Harvey Mason Jr.
Appearances
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
What's the nomenclature behind this genre of music? And the reason it's so important is that the members are the ones that know. They know better than I do. They know better than a lot of the staff because our members are music professionals. So they might hear something in the new genre that's coming up and be like, oh, you guys aren't catching on. We have to honor this music.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And that's how we continue to perpetuate the excellence in music so we can showcase different things. So it's constant, did you call it tweaking or fiddling? It's constant fiddling. Tweaking is nicer than fiddling. No, it's constant fiddling. And that process happens a couple times a year through our process of submitting proposals. And then they go into the trustee room. We vote.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Our staff adopts them, and they take place next year on the show.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Balance is nice. It's a collision sometimes. It is truly... It can be contentious. It can be controversial. But for us, and I'll say for me personally, what I love about it is there's no other award like it because it's not about popularity. It's not about who got the most streams or who had the most likes. It's truly about the people that are...
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
in the industry and who are working day in and day out around music, listening to the records or songs or albums, and then deciding which one they think is the best. It's subjective and we know that. It's not a basketball game. It's all up to the interpretation of the listener.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But what makes our show valuable, and as of now, and maybe this isn't always going to be the case, but as of now, the most valuable television show in regards to music is because it's not just about popularity. It's not predictable. It's about the voters giving attention. the award for the year to the artists or music that they love.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And it also attracts a different type of participation or attention from the artist community because it's a very desired thing to have your peers tell you you've done something special in that year, I think is meaningful. So there's an extra gravitas or weight to the Grammys, which I think translates to the viewers.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Sure. And I hear them loud and clear. I would love her to win Album of the Year. I would also love a bunch of other people to win Album of the Year. I think there's great music. I think it's also subjective. Beyonce obviously has a ton of very loyal and supportive fans, which I don't blame them for. Beyonce's won a ton of Grammy awards, so we really respect her. creativity and her artistry.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
There's no question about that as a voting body. There's different things that happen throughout the year that the voters sometimes resonate with in certain categories and other categories it doesn't resonate. So it's really hard to predict. I am excited for this year because there's been so many amazing records. There's been great work by some amazing artists. So I'm very optimistic for this year.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
As far as who wins what and who gets snubbed, who's happy and who's mad. I mean, I can't predict that, but what I can predict is The voters will do their very best to listen to the music, to evaluate the music. The other thing I can say is we also have a very different voting body now than we had three years ago, than we had five years ago, than we had 10 years ago.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
It didn't come so much from the answers. Yeah. Maybe personally it did. I'll back that up. But what it really stemmed from was looking at the makeup of our voting body and then looking at the makeup of music creators and who's making it versus who's consuming it versus who's voting on it. And we wanted to make sure our membership was representative of our music community.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And when I got here, it just wasn't. We didn't have enough people of color. We didn't have enough women. We didn't have certain representation in certain genres in dance communities. Rock community, country. So we needed to rebalance or tweak or can't remember the word you use, which I like so much. Fiddle. We needed to fiddle with the membership.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We needed to fiddle with it and make sure that it was aligning with not just the world. But more importantly and specifically with music and the music community, the genres, we had to look at the genres. What genres are really popular? Do we have enough members in those genres to evaluate it accurately?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
What are the new genres coming up that we want to make sure that we're able to interpret and vote for and get good outcomes? Well, then if that's a new one, we got to make sure we have members to support that. Otherwise, having a new category with nobody that can understand the nuance or the fine points of that genre voting, it's a failed concept.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And so we want to make sure that the voters align with music and how it's being made and consumed.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We still have room to grow, no question. We're where our goals were. We set those goals pretty aggressively. We met them a bit early, actually. But they'll continue to be new stretch goals and new things that I want to accomplish with our membership. And our membership team is amazing. They're so proactive.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And we have great committees around our membership team and elected leadership who are really passionate about membership. And as we said, until I hear your ideas for now, that's the way we think we can affect change in the outcomes and affect the relevance of our awards and continue to grow the Grammy brand on a global, global basis.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts more. When you talk about hard lines, the goal for the genre awards is to try and find some guardrails in which to fit music. And that's very hard. You're talking about, again, art and then someone's interpretation of art and how to couple those in the different buckets so that people can evaluate them comparatively.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So we don't want to see hip-hop going against rock because they're so dissimilar. Dissimilar audiences, I think. Dissimilar...
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
people that are creating, but as music becomes more and more, uh, you know, blurred together or mashed up, I guess I'll say there will be some conversations around how we're going to title the words, how we're going to include them in different fields and who should be voting on them. Right now we have different fields.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So you have, you know, a rock field, none of that will be a bunch of different genres of rock. Then you'll have a hip-hop field and a classical field. The way our voting works is we encourage our voters to vote in three fields. You don't want somebody who doesn't know anything about country just going into that category because their favorite artist is over there or
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Vice versa, you don't need someone voting in classical that only knows one classical artist. So the way we try and do it is have qualified voters voting for the music that they like. Now, to your point, as music changes and genre walls come down, we'll be able to open that up a little bit more. But that is, again, something that will be determined by our professional music community.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Our members will say, hey, Harvey, you know what? Membership team at the Academy, you know what? We think rock and jazz sound like it's coming together. Let's put that in one category. And when that happens, because our members are telling us these things, it will happen and that will change the way we vote.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Pop music in 2024, there's a definition.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Pop music is a bit amorphous because it changes from year to year and it has something to do with the term and the title itself, pop, popular. And it's the genre that tends to have The choruses, the sing-along melodies, the right style of production and vocalists. It's very difficult because there are a lot of records that get lumped into pop. As a creator, I can create it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I can show you on a piano and I can sing it, but it is a hard definition to nail down. The voters tend to do a really good job of that and making sure that they're voting for music they feel should be in that category. And also the way our labels and artists and independent labels submit, they submit their music where they want it to be.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And so if somebody feels like, hey, this is a pop record, it'll go into pop. And for the most part, that's where it's evaluated.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
They land by saying our members will tell us when it's time. And the members, again, are professionals. They're all the people working in studios, on tours, Engineers, writers, producers, artists, singers, they're the professionals. And when they say, you know what, we're tired of genres or we're tired of separating people and putting them in boxes, then we'll evolve.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I can promise you that because our organization has never moved faster, has never been more fluid. We've never listened closer to our members or our music community. So when that starts to happen, we will make sure that things adjust.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Yes, and – What tends to need to happen is, again, the voters need to have an expertise in the genre. So if we had enough voters that knew exactly what was going on in the drill genre of music, then they would pop up and say, guys, we're missing a whole group of music here. We need to honor it. We would create the category. We'd go up in the next show and they would then vote.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But without that movement, without the momentum behind the genre that's sustainable, that translates into members, we would be popping new genres into the show without the support and kind of the underpinning that it needs to be relevant and to be accurate. Because if we put a drill category in now and we didn't have enough voters and we had the wrong outcomes because...
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Just some random people started voting. Oh, I know this name. Let me vote for them. It would be disrespectful to the creators in that genre. It would also be, I think, detrimental to the brand of the Academy and the Grammys. So when the time is right for those new genres, I like to think that they'll be there. We just added the best African performance.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
You see the rise of piano and all the different genres, Afrobeats. And we had the voters. We had the support. They proposed the award. It's now in.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
The framework for making decisions around awards is very different than my personal framework around decisions that I'd like to implement at the academy. As it relates to awards, it's a very straightforward process. The awards or other changes and proposals are different. introduced by our members.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
They're discussed through appropriate committee, whether it's planning and governance or awards and nominations. It goes through the committee system. They vote it up or down. It then goes to the board of trustees, and it gets voted up or down. And I don't have a vote in those things. I try and make sure the conversations are going in the right direction, but that really comes down to
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
our board and our chair. Once those things are put in place, then I have to decide how to implement them. And that's a pretty straightforward process around awards. But maybe the broader question you're asking is like, how do I personally, how do I CEO? How do I make the decisions in my role?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And I spend a lot of time listening, to be honest, and I'm not sure what the answer is for some of your other people that you've interviewed or other CEOs, but I don't pretend to know more than I know. I'm a lifetime learner, not a knower. And so when it comes time for a decision, I tend to move relatively quickly. I don't sit and stew.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I think perfection sometimes can get in the way of making progress. So I'll listen. I'll assemble my team. I'll get the information that I need to make an educated and strategic decision. and then I'll weigh it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And to this point, my instincts and my finger has been on the pulse of what our organization wants or needs, and our members seem to be resonating with the decisions that have been happening. But if my personal taste or feelings fall out of favor with that, then it would really change my decision-making process.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Because a lot of what I do is gather the information and decide from here what I think is right. It's almost like making music, to tell you the truth. I was a songwriter and producer for years, and If you're making music for everybody else and you're trying to guess what's next and you're trying to make people happy, you're going to make the same music that everyone else is making.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But if you're making music that turns you on, that excites you, that you love as a creator, and then you come out, as long as your tastes are aligned with the consumers, you'll win. So I feel the same way in the way I like to run our organization. A lot of listening, a lot of collaborating, and then trying to make smart, swift, thoughtful decisions.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Definitely a sea change, transformational turning point in our organization. Yeah. it was a very difficult decision to be honest, because CBS has been a great partner. They've done amazing work with us, I believe for 54 shows. And when I came into this role, I realized that we had four years until there would be a renegotiation.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And I really had a vision and a plan for where I thought the Academy would needed to go, and partially that's why they have me in this role is to come figure out what that vision is and make sure we're executing on it, aligning with the board of trustees and our executive leadership and the executive committee, we know what has to happen.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And the idea behind who is going to be our partner to help us get there was a big part of that decision-making process. And we met with several people. And ultimately ended up going with a different partner because of the fact that it really aligned with our future vision and where we wanted to go and how we wanted to continue to build and grow the organization.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But more importantly, how we could serve more people and execute on our mission in a broader, wider, deeper scale. So we're really excited about the future.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
That was really the decision-making factor. I wanted to know what our options were and make sure that we were exploring all possibilities. I'm in this role temporarily for however long I'm here, but I'm really a fiduciary and a steward of the brand. I think it's an institution that needs to be protected. It's a not-for-profit. We're not doing this other than to serve music people.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So the idea was, how can we reach the best deal? How can we find the partner that most aligns with the future vision of the organization? So it was an opportunity to explore the market. I thought that only made sense.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Even with the 54-year history that we had with CBS, again, being great partners, I think anyone would say, if you have the opportunity to see what else is there, you should take a look and try and find that right alignment going forward.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I will say we had other options. Probably won't go too much deeper than that, just out of respect for our partners on both sides. But CBS has been amazing to work with. And I also really look forward to seeing what's going to come next in our new partnership.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Well, you've nailed it. We have to have the right TV partner, not only for the, revenue, but also for the future of the brand and the health of the organization. And for the good of the music community, what we do is to try and lift music and music creators. And how can we do that in the widest possible scale is something that I'm always thinking about.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But as it relates to CBS and their streaming platform versus ABC Disney, I just have to say that CBS has been great. We're going to make two more shows with them. They had a lot of very, very positive aspects of why we've been with them and why we might have considered to go forward. But we also had to look at the future of consumption.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We have to look at the future of how people are going to absorb or take in our show. Where does it need to be seen? How does it need to be seen? These are all considerations that I've been having since I took this role four years ago. So Got a couple more great shows to go with CBS. Looking forward to February 2nd this year.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And then after the next show, we'll start to think about what this new deal means. But up until then, you know, your listeners and your viewers know consumption is changing. Television is changing. Digital streaming, even social media, how that all plays into how people are consuming content.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Those are all things, as you can imagine, were top of mind when we started thinking about how are we going to move forward over the next 10 years.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Yeah, it all did. The heft, as you called it, was important. And the gravitas behind the award and where it's consumed, how people are going to watch it. There's still something unique and special about network television to a lot of consumers. To other sets of consumers, they really couldn't care less about that. So there is a balance or fine line that I wanted to make sure we walked through.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
with any partner that we join forces with.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
They're all trade-offs, to tell you the truth, and that's the balance. It's the juggle that we have to do. How do we reach the most consumers or viewers so that we can monetize the show? But also, how do we showcase and lift artists so that most people see them? It's a finely navigated line between those two things. There's a lot of other considerations as well, the history of the brand Sheen.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
accessibility, different territories around the world where there's a presence or a focus for us. So there were a lot of factors that went into the calculus of deciding where's the right home for us. So hopefully we feel like we made a good choice, but I guess we'll see in the next 10 years.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
A thousand percent. We know consumers are changing the way they're you know, they're consuming and their habits are evolving at all times. So we're always going to try and be on the cutting edge of that. But again, balancing that with making sure we're showcasing different genres of music. And it's not just all one genre.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
You're not just seeing only a certain group of creators and also making sure that we're honoring the tradition, the history of the brand. So that along with trying to innovate, trying to make sure we're meeting viewers where they are and matching their habits with what we're creating or producing is
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
something again this stuff is not easy none of it is straightforward and if I were to have assumed the role or taken the reins of the organization and said we're going to do the same thing we're just going to march straight ahead we're going to keep making the same show I think that would have been the easier route for sure but we're not doing that we're looking at everything every part of our
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
experience every part of our show every part of how we serve our members how we produce the show maybe you've seen over the last few years even how we seat our artists how we seat the music community how we celebrate them how we lift them the tone and you know we produce uh in a loving way and i know that sounds crazy but we produce in a way that brings people together that tries to
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
have camaraderie or collaboration between our community. And I think that means something to the viewers. So whether that means a three-hour show and three-and-a-half-hour show going forward or shorter versions or clips, we're going to be looking at all that and doing a lot of new things over the coming years.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Nilay, you are a smart guy. You're asking me all the questions that I ask myself, and I'm going to come get you to work with me, man. You know how to think about this stuff. But it is really, really top of mind for me and for our team as to how do we continue to be relevant. Because if you do the same thing over and over again, it's not cool. No one's going to take it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
No one's going to be excited about it. So the hard part of it is... I hate to be, again, super basic about it, but it's revenue, making sure we're balancing being forward looking, thinking about what's next, how people are consuming with, how can we continue to monetize the brand and the show? Again, not because we want to make profit. That's not the motivation.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
The agenda is to generate more revenue so that we can push it back into the industry, back into the community. For us, it's about the health and the uplifting of music. I mean, this stuff is important. Music is so dang important, especially right now, maybe more than ever. with the way the country's gone, the world's gone, with so many disparate ideas and opinions. But I've seen it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
When I travel, when I see other parts of the world listening to music or listening to artists, we might have a crazy disagreement. But when the music comes on, everybody's dancing and clapping and singing. And it just opens up people's minds and their eyes. And so because of the power of music and because of my belief and the Academy's belief in the power of music,
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We're going to do everything we can to try and make sure that we're supporting it, we're lifting it up, we're showcasing it, and giving it a chance to do what it does. And if that means shortening the show, we'll do that.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
If that means lengthening the show, more artists, less artists, different genres, more voted, we're going to continue doing that work to change and evolve every day so that we can keep doing what we need to do to lift music people.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
The state of play is so much uncertainty and I'm concerned because AI as it relates to human creativity scares me to death. I know it has a lot of power and potential to enhance and amplify human creativity. But right now we don't have guardrails in place. We don't have any systems or processes set up so that human creators can be protected.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So the state of play is like we've got to get to work as an industry. And I know a lot of the smartest people are investing in AI, which I totally understand because it is so powerful and there's so much potential. But for me as a musician, as someone who also represents 25,000 members and music people from around the world, I want to make sure that human creativity is protected.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
For all the reasons I just said, the importance of music and the ability for us to tell stories and change hearts and minds, I think the human component to that is really, really dang important. So a little nervous that we haven't got it sorted out, but I'm also optimistic, to be honest, Nilay, because... Human creators are not like computers.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We take the chaos and the uncertainty in life and the stuff that AI hates, and we make incredible art from it. And we are able to dig down deep into some of our most creative spaces and pull out the next amazing thing and make great art that I don't think any computer is going to match our head.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
As much as we're nervous and we worry about it, I don't think you can tell me that AI can create songs in the key of life or Nevermind or Illmatic. I don't see it happening. So I want to make sure we're able to use AI and I'm not an AI hater. I think it's got great potential. I've been using it for eight or nine years in different forms. I've always been an early adopter to new tech.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So I'm with it. I get it. But we have to make sure human creativity is protected. And we have a chance to make sure we're remunerated properly. We have proper approvals and make sure it's credited properly. Those are the things that are really important to me.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Same way that we let music that have samples be eligible or we let music that has synthesizers or auto-tune or pro tools be eligible. It's a technology, an evolution that has allowed people to do more, create differently, think differently, make sounds we've never heard before.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So for us to draw a line in the sand and say, if you used artificial intelligence, you are ineligible, would be, I think, short-sighted. And I think it would also cut down on a lot of the music that's being created and submitted. Also, where would you draw the line?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I mean, there's AI and so much of the software we use now for even analyzing and doing mixes and sound design, not even just the generative AI that's making music, but The finer point is that we'll allow AI to be utilized, but we're not going to honor AI in the sense that if AI is performing a song, it's in our rules. We will not give the performance an award.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
If AI is writing the song, we will not give an award for the songwriting component. For example, if you wrote a song, it was a beautiful composition, it was the best lyrics, best music, best chord progressions, and you had AI sing it, you could submit it. It's not going to win for singing. It could win for songwriting.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Conversely, if you had AI just write a song as a great song, but some vocalists sang it or rapped on it and they performed the heck out of it, I'm not going to penalize the human creativity that went into that. I'm not going to give it an award for the songwriting, but I will give it an award for the performance. That's the way our rules are currently. I'm sure it's going to change.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
This stuff is moving so quickly. But for now, that's how the academy is moving.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I believe there needs to be an understanding of what these models are training on. And I'm not sure exactly to what level it will come down, whether there's compensation payment or crediting. But I do think something has to change. And I don't believe that people's personally copywritten material should just be used or accessed by everyone to do anything they want with.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So we have to come to a bottom line and understand there's fairly trained models out there, people that are licensing groups of music or catalogs to train AI on, and I think that's a good place to start. But there's a lot to talk about. That's probably a whole other show that we could dive a little deeper into.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
You know, it's a complicated subject. So I think there's some real talks that need to happen around that. Should it be compensated on the training side? At least we need to know what it's training on, how much of it's being used. So there's a lot of nuance to that question.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
There's no perfect solution or magic bullet to any of this stuff, especially the speed at which it's moving. We are really proud of the legislation that's been introduced and passed in a couple of different states, but now we're pushing for federal legislation with the No Fakes, No Frauds Act in the House and the Senate.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
That's not the intention. That's not our desire.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Again, there's a lot of nuance. There's no perfect bill. None of these bills are exact. Everyone is trying to compensate and accommodate the needs of a lot of people that have concerns and fears.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Of course, we don't want to prevent someone from impersonating Elvis, but we do want to prevent people from impersonating artists, singers, and using their voice without any form of payment or approval whatsoever. or the right crediting. And these bills are starts. I'm sure they'll be revised. I'm sure there'll be new bills, new things enacted.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But right now, we've got bipartisan, bicameral support. There needs to be some legislation that supports and protects human creativity, human artistry. So for us, it's a first step.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
It does, but also laws protect certain usage of other people's voice even if it's another human doing it. You can't pretend to be an artist and then go monetize that in certain ways. So there's laws in the books that already prevent that from happening.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Thanks, Eli. Good to be here.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
It's all going to continue to be a mess until we get a story out because, yes, it's difficult.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Yeah, I think that's the best I can give you because, as you said, certain artists tend to claim ownership differently than others. Also, artists sometimes have publishers or record companies that own pieces of their catalog that tend to be more aggressive than some artists might naturally be. But as you start introducing AI, unless we can understand
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
where it's coming from, what it's replicating or learning from and trying to simulate, it's going to be really dang hard to figure out where the money needs to go or how the money can flow. I'll tell you one story. I met with the head of the copyright office. She was an amazing woman.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
She came to my studio actually and we started pulling up some of the generative AI platforms and I was showing her how it works. This is probably eight months ago. She hadn't really been exposed to a bunch of it and I typed in a few words And we made a track, a song. And I said, is that copyrightable? She says, no, it's not. It has to have human interaction or human involvement.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I said, well, I typed in the prompt. She's like, oh, Harvey, that's not enough. So I took the same track and I typed a response. I said, well, change the key, change the tempo, and change these three lyrics. Then I sent it back to the platform and sent back a new song. I said, now is that copyrightable? She says, no, it's getting closer, but I don't think it's enough. So I did another prompt.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So I did three rounds of prompts. It came back. It was a slightly different song. And she said, okay, I think that's right. I think that's human interaction. So none of this is figured out. The head of the copyright office, who I thought was amazing and incredible, and I love the fact that she was interested and cared enough to come to my studio.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
But the fact that we don't have an understanding of how this moves forward and how we protect creators, whether that's the songwriters you mentioned or people that just had catalogs from 20 years ago, we're not going to have good, clean answers until we get those understandings.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
The labels are going to have to sue the platforms. If we can advocate –
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
properly and loudly enough even within the tech platforms throughout the labels and publishers journalists podcasts hosts we can talk about this enough come to an understanding of how this needs to function as confusing as that might be we can start to manage some of it internally you know some same things happened when we started sampling other people's records we had a bunch of hit records that included other people's samples and that ran its course we kind of figured out how it needed to be treated and handled
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Same thing with streaming. There's things like people are putting music all over the internet on streaming services, and we've gotten to a place where we're slightly better still work to do there. I believe we'll come to some solutions around AI and how we can all equally or equitably participate in the revenue.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Everybody has got to talk about Eli and Eli. Why not us?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Very different than AI. You're right.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I'm sure it will be messier because it is such a wider reaching issue. But I do think there's a way, maybe I'm overly optimistic in rose-colored glasses, but I think people realize the importance of music, maybe broader, the importance of art and AI has an impact across all the different disciplines of artistry. And if we can
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
continue to emphasize the value and the importance of it and point out that this has the potential to really be harmful to it. I have to believe in my human heart that anybody would want that to be addressed and would want to come up with a solution that made sense. whether it's the guys you mentioned or heads of other companies, I just think there's a way to do it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I know everybody's trying to build their companies, make value for their investors and shareholders, and there's a lot of levels to this. But at the base, it's music, man. It is music. We can't have... wild, wild west around copyright and ownership and intellectual property protections.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Stuff needs to be done properly so that we can continue to tell these stories, to have these emotions and the heart and soul behind these songs. Otherwise, what are we doing? We're just going to have the computer make everything? Now, if you look at AI for other things that are... Can you talk to Sam Altman? Because that might be his answer. I'm hoping to, but I have to. He has a favorite artist.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I know he does. He has a band he grew up listening to his whole life in his bedroom while he was programming some computer. He loves somebody. Or he's read a book that mattered, or he saw a piece of art that moved him. Everybody has. Well, maybe not everybody, but most people. So all that to say, I believe in human creativity.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I believe in AI and the power that it has to enhance and amplify human creativity. And there's a way that they can coexist, I believe.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Our members are split. There's a lot of members that say AI is the devil. Don't put it in the house. And they... are fearful, rightfully so. And then there's another group of our members that are really excited about the power, the potential of AI. And they're all in. They're creating, using it. They're doing everything they can using AI. And neither side is wrong.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And again, the beauty of music or art or creativity, everybody creates differently. So my role is a difficult one. It's to try and serve our membership and our music community fairly and and in a way that allows for a bright future for our creators, whether that's using AI or whether that's limiting AI or making sure there's guidelines around AI.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
It's to be determined, but my focus when I wake up is to make sure our human creativity is healthy, it's allowed to endure, and we can continue to make a living. We have a whole group of people who make their money, their living. They pay their rent and take care of their kids by creating art.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And we have another generation that's coming up that wants to do the same thing because they know how we express ourselves. We know how music can sometimes heal and unite people. I was on a plane the other day, and there was a woman sitting next to me, a couple seats over, on a laptop. She was crying. I thought she was typing a letter to somebody. She was programming in Logic.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
on her keyboard crying so this is therapy this is expression this is a human emotion and so I want to make sure that we're realizing that and we're realizing yes AI is a part of that how can it be integrated in a way that's responsible and reasonable yeah
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I do. I have a view of some of the coolest and best new artists in music. It's one of my favorite parts of the job is getting to meet these creators. But I'm going to ruin the question because it would be irresponsible of me to tell you who the next person was or somebody that I love because there's just so many. And I don't want it to seem as if it's an Academy endorsement. But I will say this.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
i think there's more new creators making music making great art than in the history of music because of the access because of the technology because of the young woman i saw on the plane programming on a laptop like this because of the fact that you can put music out without gatekeepers without barriers to entry you know the amount of songs that is being created and released it's astronomic and it's prolific and so i will say to your question
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
there's great new artists in hip-hop. I've now heard a new crop of incredible rock bands, which I think we've had a little bit of a shortage of. I've heard, obviously, the move into country and the popularity. There's some great new artists. I love how you're seeing genre-bending artists creating different types of music in those genres.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Jazz, there's a rebirth around jazz that I'm loving and I'm really excited about. So I mean, I don't know. I can geek out all day on music and new music. But this is a topic that I love to talk about. Great music, great new artists, and how we're going to celebrate them.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Well, it starts with our show and most people know us from our show, the Grammy show. We've been doing a Grammy show for 66 years. I've been doing them since, as you said, four years ago as the CEO. But the Grammy show celebrates music and lifts creators and showcases all the different genres of music. The recording academy that produces the Grammys generates revenue from that show.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And we use that revenue that's paid to us by CBS for a licensing fee to do all the programs we do throughout the year. So it's advocacy, fighting for the rights of music people, talking about AI. We're doing a ton of stuff in that space to make sure human creators are protected. Other copyright and intellectual property protections that we're working on.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We spend millions and millions of dollars every year advocating for the rights of music people. So that's one area. The other area is...
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
philanthropic organization that's within the academy called music cares music cares is kind of a give back organization for anybody who's a musician you don't have to be a member but if you're a professional working in the music industry and you need help if you are sick facing a drug addiction mental health crisis if you crash your car someone broke in and stole your guitar
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
These are things that music cares, takes care of. And again, millions and millions of dollars every year during COVID, we gave $50 million in aid to music people that needed help. And then we do a lot through our museum, education and preservation of music, making sure the next generation of kids is exposed to music.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And if I didn't have an instrument in my hand or didn't know about all the different genres of music, I wouldn't have had a career. So making sure we do a lot of work through that. And that's what was funded and financed by our show and our performance. So that's kind of the structure of the Recording Academy.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
No, actually it strikes me as being incredibly aligned because the idea of the show is to benefit creators, even in just on its face, the show itself, we know the economic impact the show has to creators and songwriters, producers, engineers. All the ancillary or tangentially connected people that work in our industry all get a lift from our show. The streaming goes up. The consumption goes up.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
The ability to tour goes up. So that helps the creative community. And then all the revenue that we create, and you said most of the revenue is what we put, all of the revenue that we put into it comes from that show. The major drivers for revenue for the Academy are the show, other Grammy week activities, ticket sales, and sponsorships, which really kind of happens during Grammy week.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
So all that money goes back into serving the community. So for me, the only thing that's a little bit misaligned is the lack of information That the creative community has about why we do the show and that we even do these other things. A lot of people just think, oh, the Grammys are just the show. And I spend a lot of time and energy and we've got to do a better job of this as an academy.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Letting creatives and artists and producers know the reason that this show is so important is because it creates a bunch of money. hate to be so crass, but it's cash that we can use and deploy it back into our music community. So the better the show is, the better the ratings are, the more money we can generate from that show, more money that comes directly back into our industry.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
A thousand percent. And that's one of my big goals for my time here at the Academy is to make sure that we're not so reliant on just TV. Having said that, we are exploring a lot of different opportunities, how to best utilize the brand while still supporting music people and doing things within our mission. We don't want to just go... you know, sell coffee mugs or just do different random things.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We want to make sure it's on brand, on mission, this most coveted award, because it's our peers voting for our peers. So we want to make sure we keep that in mind. And it's got to be a part of whatever we do to expand. And I would love to talk about misalignment. I would love to find an additional way to generate a bunch of money and resources that we could use for our community. But right now,
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Our deal with CBS is the thing that moves the needle the most for us and allows us to have the maximum impact within our community.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
On the staff side, roughly 300 people between our different affiliates. As I said, it's the Academy, it's the Latin Academy, the Museum, and Music Cares.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
It kind of fluctuates, but the majority of the people work for the Recording Academy. Approximately 200 people for the Academy, and then some split between the Latin Academy, the Museum, and Music Cares.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Zero. That's a seasonal effort. That's something that we do. It's a six-month focus. I mean, we're always thinking about the show. We're really directing a lot of our efforts towards the outcomes that will happen on the show. But the show production is very specific to a few months of the year, the rest of the year.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
The team's working on awards, on membership, on advocacy, on all the things that I talked about throughout the academy. And we have a great staff of DEI department. We have people in culture. There's a lot of different departments that are focused on making sure that the academy can have that impact, making sure we are successful.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
growing the right membership and we talk about the awards and our ability to monetize our intellectual property our grammys through a show we have to have the right awards so you got to have the right awards department thinking about that you got to have the right membership department because without the right members you're not going to get the right results in order to stay relevant we have to have relevant members so we've just gone through a membership overhaul 100 of our members have been requalified we have 66 of our members are all new within the last five years
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And we've just added 3,000 new women voters. We've got almost 40% people of culture or people of color. I'm sorry. Those are not the numbers that we had four years ago. So we're all very proud as a staff and our elected leadership as to the work that's been done to change our membership, which then, of course, changes the awards, changes our show, changes our ability to generate revenue.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I think about it constantly, to tell you the truth. And fiddling is a nicer way of, or maybe a more playful way of saying it, but it's really the evolution of what we do in iteration around everything at the academy. And that has been a big area of focus for me and my management team over the last four years, because we are 66 years old is an iconic institution, if I could say so.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
And it means a lot to a lot of people, including people in the music community, but also music fans. So we want to be respectful of what that is and what it has been. But for me, we cannot afford to be stagnant. Music moves so fast. And you and your viewers, listeners know technology and the way people are consuming music and art is evolving so rapidly that we had to evolve as an organization. So
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
I spend a lot of time thinking, how can we adjust? How can we pivot? How can we see around the corner what's happening next? So a lot of that work, I have to say, comes from our membership because the membership really submits the changes. They submit proposals. What are we going to honor in music this year? How are we going to title this new category?