate you tend to get that back after a certain amount of years so that is called a retention period so if you have a short retention period say you know 7 years that means after you finished your publishing deal after 7 ye

ars the publisher has gives you back their share of the songs so in that in that way it's really quite good um and you know and I think the being here now and understanding how things are done here I I actually kind of feel that the a middle ground is actually a great way to do it where the the writer can have the option do you want to take a fee or do you want to keep your copyright if you want a fee then great take the fee but then we take the copyright for an x amount of years and if you don'

t do a fee then you bet on the song right I think what you're saying is music to my ear and honestly speaking I can say confidently not more than 2% in people in the music industry actually know how how this works in the west because I also didn't know this in this detailing and in fact uh uh all these artists primarily the singers are called the artists the Performing artists uh they are they involved in the process of songw writing as well more more so now than before um you know before you ha

d your singer songwriters that was like a genre and then you had your sort of pop stars and the pop stars some of them wrote songs sometime some of them didn't if you even go back to like Michael Jackson right Michael Jackson wrote some of his songs um but then rod temperton and other people wrote other songs like Thriller and off-the-wall and stuff like that so nowadays it's changed where a lot of artists want to write even if they're not song songwriters they at least want to be a part of the

process so they have their voice in there we can debate if that's always good or bad you know depends on the artist um because then you have to deal with another person's taste and it's like being an actor right if you're great actor it doesn't mean you're a great screenwriter it's different skill sets um and some there's edge shens of the world weekends Ariana Taylor Swift there's people like that who are amazing songwriters as well as they are singers and performers but then there's some that

are not and you just have to it's a personal thing whether you want the artist in the room if you want to work with an artist that doesn't really write you know um and that's the struggle I think for songwriters in the west is that you know the industry has sort of shifted things where in India I think the songwriter the composer is quite celebrated in a sense like the public knows the com that oh this is this person's song this is great right um and I think in in the US the songwriters in the p

op business the songwriters are sort of on purpose meant to be hidden because it's it's a fantasy that you they want the pop stars to be in front and they want the pop stars they they're the celebrities and they want the audience to believe what the pop stars are singing are coming from them not from a bunch of people in the studio and um so so it's different I guess mindset you know of how the audience is conditioned to to understand it I think a lot of my meats are getting bursted today yeah b

ecause we always thought the other way around yeah uh we thought that the composer and Lyricist in India are not that uh celebrated like they celebrated in the west but maybe it's our my lack of knowledge it's it's uh where're the bottom of the totem pole it shouldn't be because everything is built off the song and that's the fight that American songwriters and songwriters in the west are continually fighting in fact I was surprised when I saw your Spotify profile yesterday I saw that the songs

which you have done there are more than 10 songs which has more than a billion streams yeah streams I mean not even YouTube music Spotify streams more than billion streams and if you actually uh get a credit on all those songs uh then you will be one of of the most heard artists in the world yeah okay your songs are so popular and they are being streamed every day but none of the songs you have a credit yeah and in fact on YouTube I went to all the songs yeah it doesn't mention anything apart fr

om the name of the artist yeah like in India we have a culture that we mention everybody's name especially on YouTube it's everything who's edited who's the manager composer producer the one who played the guitar you know we credit everyone on the YouTube and obviously YouTube on the main credit there are only two or three people yeah but apart from singer the composer and The Lyricist have also started getting the credit earlier they didn't used to get credit then the composer started getting t

he credit now on Spotify as well you always generally have uh composer and Lyricist as the main artist wow so if you open your Spotify app and you name any composer or Lyricist in the country you will see that they have 10 million listen monthly listeners 20 million monthly listeners or 5 million monthly listeners because they they tagged as the main artists uh on that and I was actually shocked and surprised we thought we were always thinking of uh the Western Market to be more fair to the arti

st composer writers uh because we always knew about the royalty because that's that's definitely they are fair in that way yeah the composer owns the rights and stuff like that also maybe the market is so big because the Indian market including publishing and master of all contests released in India is about I think $400 millionar half a billion dollar at the max wow uh but whereas the American uh the Western Market is huge yeah and that's where we draw the comparison and we think about but I re

alize after listening to you and of seeing these things that in terms of treatment of artist you know our Market is fair compared to the West yeah I would say in that in that sense it's definitely fair like if I when I go back and I start telling people that about like the artist because I don't even consider my I don't even know who made my artist because I I don't the way you're conditioned in American Business is you're not the artist you're the songwriter the artist is the person who sings t

he song those things are very separate they get their they can do live shows they get their own artist stream because they're the stars because it's a celebrity culture so it's um so you know the 40-some year old songwriter writing words and Melodies to an Ariana Grande song the public doesn't want to see that they want to see Ariana Grande and they want to believe um they want the artists to be the front of of it because it's such a youth culture celebrity culture um thing that runs that drives

pop music there popular music um and I think in film and I wonder if it's because it's film music so much here so the like a lot of Americans will know for example who John Williams is who does like the Steven Spielberg scores and a lot of the massive classic movie scores in the west um they know a lot of people understand who John Williams is but with pop songw writing the average person may will not know who unless they're a fan and they look you know unless they're a music person like like t

he people in this podcast are interested in music then they'll look who wrote songs true but historically it's not see it's not in the interest of the American music business to put the songwriter up front because the artists they own the artist rights they want to make live shows with the artist they want to do brand stuff with the artist and if if the songwriters are part of that it it doesn't it's not the same thing they can market right I think because we don't get money as composers and lyr

icists we don't own the rights at all you know in the films not at all yeah uh in the independent space now people own the rights yeah and even if you own the rights uh you know the the numbers are so low in India still maybe that's why we are being compensated by giving the yeah CU they get artist royalties as well yes but the royalties are very small okay they understand the whole Market is small yeah no understood that's what I'm learning so far because we we hear stories like somebody body w

rote four songs in their life and they bought an island yeah uh I mean there's no story like that in India no there are there are artist there are composers who have composed 100 super hit tracks and they got nothing because uh you know they got they got get nothing from The Producers now they get nothing from the royalties as well in fact jav akar one of the uh most successful legendary Lyricist of this country uh he and uh other people fought and uh after 2012 there was an amendment passed ear

lier uh they didn't even used to have the artist share wow so when a composer used to write for films yeah uh entire publishing copyright everything was owned by the producers and then the labels yeah and eventually that came in 2012 an amendment that now the artist share can't be bought so and that includes the songwriter share right yeah the songwriter share that's the artist share s I mean when we say artist share I'm meaning the songwriter share got it got it so now I iprs represents the uh

Publishers and the composers and The Lyricist so whatever money they collect 50% goes to the Publishers which is which are primarily the labels they work as a publisher as well and now the composers and lers have started getting some money which is obviously growing but uh it's way far ahead or different but they still don't own the content yes see that's one of the things that I I've been learning while I've been here because this trip for me has been an educational trip because um we can go in

we'll go into that I'm sure in a minute but um it does seem that more writers need to be a part of the iprs I think from what I understanding there's around 10,000 writers about 13,000 13,000 in a country like Sweden which is like only 8 million people maybe 9 million people there's a 100,000 in the Swedish with in Sweden it's called stim so in a tiny country like that there's 100,000 people signed up for their iprs here it's only 13,000 so I think what will happen will need to happen is more w

riters need to be aware that they have to sign up for the iprs they have to be a part of that because then they have iprs will then have more leverage to to demand higher rates and demand that songwriters get paid um because what would we where I think again I'm I've been here a week and I'm just been meeting all the the sort of players you know I I I'm a True Believer that India has so much musicality and Melody and musical gifts to offer to the world that haven't been utilized for so long and

it and until there's a structure business-wise where songwriters can Thrive um the people that create the music can really Thrive the world is going to not be able to to touch the music here and and the people who have all these gifts here won't be able to spread it to the World um and they won't have the confidence to do that because they're not used to getting paid um because to be an artist to be a writer to do these things is a risk to take right every time you create something and you want

to put it out to the world it's a risk it's there's a bravery to being an artist and if there's no example of that there's any type of reward because we all live in the real world there has to be some monetary reward so you can earn a living you could feed your family if there's no evidence of that how how are we going to encourage people to take that risk so what I'm hoping is that we can all encourage writers to join the iprs we can all encourage writers to know what their rights are to unders

tand that if you take that risk if we can all take that risk then we'll be able to build an industry everyone here that that where Indian music can spread around the world said and I think I think this is a must uh in fact iprs is also trying the level best to do that yeah cuz I was I would say this about the music business you know I don't know the history of the music business in India when it really became a business but I would say in America the music business because it wasn't attached to

film was founded by right it was founded by people going hey black musician on stage do you want this you want a car like this well sign this contract and I'll make sure I'll give you a car and creators we just want to create we just want people to to hear what we do we just want this whole in us that we're you know cuz all creators are little they have a hole in them that they need to fill by creating and getting validation right so they just want to create they don't care about the other stuff

they just want to create and and what I say foundation of the music business is to take rights from artists for little reward to the artist that's the foundation that's how it was founded and the opportunity in India is because because non-film music is very sort of still fresh right and new we have an opportunity to build it fair to the artists to build it fair for the creators of the actual music because without the creators of the music you don't have anything nothing is there what's there y

ou know so just just being greedy on behalf of all the artists are you planning to do something in India yeah I'm I'm learning uh my my intention right now is to understand and to encourage the artists and the songwriters and whatever I can do to educate because I you know my whole life and I can go I can tell you a story if you want sure sure we love stories um a country of stories so you know I was raised in a very traditional GTI family and very good very GTI Community the cliche thing of you

hear about Second Generation and cliche thing my parents wanted me to do good in school be a doctor be a lawyer there was no other option when I was 15 years old I found music found writing songs and I would write songs and everybody would go to bed at night I would take my sister's old keyboard and I would I would just play chords and I would write songs I didn't even know what I was doing I was actually too lazy to learn other people's songs so I would just write my own Melodies and I would d

o this every time everyone went to bed and it became like an obsession right something happened something clicked in me and one day I was watching the show Full House and there was a character named Uncle Jesse in Full House and he had a studio so ID watched Full House and I'd be like H that's kind of what I'm doing so that's what that's what that is so I started reading about music and Music Creation and and in and in school I got into choir so I was there was some you know at the time in Ameri

ca there was these big acts called Boys to Men like vocal Harmony groups um that were having big hits and we were big fans of boys and men so me and three friends were like well we should Haron we would be in the bathroom like harmonizing and you know doing Boys to Men songs and I would be like well I have some songs I wrote do you want to you know sing so we started singing my songs that I wrote and we started getting a little bit popular in my high school and now my parents started figuring ou

t that I was cuz my grades were getting really bad because what I was doing is I was skipping class and I was going to the choir room and I would just be on the piano and every lunchtime people would surr me and I'd be on the piano singing new songs that I wrote I started like oh maybe I should do something with this so I went to the I went and started reading books about the music business I didn't really know much about the music business but I found a book that had addresses of all the music

publishing companies and record labels so I was like oh my gosh I'm going to do something so I I'm going to get a record deal I'm going to get a record deal for me and my group so I spent all my money on blank cassettes and envelopes and stamps and every day I I would try and record a demo so I'd fresh record on the tape deck I'd play something on the Yamaha Keyboard I would steal my sister's tape deck from her room and I'd put the tape in there push play and I'd push record on and that's how I'

d make my demos I would just send random I didn't even know who these companies were random addresses so one day I get a call I'm 17 years old and I get a call from a guy I I'm getting ready for school 7:30 in the morning I pick up the phone the home phone nobody's home everyone my parents went to work everyone's there and this guy goes hey this is uh Dave mcferson from Jive Records is Savin kataka there I like yeah this is svin he's like hey man listen I don't know how your shitty demo got on m

y desk my assistant must have put it there but there's actually a song on here that's pretty good I was like oh yeah he goes what is this did you write it and I was like yeah he goes by yourself and I was like yeah he's like how old are you I was like I'm 17 so can you publish I was like no but I'm trying to you know I don't know what publish is but I want to get a record deal from me I have a vocal Harmony group and went got a record deal he's like listen kid I just signed this band out of Flor

ida called Backstreet Boys and I and if you're not published I'd really love to take the song and have them record it I was like you know listen sir I mean I want to get a record deal for my band like is there any way we could talk about that he was like well is it you singing on the tape I said yeah he goes well you're not the greatest singer he goes That's not the big problem because I want to be honest with you I'm a black American so I'm saying this with utmost respect just to be real with y

ou I could tell by your name you're a different ethnicity said yeah I'm Indian he goes listen kid no girl in Wisconsin is going to put an Indian guy on her wall you should just be a songwriter change my life from then on I was like why guess that's not an option for me because I'm Indian and I went through living that way you know waiting for a time when the world in the west would be ready for for for my culture for people that look like me to make music for them right in my whole career I was

the only Brown guy in the room you know my whole career once in a while you'll see it we talked about it once in a while to be a music executive in the UK that you know that would it' be like a connection there like oh you know like you know my whole career the back of my my head I always said one day that's going to happen and then I go through my life I go through career I've been so lucky had so much succcess and you know around 2019 at the height of My Success I mean it was amazing I was lik

e you know all my dreams as a songwriter came true and I had wife and kids and crazy amounts of money coming in I could get access to any artist every award show I was going all that all the things that you think of I was miserable I went through my days faking being happy everything I thought that I could that would fulfill me didn't fulfill me at all I found myself in a really bad depression I mean I was it was dark I I found myself in I was I had an exit plan I Was preparing finances like so

it would be easier for my wife and kids so they wouldn't have complicated royalty streams I sold a catalog I did all these things to simplify everything because I was going to be out of here I was going to be gone I had a date and I had I knew exactly that's how far it went and luckily an artist friend of mine caught caught me an artist I won't say who it is cuz it's just for her privacy a big star said spoke to me on the phone one day you okay I think K tell something is off I was like I just f

eel numb I just for some reason that moment I opened up she's like hold on one second I'm going to call you back she called me back and said call this number this is my therapist you you need to talk to someone luckily this one person caught me at this moment and and open endless therapy helped me and everything came out and I was keeping everything inside I my wife didn't know nobody knew I had good friends you know cuz I would be like what happened was you know through my upbringing because it

was really difficult it was hard to be the Indian guy in in the room it was hard to be like the black sheep of the Indian Community you know like when I was growing up after all my friends went to college and I was like trying to make it you know my mother was so sad you know there was so much sadness that I wasn't like all the other kids you know so I lived with that guilt and and um I couldn't go to the grocery store without some Auntie stopping me that would see me and be like what are you d

oing with your life or a cousin calling me you know all those things so when I finally got a chance to to make it I just ran and I was like okay okay okay and if this happens it'll be happening this happen you know and when I got to the top I looked back and I was like I'm miserable because achievement and self-worth sort of got tied together this is the second generation problem as well because unintentionally my parents put achievement and self-worth right they put their hopes and their standi

ng in the community was based on what their children did so going into music and the reason why they felt that way is because there was no representation they couldn't look at another Indian in the West in the music business and say oh okay he did it so yeah do what he's doing I was the only one right so my my mission in life after I recovered from the depression I took two and a half years off and I realized what do I have to do what I have to do is make sure that I'm never going to be the only

Brown the next me will never be the only Brown kid in the room that there's look at the culture we come from look at the gifts of sound and instruments and Melody that the culture we come from has to offer to the world I'm never going to whitewash where I come from there there's an opportunity now and where I sit There's an opportunity to lift everything up and to open the floodgates and it's time now you know when when we talking I was so engrossed in what you were saying you actually lived a

Indian life in the west yeah because uh there are thousands of kids who have the same life and the same problem and it doesn't matter how talented you are or what you want to achieve in life you're always uh waiting for the parents validation yeah and that's the most important thing and sometime gets into your head yeah so even when you achieve and be on the top of your you know life and career you sometimes still miss those validations and it you know kicks back and I I think that's the reason

because there can't be any other reason for you being depressed yeah you know no it's it's that's the thing it's you look and and and I learned you know it was wonderful and I wonder if people can relate to this you know I learned to have empathy for my parents and why they felt the way they felt you know you know my mom they went from Uganda she wanted to they got kicked out of Uganda probably never dealt with that trauma she wanted to live with her family in London because of the culture my da

d was like no we're going to America I want and you have to follow your husband to America you know arrang marriage back then right so nothing was what she wanted so even though I'm successful and I own I bought her homes and cars and all these kind of things still not it's still not the way she wanted it and that you have to you have to just say Okay I accept this is not what you wanted and put it there and not let it affect me do do you know what I mean I understand okay the one all these othe

r things in your life were not how you wanted you know my father who's a great guy now but when I was a child was an alcoholic and all the things you know she was thinking okay but when my kids are adults then that will be how I want it true you know and I had to come to terms with with all of those those things you know but once I did it made everything wonderful and made everything easier um but it was um it was a hard two and a half years I didn't know if I wanted to do music again I really g

enuinely didn't and um but it's been wonderful now to to see life in a different through a different lens and to have purpose doing something out of the box I think everybody faces this problem yeah you don't get the validation until and unless you achieve a lot yeah because uh you know you you don't have a set example as you said and because you are that example yeah now because you are successful and you made a life for yourself uh any other Brown kid in the US if he or she is wanting to do so

ngw writing they at least have one example that listen that guy me you didn't have that example you know but uh I I had to ask you uh you were in a depression for like about 2 2 and a half years are you comfortable talking about that yeah most people finds it difficult to believe that an artist who has money he can't count who has Fame who has followers people people want to be like him people want to be spend time spending time with him want to have dinners with them uh how do they get into dep

ression and uh if they do what is the best way to deal with with it and get out of it I can tell you for me and also being around big big stars who have had depression it's interesting I bonded with a lot of my like artist friends because of it um is that you know first of all talking about it and destigmatizing it is really important I think especially in our culture to be able to say hey I went through this is so important talking about it is the first thing you know just that takes a weight o

ff to be able to say and not feel judged um because it is hard it's hard for people to understand sometimes because you know during that time like I had one of my best friends right he didn't know I was depressed but he would say to me like you know because everything was everything was working and I I remember I did this Mo I was a part of the this movie called this uh EUR Vision no no this was before EUR Vision I was a part of this movie Charlie's Angels right I did the music for it and we had

big stars singing the songs and it didn't work the music didn't work and it went the the first song went to only number 15 right and I was I was just like because again selfworth and achievement got tied together so I felt I let everyone down I didn't understand why my children wanted to hug me because it didn't wasn't a big hit you know these things that just it somehow got tied together and he said to me what are you doing why are you so miserable you know I I would love to have something tha

t goes 15 you know and that made me and he doesn't know this he didn't know this at the time we spoke about after it he didn't say that for anym but for me it was I started feeling even worse because I was like what a shitty person I am to not you know because when you're in a depression everything every lens you look through is dark right no and when this happened how old was I think my it was Pro this was 2018 so 5 years ago okay so yeah six and three then so you're six-year-old kid told you t

his no my six-year-old was trying to hug my my my friend told me my friend was like why I I would kill for something that's top 15 what are you talking about and I was like yeah but it just flopped he's like are you crazy and for me at the time like I said when you're depressed and I think a lot of people have gone through this especially sort of high achieving people in their field it makes you feel worse that it's a it's a vicious cycle because you're depressed and then people will say to you

why are you depressed you have all of this and that makes you get more depressed because I'm so horrible a person and unappreciative and ungrateful that I can't be happy for what I have right and what I've learned to accept and again being around big stars and high achieving Executives and all these kind of things is that especially in Creative what drives people to be the big star and what what gives us the inspiration and the creativity is unfortunately it's another vicious cycle it's unfortun

ately the holes that we feel and the things that we're missing drive us to create the feel the need to express ourselves in whatever art form we are in what drives us to that and to work and to to struggle go beyond what the average person does what strives us to do that is the same thing that is the same holes that we're trying to fill and it's something I think about a lot can you be the elite of C something something without having that desperation to F to fill that void in you because you're

feeling that void so desperately more than anyone else's because you have the void so so many that's why you see so many big artists so many big sele they'll get depressed because they're chasing this thing and when people say oh it's easy to say money isn't everything until you have money well you don't know it's not everything until you have money true you don't know that success isn't everything until you have success you're chasing this thing and then when you get there that's the only time

you learn the lesson and what I pray is that most people that everyone learns the lesson before they get to that that's why I think it's important to talk about that people have gone through it should talk about it because I was so lucky I was two months away from my plan being fulfilled you know like like exiting the whole thing exiting the whole thing um but I feel like at least that's my theory is that creatives we we're trying to fulfill artists that are driven to be famous and they're driv

en to have because when when you're driving yourself to be famous for example you're trying you want validation from people why do you want validation from people because you're missing something whether it's something in your childhood you know for me it was acceptance right from my parents or my community I felt different because I was creative I you know and and we all feel we everyone has their own reasons for striving for that success that you know any I'm sure you you know you manage so ma

ny artists you must see that yourself that there's always a a void they're trying to fill which is what pushes the elite to be the elite true and it's a chicken in the egg thing right true can you be elite yeah can you be elite without having that hole to fulfill I don't know I envy those that are able to just find that balance you know to I have friends that are like that they just they're just happy they don't have to be the biggest riter in the world or they have the most hits they can have o

ne and be happy even coming back after two and a half years there was um there were times where you know all my friends and my industry friends that knew what was going on and artists that I worked with were like super supportive but they knew there might be a time he might not come back you know and then after a while friends were like hey do you want to I'm with this artist you want to come in you want to do it and I told my wife at one point I was like I think I'm ready because I thought I wa

s going to sell films I started selling films in America and TV shows and things that are in development still I love doing that that was like a hobby you know to develop films and I told my wife though I think I want to try again you know and some days were great you know I remember going in with lizo and it was great and then I remember a few months later I went to LA and I flew doing the Grammy Awards you know it used to be for like 10 years I would go to Grammy parties and I was one of the o

nes everybody was kissing their you know I was like because I was one of the biggest songwriters in the world and I went to this Grammy party after two or three years not being see not seeing all the executives and the new man all the managers and the artists and I was like hey man I was like hey and I went back to my hotel and I was I fell in a anxi I had an anxiety attack so I was like oh my career is over they didn't even care I was gone you know what I mean and I remember no even cared all t

hese execu and again I fell in the dark you know but then I at least from my depression and years in therapy I was given tools a toolbox right a toolbox to like to get out of it to I I had my panic attack and then I remembered oh I've got this bag of tools here perspective turn the cup to the other side see the other perspective and look at what's important and all these things that you've learned don't fall back to where you were and I was able to pull myself out I spoke about it the next day I

spoke to one of my good friends about it and before I wouldn't have spoken to anyone about it I would have just lived with it in my head you know so it was a it was I considered the depression a blessing you know because another part of that time was when I when I felt better from my depression my wife got cancer so she went through cancer for a year and a half two years so during covid so also my kids couldn't be in the same room with her in chemotherapy CU they had to go to school you know wh

at I mean we couldn't I mean she didn't go through radiation thankfully she went through chemo and it worked but it was a long recovery and um and I look at that time and and I go well because of my depression I see it as the universe had to put me through that so I could have the tools to get my family through the other thing right is she is she fine now she's fine now and doing wonderful and all that when I was doing your research yesterday I want to seek apologies because because I'm not a gu

y who's listened to uh English songs during the childhood yeah so for me you know every name every song is like a a new thing and I mean I'm exposed to the English music very later on in my life and um I I listen to a very few songs but your story is so unique you know right from your childhood then you talk about Jive Records then U I heard that uh you were trying to get in touch with baby face yeah uh yeah when I was yeah when I was a teenager baby face who many people don't know in the 90s he

was an artist but he was also the biggest songwriter in the 90s like so many big songs all my favorite songs growing up were baby face and um he I read in the gossip column in our local P Paper in Austin Texas that him and his family were vacationing or seen vac it might not even been true it was just the gossip column they were seing vacationing in a place called Lake Travis which in Austin Texas is like the lake where people you know vacation sometimes so I was like oh my gosh I'm going to go

find baby face so this is pre- internet so I wrote a a letter that night a really passionate letter to baby face I printed 140 copies of it or something like that and I made hundred something tapes of my copies of my demo tape so mind you this was tape to tape so you have to wait for the tape to finish so I spent the whole night making demo tape like copies of my demo tape and I and while the tapes were being made I was highlighting in the phone book I was looking for all the um rental condos a

round Lake Travis and I would like highlight them and I called three friends look guys I need your help I need your help I just I told them like baby faces down and they knew they knew what that meant to me they're like okay yeah I was like I need I need you guys to come with me we going to have to knock I got all the addresses around Lake Travis we have to knock on all the doors so at 6:00 in the morning I drove and I picked up three friends we went down to Lake Travis and they helped me knock

on every single door we could get to and whatever door didn't have someone answering we left the demo tape and for months I would get people calling me like hi I got your demo tape like I don't listen to pop music but I'm sure I'll give this a listen you know like I don't know who this baby face guy is it was funny and like obviously I didn't me but years later a record executive in America who was once baby Face's partner told baby face the story and I always like when I got success I sort of a

voided baby face cuz I was like o I don't want to like you know and and so he this guy told baby face the story so I met I met him one time and he was like I heard heard a lot about you and then one day when it felt we we the right project we actually it's coming out in a film that that I'm a part of um on Amazon in March yeah in March it's coming out but we we wrote a song um we finally wrote together and I took a photo of him I took a photo of him in in our studio and I sent it to my three fri

ends who I'm still friends with I was like look he got my letter 20 years later and um after that you you went to London for studies right no I didn't go to I went I've lived in lond a little bit just to um so I went when I signed my first publishing deal I was with BMG with BMG when I was like I think I was 19 almost 20 and you got two years from your father to prove my dad out of high school my dad was like look cuz they knew they like you're not getting in any college because your grades are

too he look you're going to if you take Community College classes I'll let you have two years and you can try and do music at the if you can figure it out then I'll I'll give you two years to figure out where you can live at our we could live at home rentree basically um and right at the edge that's not something which is common in India yeah listen once I made my first six figure check I got a bill from my dad he sent he sent me an invoice saying this is how much money you owe me for those year

s so um they were rough on me but but luckily I got those two years and at the end of those two years I got the BMG deal thankfully I was still sending out demos and things like that and I got really lucky and um they sent me to Sweden so I never met other songwriter but during that time backy Boys in sync and Berney Spears were happening it was a Swedish team that was doing that and they were like just go to Sweden because even though I wasn't working with that team at the time they were just l

ike anyone in Sweden Sweden is the hot place for pop music so they would send me to Sweden then Sweden's a two-hour flight from London where all my my MOSI and masas and fuas and fo are there so I I would just go to London and so I was back and forth a lot and and I thought I would study in London um I was like maybe I should study and I maybe I should good go college but something kept telling me no no no you're going to do this you're going to make it and when I was around I think 19 or 20 aro

und that year the year after I was in London and the BMG person said you know what you should meet the BMG office and at BMG in the BMG office there's a record executive a really he's starting to get really big as a record executive his name is Simon cow you should go meet him so I go there and I and I go to Simon cow's office and do you know who Simon C is yes um yeah everybody watches Got Talent and okay there you go um so Simon this is before any of the TV shows or anything I walk into his of

fice and everyone seems like afraid of him and I'm not I I'm naive I don't know what the heck's going on so when I tell Simon the story all the time we we laugh about it but when I go into his office there's just a cloud of smoke and he's like smoking a cigarette and he's like writing something and he looks up at me he doesn't say anything he's right something and he finishes up and he stands up and he's got short shorts on it was really strange and he goes hello saon you know and from that mome

nt my life changed because he became an angel on my shoulder for most of my career you know he um you know after that moment he he liked a lot of my songs he didn't take any of those songs but he was telling me that I've got these boy bands a band called Westlife and a band called five and you know send me songs for them and eventually through some producers in Sweden that were already working with him I landed a song on West life and then eventually he started I started talking to him and his e

xecutive and they were like always believed in me they always were like so kind and then they gave me a chance they would send their biggest bands to me when I was a new writer um and they would cut my songs and I would have hits with them and it just be formed this beautiful relationship which changed the course of my life and in 2010 um Simon called me and he said you know look you know savan I want you to do the new season of xfactor with me and I was like oh Simon you know I just started hav

ing hits in America now with Usher with DJ goong love and Britney Spears and I just had two big UK number ones that year I was look I love you man but I just I don't know if I want to do a TV show he's like savan trust me come to the auditions so I would go fly to the auditions and you know help out with those you know the first rounds before it's televis you know those auditions and let's meet people and I and I already knew his team and I loved everyone they were friends of mine but I was like

Simon I don't know he savan just spend 30 minutes fly to London I'm flying you to London spend 30 minutes with each of the contestants that will be shown on TV trust me I I have a feeling you're going to want to do this so I go to London I'm like I'm not going to do anything I'll just do this to humor Simon I owe him so much I'm going to do it see contestant contestant contestant contestant they're nice kids contestant contestant in walks Five Guys who I recognized from the audition thing when

and they were solo artists and walks five boys and the difference is with these five boys when they walked in the energy shifted in the room do you know what I mean by that when you're a presence of yes they were just little teenage kids and but I noticed that when these five kids walked in all the women who worked in the office walked in as well nobody cared to be around the other 30 minutes but when these boys walked in all the women followed them in and just stood against the wall were just l

ike smiling and giggling I was like this is different and I'm at One Direction and um I I I met them and I met an artist named Sher Lloyd who was another one on that season and I told Simon I'm in I'm gonna I want to do it I want to do it with you so I did xfactor and I and um we developed One Direction off of the show and this artist Sher Lloyd who was also great and we had some success with her I was put in charge of Sher and you know I was a I became a consultant for Simon's label for those t

hose years and helped steer One Direction um and you know one day you know and by then I'd had you know a number of hits and I was quite successful but one day I'm in London in a hotel and my wife who I just married um the year before you know she was on the other side of the wall and she was just getting doing her hair you know it's like oh I feel so ugly I said I'm on I'm in the bathroom and I'm like no baby you're beautiful you don't know you're beautiful it's like I wrote that down it's like

oh you're you're beautiful and that's what makes you beautiful I wrote that in my phone and I was going to go to the studio that day because the guy the One Direction was like when are you going to start on our record you know and I had had two friends of mine from Sweden who have had a lot of success with in the past I said what there's this boy band from the show can you do it with me I need I needed producers and songwriters with me so they came to London and I came in studio and I had this

title so we're were trying to crack the songs the song and that was what makes you beautiful and the most iconic songs and it changed my life I wrote that about my wife um the moment I met my wife wow so you know you it feels like you had many lives in one you know you had an initial uh career with BMG then this One Direction I think in the third album when they had the world you had a newborn uh BBE that's the time you had to come back to LA yeah so we I was living two year for about three or 4

years I was living every two weeks La in Sweden except for the time I did xfactor and then we did xfactor in America I did the first season and consulted for the SE second season and then I would be in America for three months but I was back and forth so you know when my wife got pregnant and One Direction had exploded and all my Swedish collaborators they want they were moved T already I my wife we have to move to America I'm really sorry and she was you know in the middle of her studies um wh

ich were really important to her and she sacrificed that for for me to to come to America so we could be a family and I wouldn't be like absentee father um and yeah and I had my second I had my first child and then three years later I had a second child but um but yeah it was an amazing looking back obviously at the time it was stressful and all the stuff but looking back it was an amazing time to be a part of something that becomes that much of a phenomenon from day one um and to see how that g

rew and built it's something I'm one of the things I'm most proud of of my career um to be to have helped Shepherd that that act and project and then also seeing what the boys are doing now as solo artists especially Harry um it's incredible it's it's like it's the most amazing thing to to to have been a part of that story and then when you moved to LA I think your new Journey started again yeah that was sort of like the third chapter of my career and the most successful one I would say of suces

s you know um when I talk about sort of angels on my shoulder my second shoulder I had another Angel you know who slowly became an angel on my shoulder which is one of my good friends Max Martin who's probably the greatest pop producer I think after I mean Paul McCartney John linen and Max Martin are the biggest songwriters the biggest songwriters ever in the history of music and he just tied John Lennon with the most number ones he's number two tied at number two with John Lennon for the most n

umber one songs in America ever um you know in my Sweden days obviously he was an icon um and eventually I worked my way up through the Swedish scene and he would call me in you know once a while to to to help write like to help with some songs and sometimes with lyrics cuz I was American and you know and um kind of took me under his wing for the most part and I would always come to him more just like I became I had access to this great gift of a talent and good guy and he was always willing to

help you know listen to things and maybe you should change this he's a really good gift of of knowing what to fix on a song you know and I learned a lot through those years and when I got to America yeah they he wanted to start a camp you know cuz he always came from sort of a camp culture of just a group of writers and producers in the same house and we all collaborate and help with each other said will you be a part of this thing with me and and and yeah that became the new phase of my career

luckily was in LA five minute drive from my house you know when when One Direction sort of finished for me like when they wanted to sort of grow for me which at the time was hard cuz I was like oh no what are you doing we were you know but they wanted their own voice and they didn't want me to be their voice you know which is understandable with artists eventually um I didn't know what I was going to do I was like gosh I lost this I was really sad I was like I'm not working with this band or lik

e my little brothers anymore um and I was looking for artists I was in a bad writer block and I was looking to see what to do next because everyone you know after Wonder everyone was throwing all their problem artists at me you know that oh we can't sort this out or this person has the rain maker yeah you become you know which was a great position to be in um but I had such bad writers block for like 6 months I didn't know I was like I just couldn't write anything good you know and then the guys

I wrote What Makes You Beautiful they were in LA and they called me and they said hey we're working with Dave agu I why don't you come in and help us Rite something and in that session they play they were playing like a chord progression and I went behind the mic and the song One Last Time came out uh um and a few months after that you know David didn't want feel it was right for his album so it was just like the song I was like but this is such a great song What do we do with it and an anr per

son at Republic records in America named Wendy Goldstein came over to my house for meeting I was actually introducing to her to a new writer producer that I met that I was signing for people who don't know Republic record is the most successful music label in the world right now abely and Wendy who was an anr executive at that she's currently the number two in public records president yeah she's amazing a great person and um and again another person that helped change my life this meeting change

d my life you know she goes you know I was there I was like look and a bunch of sweds are coming as well where you know with Max she's like well I've got this project Ariana Grande do you know her you know I was like yeah I know who she is you know cuz I was friends with people that were on her show you know so on the show that she was on Victorious I was was friends with Victoria Justice and aan Yogi a gdti guy um and so I I I knew of Ariana I knew she just had a sort of a hit and they were try

ing to figure out what to do next and I was like well that sounds like something I would do I should meet her so we meet in a studio me her and Wendy and I play her one last time and she loves it she's like this is it and I had the idea of what became the song problem I had problem in my head like I knew like theoretically what it was I got one less problem with that I had that I had some of diverse Melody and I knew how it should sound and I told her about it and she was like yeah I love that I

love that idea and so we booked two weeks some of the guys from Sweden came and I told everyone what we need to do and and that album exploded and a whole new phase of my career um took off and from Ariana it attracted the weekend which attracted like Ellie ging and then we had hits with Demi Lovato again you know there was just like it was an amazing time but it was also a time where I was working non-stop you know um and not having time for the kids always on the phone and it was such a bless

ing though because the universe God you know none of creativity is I always say it's like ideas are here they all float around us and if you can be a vessel for an idea what a blessing that is right but it's not yours it's something that's given to you and during that period of time the god the universe was giving them to me you know some of the biggest songs of my career just in the middle of the night Boop in my head and I would wake up and I would have the melody and a chorus in my head or I'

d be in the shower and then like you know Santa tell me this big Christmas song that we have like Pops in my head like a Divine energy with just yeah and I don't know what was going on with with me in the universe but I was being blessed with all these I was fully aware it wasn't me I was fully aware they're not mine that it's being given to me and there was a period of like eight years where it was like every few days it was like boop boop boop boop and I had amazing collaborators and I had Max

and you know people like Ilia who is one of my main collaborators just you know elevating every idea I had and helping shape it and make it like great or one of them would have an idea and I had you know a way to make it great and and that's what we did we were a collective of people that just fed off of each other um and it was an amazing time you know um yeah it was it was looking back you know post depression everything was amazing to to have the universe just give you those gifts and Tools

around you you know I think I think uh it all looks like for me a Destiny for you to come to India explore the opportunity and you know get this Mission uh if nothing of that would have happened maybe uh this Mission would not have got the priority no you know it's to that point of why do things happen I think I think all of that happened all that success happened the depression happened the cancer happened everything put everything in perspective and pushed me towards something else so and and

it pushed me that little voice inside of me since I was 17 years old that said no Brown guy is going to be on the wall of a you know American Girl that little voice that kept chewing at me and gwing at me everything led me to here you know into this moment where my it's a mission to help Indian artists get onto the world stage to help Indian songwriters go onto the world stage to bring collaborations whatever needs to be done um to bring opportunity and also there's a way to do like we said in t

he beginning there's a way that the West does things in s as far as the music business that the good stuff we can take from that and build a music B build a non-film music business here in the right way in a way that's takes care of the creators that takes care of the artists that also is done with the right intentions money all of those things come with success after things are great but intention is important to have to have a long long running business you have to have good intention at the c

ore and the foundation of it um and I think it's important that as a collective community that we do that Amen to that I'm sure that's going to uh happen in fact um you know like from the industry even if we have a billboard in New York like Spotify does a activity where they try to put a billboard in uh the Time Square with Indian artists helping them promote you know that's kind of a celebration for us yeah you know what you have done you make it sound so easy and comfortable but the kind of s

ongs you have done the kind of artist you worked with the number of hits you have uh I don't think not any too many people in India is aware about these things also more specifically because you are not really very active on social media uh you haven't done too much of PR around this and the culture which you said where artists have made the celebrity and you know songwriters are kind of hidden in the whole ecosystem I'm 100% sure when people listen to this story and they realize what you have d

one especially people who are watching this podcast from India they'll actually get to know more uh I mean I I don't want to get take an estimate but the kind of content you own uh the copyrights you own might be making you millions of dollars already and their worth might be much much more uh forever right yeah but you still feel that uh vo you still felt that void you still felt that discomfort that uh you know need for validation and I'm happy that finally you got out of it since we are you k

now very number related economy number driven economy would it be comfortable for you to share that what is the maximum royalty you made from a song in your lifetime till now like any one song gosh I've never calculate to be honest I've never calculated like one song what that's earned in its life but I will say that if you in the West if you have a big hit song I'm obviously you split it with your co-writers but if you have a big hit song you're looking at you know $23 million if you have a meg

a mega smash you're looking at5 $6 million um off of that song this lifetime royalty yeah lifetime relative but continue if you have a big one you continuously will see you know you know I know some of my bigger songs from the past that are still relevant today they still earn like quite not you know they'll still earn like you know 70 800,000 a year consistently that one song yeah and then if someone uses it in a TV show all of a sudden the syn and the syn that's can be another and sometimes it

's the songs you least expect you know like I have a song called confident with Demi Lovato that when it came out it wasn't even that big a hit it was like a top 10 radio hit cuz in America you care about if you're a songwriter you care about radio cuz that's where you make your money but but that song has been synced in so many commercials and so many like background of TV shows and TV Promos in in America became like one of the standard things to sync and we were like wow we didn't think that

song of all songs would be the one that makes so much money and then randomly you'll get you know bang bang my song with Ariana and Jesse J will get a huge snc in Korea for a phone company you know just random things like that and that's what I want I think they want to encourage songwriters here to build and the publishing industry here can build is that when that stuff happens it's not just a big song that spreads around the world it's a big song will stay a big song will stay around the world

and of course like I've sold catalog a lot of my catalog during my depression days and when I've been when I've realized okay this is they're overpaying and it's a business decision and some people don't believe in selling their catalog and it's just everyone has their own their own sort of ort of theory on that but I believe writers should have the choice they should be given the choice to collect and own their copyrights and then decide what they want to do with them um and if we can create a

n industry here where people do that then it's not only that the music will spread if you can if we create an industry where there are active Publishers that know how to not just when the song was released but know how to take the song internationally and Pitch it for TV shows and commercials and other usages of the song It's a whole another world for the songwriters and creators and it adds a whole another value to the copyright but not only that but to the culture behind the song fantastic and

uh my last question on the numbers and revenue so for example if if a song has made $100,000 uh in a year uh what would be it's approximately catalog valuation it depend nowadays people are buying things if it's a hit and it if it feels like it's going to be a hit you're making more than 100,000 but like usually like sometimes it could be 12 to 15 times of of the last yeah um sometimes it's 15 to 20 if it's a huge catalog if it's an important catalog like I've sold things but that's a great thi

ng about the West that even if you're not getting money for writing the song uh even if you're not getting the credit credits or you know not too many people annoying about it the royalty and the ownership of copyrights and it's monetized really well and it can actually one song Can Survive you for life oh yeah there's many people that are living off of that one hit they had in the 1980s you know and they kept on it or they sold it and they bought and they invested that money that made so it's t

hat part of the way the West does it because they've created a business around copyrights and it's and it's valuable it has value um so yeah I think that's super super important to express here you know um that those things can really really have value so what do we speaking just now I mean let's get it on the camera so love me like you do so oh you want me to tell the story again yes oh so yeah I was saying that what's funny and I I forget myself to love me like you do was attached to the film

50 Shades of Gray and sort of Facebook was my my sister I think it's my mom had gotten on Facebook around that time for the first time and my sister had posted you know that my brother's new song is in this fil is in 50 Shades of Gray and know my parents like so they Pro they don't go to movies they don't go out to dinner that's it's not that kind of marriage so they probably hadn't seen a movie together them two alone like in a movie theater ever but my mom's on Facebook and she's one of those

moments where she wants to like understand what I'm doing so she goes oh we should go see this movie to my dad and and you know my parents my mom was super conservative about things like if there was kissing on TV when we were kids like watching Beverly Hills 90210 she would change the channel like you know when I was 17 and the neighbor came cuz she was locked out of her house and while we were wait she was waiting for her parents after school like we were sitting on the sofa together and my mo

m got so angry that I was sitting with a girl alone she slapped me across the face you know very like so of course my mom and my dad before I could stop it before I knew they went to go see 50 Shades of Gray together and it was not a very fun phone call after and and it was a remind me of when when I wrote when we had this song uh me and Max and shelc had this song If you see Amy um that was recorded by Bry Spears and the whole joke of the song was it's if you see K me but called it if you see K

me and and it was like a funny lyric you know to try and get away with saying that on American radio and obvious became a big controvers in America and this morning show Good Morning America um had a whole segment you know where they're talking to teenagers going like but do you know what this is and what they're trying to say and again my sister innocently is saying like oh that's they're talking about Sovereign song so my mom sits and watches and I only know this after but I'm in Sweden at th

e time and late at night I get this phone call and my mom is like crying on the phone and I'm like Mom what's going on I thought someone died what happened and S Patel said Doctor my son writes the pop song about the sex and she hung up the phone and my dad actually at the end of that cover my dad gets on the phone said you're being indecent and hung up and my mom wouldn't talk to me for like two months it was it was a really funny time because there was finally she was realiz now I was seeing l

ike the impact of what I was doing and when she was starting to try and understand it was just not a good mesh you know I'm just still thinking the trauma they must have got when they watched 50 know out of all movies it had to be that one I think you got away with this oh it it wasn't fun though it wasn't it wasn't a fun I have a few questions which I had uh kind of uh prepared for you like for an Indian artist go globally I mean why haven't somebody been able to crack it what do you think is l

acking uh now so I have a theory on this and this again when I'm I'm going to PR preface my what I'm about to say is that anything can happen my theory is if you look at the Latin Market right if you even if we go back to the early 2000s late 90s when in amer in the west Ricky Martin and Enrique glacius were huge right when they stopped working in the English market is when they stopped being Latin the beginning they blew like Enrique with baa MOS and Lita Loca and they had they kept their cultu

res rhythms and sounds in the music but then after a while like American Urban Music started working and then I I remember because I was friends with Enrique at the time I love Enrique by the way best person on the planet but at the time he did this album and it was sounding more Western he wanted to work with American like Urban producers and and I remember thinking but isn't what makes you different than an American Urban artist the fact that you ring your culture you know what I mean and you

look at that period of time and even Ricky Martin he did like a a album that was trying to be like R&B pop and it didn't work and I think L Music learned the lesson from that that if you don't stay true to your roots that's that's your that's the gift that nobody else has that's the sound that no one else can recreate but you and I think that you know there has been like um there was the bangra hit right the um Punjabi MC Jan you know Jan was yeah had that one had one hit in America but it was m

ore like an R&B and I and I think that and that was like just little Wayne was huge and it was a one there's always going to be one thing that breaks right but as far as like a movement like Latin music now there's a new Latin movement and what they've been smart with is they haven't they haven't gone away from their sound and their culture they haven't tried to adapt to the West Bad Bunny is Bad Bunny a Bad Bunny song in Latin America is a Bad Bunny song in America The rhythms all of these thin

gs that's what makes it infectious to the rest of the world and this is the superpower that India has and I think sometimes Indian artists are trying to sound like Western artists and be the Indian version of and my belief is that if you're not true to your roots and especially for younger artists The rhythms even if you think it's traditional rhythms do drums T those Loops those swings to the rest of the world that's that's a unique brush you're painting with especially in a time where we all h

ave every song ever created on our phone so we don't need another version of another song We like because we already know that song we can just click and that it's not like before where you had to like oh take another another physical thing and put it in another physical thing that's a that's work so you're okay you know for like sound alikes back then but now we have to think as a culture what is what is the unique thing that we bring to the world stage It's the Rhythm Rhythm and sounds and ins

truments right there's a Melody language but I think that is the key I think sometimes I think the mistake that some of the genres I've seeing and then and this is just my opinion they're doing great you know um is that they'll do like a western act Western sounding tracks but sounding but singing in Hindi or singing in Punjabi are singing but they're like weekend tracks but the rest of the world already has the weekend they like the weekend they sing weekend sings in a language they understand

so they're not looking for just another language singing on weekend tracks and I think you could see it with the success of Rosalia stuck to her Spanish even if it was traditional Spanish rhythms that she stuck to it and that's what made her stand out to the rest of the world um so I my theory my thesis is that once a youth Indian artist cracks that infuses Indian rhythms and sounds with the West game over it's a whole no one can touch it it doesn't sound like anything that's happening in the we

st rhythms are everything what was great about moving to Sweden was interesting even when I lived there before was it's a place that doesn't speak English right so from when you're raised in America you think America's the world you go to Sweden it's not English isn't the first language so Melody and rhythm is the language and in Sweden there's not many Spanish-speaking people there's no like Mexicans and SW but in the summer when it's a sunny day outside every store on a busy street is blasting

like ratone or like some Latin song they don't know what the they're saying they just It's the Rhythm and the and the melody that moves them but if it was the same Latin artist just singing on like a normal Western Urban beat or just a normal guitar that's no interest of them right because then they want to hear that in their own language so you mean to say that you need to keep the authenticity alive that was you said it in the short way yeah I mean you need to have a unique style yeah you hav

e to be authentic and that should appeal to the international audience and I think it's maybe a scary thing for local artists to say because maybe two local artists oh this feels oldfashioned right if I'm seeking traditional and and sort of Indian sound but I don't think it will I think I my personal thought is that that will travel and you know um and I think that's what my bet is the first thing to really break out of the diaspora is going to be that and let's assume you are coming to India an

d you have a mission of taking a brown artist or artist from India to the world uh if I I am listening to this and I'm watching this and I feel I'm the one how do I reach out to you Instagram I do look at my Instagram messages I can't reply to everything but I do try and listen to things and if I love something I'll connect to the person um I think that I think the hungry person will find me it's not it's not hard um because of social media and because of the internet and and now being here I've

introduced myself to the music industry here and a lot of The Gatekeepers here um it's an interesting I always think like we were talking about this off camera one of the big lessons I've learned is you can't want it more than the artist and I always want to see that if you're hungry for it and you need it and you're willing to starve for it you're going to find a way to get to someone like me I'm looking it's not that I'm looking so and most people that have a mission to find talents as you do

I know as a manager you're I imagine you're always open as well for talent so we're all looking that's the message to everybody we're all looking surprise me surprise me what is the thing uh what is the way so that I connect with you but I don't disturb you so if you tell me that listen you know when you're sending me a message or this is what you need to send it to me for me to judge whether I'm interested or not send me a link of your songs send me a link of the songs um tell me a little bit

about yourself send me a link of the songs music is what's going to speak to me I always again my second Angel on My Shoulder Max that always taught me um he's much better at keeping that his North Star sometimes than I am but that music is the thing it's it's a great song or a great sound or a great idea a great theory of what you want to do that's that's what will win you know know cuz and that's what we want to be the export of India I think I speak for you as well like we you want the best t

hing to be what's presented to the rest of the world because that will start a movement you know you see like again I start to compare it to Latin music but I just being an an American that's the best thing I can compare to is the Latin explosion on the global charts wellon they can't I'm going to be competitive now they can't touch India once India gets going you K-pop has been able to do that I think k-pop's done that in a really smart way which I think India my advice to the Indian music indu

stry is which I know is starting to happen you have some quite smart people doing it now but um K-pop was smart in the sense they they went after teen fan base um they represented people there's so many Koreans and Asian people around the world who wanted someone that looked like them that they didn't have that representation they were very it's you know the deals are questionable with the artists but it's a different culture of like you know they get them really young and they put them through

these intense camps and all of that um I think k-pop's done a great I think it K's done a good service to India because I also think that historically there's been like a sex appeal problem right because in the west pop music is very much about sex appeal uh popular non-film music is about sex appeal and like Latin the like Spanish men have been like a fantasy in western movies right for a long time like the you know and that became like so there was like they had sex appeal so Ricky Martin and

Enrique could go into like into America and and they were like oo the Latin fantasy historically man back to me being 17 years old and what the guy said to me there's no you know girl in Wisconsin P union guy her wall he was right back then he wasn't wrong I was living in Texas I knew it like that was how the the West didn't see like Indian men as having sex appeal but now I think K-pop has helped change that especially for for the Asian diaspora but also because you're having teenage girls whit

e teenage girls screaming for these Asian kids and also film and TV you're starting to see like Riz ahed and a few other these great actors you know come up on screen and they're the love interest of white girls right so it all those things subconsciously start happening I think it's easier for Indian women who are seeing as beautiful around the world you know because you've had Ash you've had you know you have feed people but you haven't had male heartthrobs from India that are Global and I thi

nk that's slowly starting to change and I think that's a service that K-pop actually has done for India is that a whole area of the world where those boys weren't sort of seen as heart throbs are now being seen that way and I think gen Z in the west are open to that now so I think we can learn from K-pop especially when it comes to feeding a youth fan base because they're just looking for representation and I think my thesis and you could correct me if I'm wrong and if there's any there's no tee

nagers in the room but anyone with teenage kids can tell me I imagine as well a world where even a boy band or a girl band from India of Indian youth you see that with a are with that song the Pakistani boys three cute boys and nush man's new act that just went number one on Spotify an new jend who's great just singing a love song that looks like the boy next door from India or Pakistan and everyone goes nuts so you feed that and you're out of here you then you then you create a genu generation

of music of nonfilm music fans and they'll stick with those artists and they'll grow into the Spotify paying customers that will then create a an industry where songwriters can live and Thrive and that will level up the quality of music coming out of India and it's a domino effect and then India takes over the world I think unlike any other country India is the only country which has many countries in one yeah in terms of music because you know you go every 100 kilometers you have an authentic s

ound and are many ofs can be used we start we can for time absolutely you know I have I totally agree and it's just so rich and dance and color and these things are not things that have been seen so much by the West stop copying the west or K-pop or Latin America or anything which has worked yeah you have to offer something unique which is true to us and which can appeal to the wider audience and unique and authenticity is always is the way I think about my biggest hits in my career and they all

came from a even if they're like sexy songs or whatever they all came from like a a grain of Truth you know like a grain of truth always inspired the ones that connected because if it's a even at least a grain of Truth and something that will connect we're we're all humans you know and what else are you thinking of doing in India are you comfortable or sh ing you know your other plans in India like I said right now this trip this time was an education learning from smart people like yourself um

getting a feel for what's going on how I could be of service um to help move things forward um I would love I'm going to explore publishing look at signing artists or being at least a bridge creating a bridge uh for the artists that do have international Potential from here to America um that's where I want to start I think um which itself is a big Endeavor um you know I think that there's so much opportunity um for so many things you know there's talent shows that formats that haven't been her

e yet that I think again can find these stars in Internet AAL artists so there's there's a number of things but I want to start with learning because I don't want to presume anything I have too much respect for for this place so I've come with humility to to just learn and to listen um some of my theories coming in here have been proven right and some have been proven wrong so I'm going to go back and and and and think what could I be because it's not about like money or B it's it's about it's i

t's how can I be of service to this common cause that I think a lot of us have um but I have a I'm sit in a unique Place having what I've been able to do in the west so it's definitely something I just care passionately about and I want it to be done the right way cool I mean um I also wanted to ask you a few questions about about you know the process of writing the song and your experiences typically what comes to you first the melody or the lyrics how do you work um it's ch it's evolved and ch

anged over the years but I'll tell you the last my most sort of productive years usually Melody and a song title first I I actually collect titles my phone is full of I collect like you know because I believe Universal I believe Melody is the universal language but then one of the things I learned is that you also need like that unique title or concept or some juicy words that just stand out and maybe feel wrong to make it a little different so it's not too perfect and slick so I I always collec

t titles um and then as melodies come to me or as I should say as Melodies are given to me I try and like quickly go through my titles is there something that could fit here and usually if I know I'm working with or for an artist um I have a conversation with that artist and I take notes when we write we we I don't like going in with an artist until I've gotten to know them and so in that conversation I do my best it's almost like method acting but I call it method songwriting I do my best to un

derstand their voice and their point of view and how and I see myself especially with artists that write I see myself as a service pro provider um in meaning that my job is to help them help them spread their voice or their point of view I would say to as many people as possible to make it as digestible to the masses as possible and and I I like doing that if we if I have the luxury of having enough time to talk to the artist um and then I collect titles and then and um you know like God is a wo

man for example was just a title I had in one day I was alone in the room and the melody was given to me and I have the recording of that original idea of and it is what the chorus is what it what it was in the original voice note I take out my phone all the time and I'm it's it's uh you know dangerous to do on airplanes being a brown person with a beard to take out your phone and like I remember when I wrote Ariana when I had the idea the initial seed of the idea for Ariana's problem um which e

nded up being Ariana's problem I was sitting next to this old white lady and I was on a domestic flight in America and it was like 201 I think I had the idea like 2012 or no 2012 or 13 and you know I was just like the idea came to my head like what if you do like a whisper song like if you have a big singer and then it goes into a whisper and so I got on my phone and I like this lady's like looking at me already just kind of nervous by sitting next to me and I got my phone and I'm like I got one

that's problem I have the voice note too and you can hear and like and this lady just I could feel her energy getting so nervous so I just go up and go to the bathroom and I like crap I don't know what the verse is but big precourse and then you go to I got one that's wrong time and then I I'm in the bathroom too long and they knock on the door now cuz there's people like excuse me sir is anything wrong and I'm like I step out of the bathroom and then the a bit of the verse Mel you know that's

all I had at the start until I took it to Il and Max but like I was like sorry I stepped out of bed like oh sorry one more minute it it was not the you know so I've learned to you know I've learned to pick the place but I also you know because you never know when it's going to be given to you and um so I like doing that not every song starts that way because obviously there's collaborators there'll be like also no tears left to cry for example m brought the start of that chorus Melody and we wer

e just trying to feel words for that and then Hari said something was like oh that was that's the title you know so sometimes it can be chords or beat or we sit down and say okay we want to do something in this genre for this artist or here me and us and the artists will be talking and there's a reference and you know start some you know the one of the collaborators starting some chords or a Groove and start singing Melodies over that but I I tend to feel like the best ones can come when the cho

rus Melody comes to you like AC capella because when you sing a song by yourself that you love you're not singing to the music you yourself are singing in AC capella right you're humming it around the house so I feel like if it comes that way and it feels good like with no music and nothing then I feel like there's usually something there and you know out of all the songs you've done which is the which is your favorite oh gosh I don't know if I have a favorite because I I always I don't know I w

ould say two that I'm really proud of in my life but there were also two lifechanging moments of songs was one is What Makes You Beautiful because I wrote that about my wife and it's it's became what it became and like now my kids you know it's it's weird that that song is so relevant in their lives like in school and stuff teachers are playing it or in PE while they're playing sports it's always part of their world and they know that it's about their mom so that makes me smile a lot that like i

t hasn't left my life it's it's like something that um is present in their life and they're aware that this thing and they get to tell like you know that's actually about my mom you know and um and they're so proud of that so I I'm I'm really happy with that and it's also we actually sold Amazon in America has bought a movie loc called What Makes You Beautiful that I've been developing that's Loosely based on the inspiration for the song so um and I think like you know probably one last time aga

in since it was the first thing I played Ariana and that became such a important and special relationship in my life um and then probably Santa tell me now because it's just become I don't know if it means anything here but in the west it's usually like the third or fourth biggest Christmas song every year um on global Spotify it's nine years ago we wrote it and it's just gets bigger every year so it's been fun cuz I love Christmas are you are you still uh looking forward to working with somebod

y who you haven't worked till now um I'm more excit I'm more excited about like new like newish artists I've always liked helping an artist crack a code more than like oh a superstar artist I mean I love doing that because it's obviously lucrative and it's and it's fun and exciting to be a part of but I like you know I like balancing it so if it's an artist like I think I have an idea for that's maybe not the biggest thing in the world right now that you can help make the biggest thing in the wo

rld that usually excites me um but it's hard I don't think I don't know for sure that there's anyone that're like oh like I've always I always wished to have like a song with Eminem you know to have written a chorus for Eminem or like but um there and there's Legends out there that aren't that relevant now that if they had call if they call me up I'd probably still say yeah I'll do it because that'd be fun like I'd love to work with Brian Adams I think he's amazing like um but yeah I think I've

been so lucky that usually as far as like the relevant pop artists like this year I got to work with Ed Sharon who's always been one of my favorites um and this is 20 this year 2024 2020 yeah hopefully it's out this year but like um it's just new and challenging things is what I like looking at um an artists that inspire me if I hear something when I see them that that and are you a about any Indian artists do you listen to any Indian artists I'm the worst person with names but I obviously know

like RJ sing's voice and um and I go through in the Punjabi artists that are happening like AP and Karen and and King uh like that that King song that was beautiful the one that Jonah's Brothers yeah but I know the one that's just M yeah that's a beautiful song um so I listen to through Indian Spotify um quite often cuz also obviously getting to know the market and what's working here do you think about this is an Indian artist I want to kind of work with I would love to work with um I'm I I get

so I'm like so intimidated by working with an Indian artist because um I'm I'm sort of like I would be excited to try but I'm also I'm almost like very careful because I like I kind of like what you do I don't know if I'll like what you do if you do it with me I'm always afraid I'm always afraid that I I'll mess it up um I get more nervous so if I love something I I I can kind of get sometimes nervous like to work with that person because I don't want to mess it up unless they're like look I'm

stuck and I want to evolve into this other thing or I want to like find something new to do then I'm like okay let's figure out how we can crack but if they like doing amazing how they're doing like I kind of get ner I'm I'm I'm one of those people that are like o just keep going what you're doing I want to watch cuz it's great You Know Have you listened to any Indian Regional sounds which you think might be the uh things you're looking at I'm scoping some I I would love suggestions but I've jus

t been scoping I'm like the worst with names and stuff but I've been sent things from like some of the labels here that I've been listening from different regions um and I'm just listening I'm learning and listening still I would say I have some questions from the audience actually we uh had put a post online and we had allowed people to ask questions it's called ask the guest uh I have some questions from there and I'll read out them for you uh what's the songw writing process uh the analogies

about songs and future of Music Industry uh in music industry and collaboration of I think we have spoken about all of it the songw writing process if you want to uh describe I mean I think for me I try to remain open with the process I think um I always keep myself I try and keep myself open to the universe to be giving ideas and I I'm always just prepared for like a a Melody comes in record a melody on your phone a lyric idea comes and write it down um and then when you're with collaborators y

ou stay open cuz somebody might have a great idea that's better than yours and you know um it's a the western music is such a collaborative um thing so which which I Love Actually I like that much more than writing by myself okay uh then next is how different is the writing process in the west as compared to India I think you kind of explained that yeah it's it feels more like a collaboration thing um and we don't separate Melody and lyric as much especially anymore yeah everyone's considered a

songwriter and most people who do melodies for the most part will do lyric and if they don't they probably work on the track and can do Melodies a little bit do you know what I mean the next one is what do you think about Indian collabs with artists from the West like Divine or djit do have you heard about um I think it's great listen I think anything that brings Indian artists to the West is great um again my thesis is as long as it stays authentic to the Indian artist and not trying to go or d

oesn't feel too forced because I think one thing that and we spoke about this off camera I think that as Spotify grows in India that the Indian artist need to be cautious of is pick your collaborations very carefully because as as Spotify grows and the numbers grow it's eventually in the next few years going to happen where India dominates the global chart just because of the way it's done right because it's just math if you look at like the number one you know the number one song in Mexico and

on the average day is two times sometimes three times the number one song in America so of course it's going to you know so but then the Americans will look at American music business will look at it and go oo I can get some more streams if I collaborate with this people because they know they're America and they know most likely the Indian artist wants to just do anything to be attached to to the west and I think that the Indian artists I would what I would say if I was a manager of record labe

ls patience do the thing when it's right and it feels right and it doesn't feel forced like a rent like a rent to rapper we say that in the US business we call a rent to rapper if you just put a rapper on your song for no reason it doesn't it's just clearly to like so it fits on radio better rather than it's good for the song so I think I think it's important to intentions aren't important I think and I think the audience will see through anything that feels too fabricated um so it needs to feel

authentic for a collaboration needs to feel authentic the next one is how did you feel when One Direction went in different directions um I mean I assume they me when they sort of separ separated I think for everyone that was involved in it from the beginning it was Bitter Sweet sweet but I think you know by then I was sort of I was still friendly with some of the guys and Harry and you know NY and everyone but like um I had sort of moved on to Ariana so I was not as attached after those years

but it was always it was sad we me and like some of the people at the label or people on xfactor that were part of putting it together I remember we were we were on chat and sending you know and talking to each other individually and um it was a it was sad in a way but understandable in a way I mean these kids they did such an incredible job for and it was so intense for them for those years and they deserved the right to do what makes them happy you know um they earned that more than anyone els

e that was involved in One Direction those boys earned to do whatever makes them happy and whatever they needed to do as a solo artist as in TV or film whatever they wanted to do they earned the right to do that um and they have yeah they should be proud which I know they are of what they achieved and anyone that was involved I know is as well uh the next is what part of Indian culture should Indian Independent Artists adopt from the West what should they adopt from the West oh what part of see

one thing I can say to that is the royalty and the ownership for sure yeah I think maintaining ownership of the songs again that doesn't mean I think the whole publishing industry needs to Ma I think needs to matter here um Fair deals for sure try and own the royalties I think if on the suit side on the other side of the desk if there can be start that's maybe maybe it's an option of you know pay to you know buy out fee or give the songwriter the option of or you keep your copyright if you want

maybe there's a middle ground there um because until there's money to earn in publishing I feel bad saying hey everyone just keep your copyrights because there might not be money to earn for a few years but there won't be money to earn if people don't keep their copyrights so but what I have gathered by and I hope it's okay to say because I know there's a lot of music industry people um listening to this when I have understood now speaking to a lot of local writers is that they feel intimidated

by asking for what they deserve regarding their rights they feel that if they say that they want to maintain their rights that artist or that manager will not go to them anymore for songs a few of them have told me that they were told that as well specifically threaten that and I think if if those people in power care about Indian music and the Indian music business they they won't do that anymore they'll stop that because that that can't be the most important thing and I want to stress this the

re is no music business without songs there's no songs without people to create songs that is a craft that needs to be learned and there needs to be time to learn and there needs to be an environment where people are can eat and learn to to and live and learn to write songs and get better and better you need to create that Foundation otherwise there's no Global music business in India and I I have a you know my additional question to this a is uh is it safe to say that most songwriters in the we

st are educated about their rights copyrights publishing there to a point yeah I mean maybe not the details of what's the pro radar rate from Spotify yeah but the know of the knowing of yeah am I signing my publishing how many years am I signing most of the basic stuff they know so is it fair to say that the first step for Indian artist should be to educate themselves for this absolutely so that they can make they they can make a deal within lot of awareness absolutely yeah and so I don't know i

f that book has been translated here but in the American music business there's a book by a lawyer called Don Donald passman he's like a famous music business lawyer and his book is called all you need to know about the music business um that's sort of the Bible in America um I remember during xfactor I bought the final 10 contestants in the UK I bought them this book and it really pissed off the management company that was going to manage them because no and I was like they have to know you kno

w um so I if there's a way for any of your listeners to get a hold of that book that's considered the Bible what's the name of the book you said all you need to know about the music business by Donald passman by Don passman and that just breaks down record deals and Publishing deals and what it means um and I think he's updated it for like the streaming era as well so I think that's an important um I don't know if there's an equivalent of that in India but knowing that since 2012 some laws have

changed the laws are basically somewhat still or somewhat like the West there some there's some educated lawyers Publishers and other people who are helping it out iprs and all these people are trying to educate people but still as we discussed offline you can't educate somebody who doesn't want to be educated uh if artist wants to be treated fairly it's them who has to take an effort because information is easy yeah on YouTube on Google if you type the top five questions you'll get the answers

yeah and when you try you will have a specific question in which you can ask an expert it's not that difficult anymore and I would stress to your point because I understand that creative sometimes we just want to create and we don't want to deal with that stuff but you will have to deal with it eventually there's no such thing as someone that's so pretentious and Arty that oh I only care about the music you might feel that way today but once you've made the music and the music is out and people

are listening to your music there will be a time years from now where you're going to wish you knew about the music business part it's boring it feels unemotional it feels not spiritual but it's so crucial it's so crucial and U I forgot to ask you about that how does the management and booking agency this thing work in the west booking agency I would not be the person to ask since I don't deal on the artist side but management it's very like I it's you know manager usually takes 15 or 20% of the

artists um yes I think they I think every deal is different if it's a superstar act I'm sure there's different but if you just go on to basic they take 15 20% of um entertainment income generally um but they're also though like if you say the artist is like the the company the manager is the CEO of the company if you know what I mean um and and so they're running everything and and making they're the like ones that go into like the contracts and stuff in America the marriages are very very invo

lved in the songwriters get signed to a publisher yeah I mean all songwriters kind of have to be signed to a publisher in the sense of either through a publishing co-publishing deal or through an admin deal because you at least need someone to be collecting your royalties for you um singers or artists are generally signed to a record label singers and artists to record label if they're good enough to have a record deal they will also usually get a publishing deal if they write songs as well um s

o then those and those things can be totally separate so you could be Sony music publishing on your publishing side and then Universal for example on your artist side and then you get Sony's publishing arm working your songs as well as the UN you know what I mean so I think like I think Taylor I could be wrong I think Taylor's with son Taylor Swift for example is with Sony publishing and Universal um record so it's an advantage to have a good publisher because if you're an artist because you wan

t like it's another team of people one introducing you to other collabor ators which is very crucial but also like working the song So It the song You Almost have to think the song each song is its own startup and your collaborators on that song or or your partners of the startup and even just because you do the launch your release of the song is like the launch of your startup company it needs you're not exploiting your company in the right way if you're not helping it live a longer life than j

ust from the launch date right and the publisher can help make your copyright live a longer life you know like 5 years after it's done your publisher could pitch it for a television show and all of a sudden true you know look in the western business right now um especially with the streaming Netflix and Amazon and how viral movies go there's a great example there's two great examples I can tell you about one is um in the west there was a song There was a Netflix show so Netflix had that show str

anger things and in and stranger things became phenomenon and in that show they used the Kate Bush song running up the hill and because and that song was out in the 80s and because these kids watched that show with that song synced which a publisher would have figured out the license to that song I think it went back it went number one in America just a few years ago it became a radio hit number one it had a whole new life and it's happening right now there's on Amazon there's a film called Sal

salt burn and at the end of saltburn there's a big scene where the guy is running around dancing around this house naked and the song he's dancing to is murder on the Dance Floor I think it's like in the early 2000s it was a big radio hit with an artist sophieella Specter and it didn't leave I don't think it did much outside the UK and Europe and now this movie comes out years later probably 2030 years later and they used that song the movie is very popular and so the song became super popular a

nd is now in the global top 50 yesterday and it's getting American radio play 30 years later when it was a big hit in England and a ma major Smash in England when it came out America never touched it so we're so Publishers are helping do those things and music supervisors so rep Publishers at least give this song into the hands of Music supervisors you know true I'm going to ask you last few questions had an amazing chat um what do you think are the questions which should never never be asked to

a person like you gossip gosip about artists yeah glad we didn't ask any of those that sort of stays in the we always say what what's said in the studio stays in the studio and what's the most important question you think should be asked to you which you w't address oh gosh I don't really see myself as someone of importance to ask a question to um oh that's a tough question I don't know I guess it depends where angle you're coming from I guess you know aspiring musicians uh one of the person wa

tching this podcast might be the next big star I mean he has that Talent OR she has that Talent okay I'll say one thing persistence and perseverance for that person who's listening that's wants to do this I'll see I think you have to you have to love it enough to starve for it because you will starve for it and there will be a period of time where you will starve for it you'll be on the edge and I think most people will have those stories like for me I had that my early years in Sweden there wer

e there were times I was so broke I would fly take a cheap very cheap Ryan airlight to my family in London and stay there for a month they didn't realize it was because I was so broke I couldn't afford I didn't have any place to live in Sweden so or there were times where if I didn't have someone lend a hand and say oh my cousin has an apartment you can use for free for two weeks I would have probably had to sleep on a park bench or sleep in the studio with that I was using you know um there was

those days but I nothing there was never a moment where I said okay this is too hard I'm done because I loved it so much so I always tell aspiring musicians and songwriters you have to love it enough to starve for it because you will true um and the ones that get past that are the ones who love it enough to starve for it and what had been your most difficult decision I think maybe moving back to Sweden was probably the most in hindsight the most it's the happiest decision as it was also the hap

piest decision but it was knowing it was knowing in like 2019 that I was going to put a pause and that it might be hard to come back um that was that was a decision that I made for my happiness in my family not for my career and the last question and the most important one for me is that in your journey I mean you started at the age of 15 Yeah it's you're 45 Now 44 45 yeah 30 years of your career uh you've seen everything yeah what are the most important learnings from your life and career in my

career I would say focus on quality not quantity I would say that no one will or should care more about your career than yourself if you put that expectation on people you're in the wrong career you have to be a reain maker yourself you have to do be a fire starter you have to figure it out because even the people at the top of course it would be so easy for me to go oh you come in you're going to be in the studio with me all the time and we're going to be with big artists but that's not doing

you any good cuz if I get hit by a car the next day you won't know how to do those things I want to know that you can figure out how to get to me or how to get the music to the right people um so that would be you you have to be a rain maker you have to be a startup you can't expect anyone to to care more about your career than yourself because you'll never find that person by the way you'll never find it you'll never be successful finding that person and you'll always be disappointed in people

if that's what you expect that's that's a mistake I see all the time like oh I signed to that person it was you know it's like but why did you expect that person to care more about your career than you you just sat back it's because you signed a publishing deal or a record deal all that means is that you're up to bat you're able to play in the big leagues it doesn't mean that you're going to you're going to score a point true it's you who has to still it just sends we're going to you on the play

ing field that's all that means you still have to drive it you still have to do everything and then in in life I would say uh you know achievement and selfworth should never be connected that's deep yeah true so yeah I guess that would be my answer thank you sa I I don't think uh it felt like we're meeting for the first time yeah no uh it seems strange that we uh chatted day before yesterday I didn't even chat in fact we I just s sent you an email I ched withas and here we are uh we did three sh

oots three podcast today so one and a half podcast before then half in between and then one the real one which we shot yeah and thank you so much for giving so much of insight I'm sure anybody who's watching this or listening to this uh we a lot of insights uh we got a lot of learning lot of experiences and uh thank you so much for being so wonderful thank you thank you so much this was great thanks guys thank you guys