Why AI Depresses Patreon CEO Jack Conte

Yo, it was a Pockets recording. It was like they trained on your stuff for sure. Oh, dude. It's like the horn arrangement, even the mixing. I was like, 'This sounds like it was a Pockets recording.' It's crazy.

Really bad. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, what I feel is depression. Um, because you know, I remember what it felt like in 2012 when I wasn't getting paid for my work, publishing stuff on the internet. I was like, 'Yo, we're all just going to like publish stuff and none of us are going to get paid for it and we're going to let the platforms tell us that we're doing it for the exposure and like that's our lot now? Like that's what it means to be an artist is just make a bunch of stuff for free and not get paid for it.' I remember what that felt like and it was depressing as hell and it's why I started this company, right? It's like it was a slingshot that catapulted me into 13 years of operations and insanity which I did not expect that, but here I am.

I felt like we made so much progress as a company. Like when Patreon started, there was no such thing as the creator economy. That was not a term. Yeah. Um, and now 13 years later, you know, creators have earned, you know, I think at this point it's over 11 billion dollars on Patreon. Insane. Yeah, like I'm so proud of that. And I feel like we're doing it. Like we're chipping away at this problem, you know, we're chipping away at it. We're not, you know, YouTube, but like we're making a difference and that feels good. I feel like I'm doing what I set out to do. And then this thing happens. And I'm like, oh my, it feels like starting over. It feels like resetting the scoreboard to zero. And it's like now there's this whole other way to screw creative people. You know, it's not just about publishing your work anymore and getting paid for that. It's like using your work, absorbing your work into an omnipotent, omniscient model that just borgs all of your creativity and then spits it back out for anybody who wants it and doesn't give you credit or compensation along the way. And doesn't even let you consent. You can't even say no, I don't want you to train on my stuff. Um, and like I didn't see that coming four years ago. I don't, very few people did, you know? Um, and I feel depressed. Um, so now I'm hopeful that there will be solutions for this. Um, in the form of products, in the form of legislation, in the form of consumer demand, creator demand. I am hopeful. Uh, but like right now it's just another moment where creators take a right hook in the face and have to bleed for a while before we get patched up. And that is, oh man, sorry. Yeah. It's, uh, not fair. Not fair.

The secret for Scary Pockets and Pomplamoose who made, you know, between the two bands made 100 music videos a year for 7 years. It's insane. The secret there was fly down to LA on a Friday night. Pomplamoose would meet on Saturday, record four songs. Scary Pockets would meet Sunday, record four songs. I'd fly back and then do Patreon the rest of the month. Meanwhile, a team is editing and assembling those songs into videos. We release them one song per band per week. And now I get to be a creator releasing a song a week on two different YouTube channels by working one Saturday and Sunday in the recording sessions. And then the rest of the time, I'm devoted to Patreon because I'm super busy here. Um, but like that trick of batching production allowed me to be a very prolific creator for a very, very long time while I was, you know, building out Patreon.

No, and part of the reason I think I'm good at it is because I sucked at it for so long. Mhm. Um, you know, at this point in terms of like, so that process of going down on a Saturday and Sunday, arranging and recording four songs in one day in a 6-hour period. Um, you know, Pomplamoose published maybe 400 or 450 songs that way. One thing that is key is like, everybody says trust your gut. It's not that. It's like, did I just feel something? Like am I excited about that? And then really leaning into that. Like if somebody does something, you're like, 'Ooh.' It's like stop everything. Do that. And then let's work around that. There's something core there. And you can feel that in literally 1 second, or at least I can. Mhm. And it's like, 'Ooh, I like that.' Mhm. Run at that as fast as you can and build around that, because then there's something core that's inspiring. And usually if you feel it, like we all have the same shape of brain, probably other people felt excited about that, too. Yeah. Um, so, that's one thing. It's just like I let myself be a child in those rooms. Second thing is like, which I appreciate what you said around having good ideas. Uh, I do have ideas, and I do sometimes say those ideas. But I also really like, if you're working with good people, you can literally be like, all you have to do is put something on the table. So, I can literally be like, 'Hey, let's do a four on the floor thing at 120. Spence, what you got?' Mhm. And the drummer just goes, and now you have to do something. And like, sometimes you'll do a thing and it'll be like, 'Let's run with that.' Sometimes it's not there. I'll be like, 'Nick Campbell, what do you got?' You know? And then Nick'll try something, and after two or three of those, there's usually something there that we can start to stack on top of. So, pulling ideas from the room in those settings, getting people to just be impulsive and let things flow out of them is really great. Mhm. Um, I don't have a third thing, but I'll think of something. Instagram's going to be so disappointed.

Yeah. Which is all about the yes, and.

Yeah. Um, either with other people or with yourself. Um, you know, I think that used to be really hard for me. Uh, but I think the more I made a big deal out of it, the worse it was for the other person and for me. Hm. Um, and so like literally now I'll just be like, 'Try something else. What else you got?' Hm. Um, and like I've never seen somebody cry because I said that. Like nobody, like we're all adults. Like let's try something else. Um, you know, what else have I done? Um, sometimes I'll change something else or I'll change my part or I'll just describe what I'm feeling. Hm. Like I'll say to the room like, 'I'm just not feeling excited when we get to the chorus.' Hm. And usually people are like, 'Yeah, I'm not feeling excited either about the chorus.' Mhm. And it's not about a person or a human or anything anyone's doing wrong. It's like we're all in this room together working on this thing, and we're trying to make something that makes us feel something. And if we're not feeling something, thank god somebody said so. Hm. And then let's all make adjustments to see if when we get to the chorus, we can be excited about it.

What was it? Oh, um, yeah, we started really high. It was like this Michael Jackson kind of funky, off-the-wall kind of 80s picky guitar funk thing. And we just started really high for like 16 bars. So we let it ride for a while. And then we dropped it way down. It was just like four on the floor and a shaker and a vocal. Just partying and they just make a ton of space for the singer to just enter and just be like, 'Wow, listen to this voice.' And then we brought it back up. And then our instinct at first when we got to the second verse was to do the same thing. Everybody comes down. Um, and we got to the second verse, everybody dropped out, shaker, kick drum, she did the second verse. We did a couple takes like this. When we went back to the control room to listen. When we listened back to the takes and we got to the second verse, I was like, 'Oh, I'm so disappointed.' Like I feel like the party stopped. You know, and everybody was like, 'Yeah.' Like we need to keep playing through that second verse. Like it was a good idea to come down that first verse, but then once we reignite the party, let's just let the party ride rather than coming down again. Like we already did that. We don't need to do it again. And everybody was shaking their butts and dancing. Let's keep it going. Um, so literally just like, I guess it comes down to the same thing. It's just like saying how I feel. Making it less like you're not doing something right and more like I'm not, you know, this isn't working for me for whatever reason. I want to fully express myself with my music, you know? Which is why I struggle with Suno. Oh, I use Suno sometimes. Like I have used Suno. Um, I use it to reimagine things really quickly. I very rarely use the output of Suno. Um, have I ever used the output of Suno? I'll use something and then have it turn it into a string quartet or a string arrangement or have it turn it into a funk something or whatever to get ideas. Um, and then I find sometimes that inspires me and then I'll open up Ableton and go do something. I can't use it as a DAW. I've tried. Yeah, it's not great. I can't. And I'm, you know, power to them. They've really invested in the DAW, Mhm, but it's just not feature-rich enough. Yeah. And for serious producers, I don't think it was made for serious producers. It's not made for, yeah. Yeah. And I'm always, it's never exactly what I want. I think there's always going to be a certain type of artist that's very specific around exactly what they want to express and how they want to express it. Mhm. I think that type of craftsperson will probably always exist. Mhm. And I think AI will get really good at making things that sound good and look good and read well and it'll get good at it, but it doesn't know exactly what I want to say unless it can somehow tap into my brain and understand the entire thing and my physiological state and my emotional state. Like it's going to be a long time before it can even get close to that. And so, I think there's going to be craftspeople who for a very, very, very long time. I mean, decades and decades and decades. And who can see beyond that anyway, but who will just use the AI as a tool to help them say what they want to say, but I don't see, I know there's a lot of creative people who are worried it's going to replace creative people. I'm not one of those people. I don't think it replaces creative people because it can't know what you want to say. Right. Unless you have nothing to say. Unless you have nothing to say. Right. It will replace people who don't have anything to say. That's a good way to say it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, I do.

Um, it was shaking. Mhm. Um, I thought the chords were so sick that I transcribed them. [laughter] What were they? Do you remember? Yeah, it, um, there was an unexpected minor four and there was an unexpected major seven in otherwise what was like a bunch of mode mixture and flat sixes and flat sevens and traditional dance music. Yeah. [snorts] And then it threw in this like major backdoor seven thing, like flat seven major thing. Uh, no, no, no, a natural seven. Natural seven major chord. Major in just the wrong place. Woah. And I was like, 'That's hip as fuck.' [laughter] Yeah. And I didn't know what it was. Yeah. And so I literally put on the earphones, sat down at the piano, and was like, second by second because there was also some really cool inner voice movement along the way. Like it wasn't supposed to be a natural seven. It was like two notes shifted and suddenly the structure was a natural seven. Yeah. And so there was cool voice leading. Yeah. And look, I'm not saying that AI never makes cool things. There's some cool moments, right? Or at least it made something where I was like, 'That's cool.' Yeah. Uh, but it doesn't do that over and over and over again. And it's usually one thing. I haven't heard the architecture of something that really pulls me. Yeah.

I thought about this a lot because you know, I just spent a long time talking about acting in accordance with my beliefs, right? And so this matters to me. Um, so much to say about that. Uh, the first is I think this is a very important moment for artists right now. Uh, you know, when the film industry transitioned off of silent films in 1927, um, a whole bunch of filmmakers didn't make the transition. A whole bunch of actors didn't make the transition. Um, a whole bunch of directors didn't make the transition. Um, and in 3 years the world shifted from silent films to films with sound. The musicians union put up a huge fight because the theaters employed orchestras to score silent films live. Mhm. Beautiful. That would have been awesome. It was awesome. It was awesome. And the way people experienced music at the time was live music. Mhm. That's what they thought music was. Recording didn't really exist. Commercial recording didn't exist in 1927. There was recording technology, but like people weren't buying listening to records like they did in the '70s, right? Um, so when talkies hit in 1927, the first talkie was The Jazz Singer. Uh, the theaters were like, 'Holy, this is amazing. Synchronized dialogue and picture with scores baked into the film?' Um, the machine that played back synchronized dialogue and picture cost about 9 to 15,000 dollars at the time. And so the theater owners, many of them paid for the new equipment by firing the orchestra. Mhm. So within about 3 years, um, it's estimated that somewhere around 50,000 musicians lost their jobs. Mhm. Um, so you can look at that. Brutal history, right? There's brutal history with technology and the arts. Um, are movies with sound evil? Mhm. Is recorded sound a bad thing? [snorts] I think about the sound of R2-D2's beeps or the theme from Indiana Jones or, you know, these sounds that are now a part of my brain and heart, you know? And I'm so grateful that recorded sound exists. You know and it was a brutal technology and it was a very difficult moment with culture and for so many musicians who lost their jobs, so many musicians lost their jobs over that time period. And then, you know, the musicians union ran ads basically saying like this is fake music. Recorded sound is fake sound. And they ran a whole campaign for like a decade that showed robots, literally there's one ad that shows robots shoving acoustic instruments into a meat grinder and it's outputting garbled gross stuff into a can labeled canned music. They called it canned music. And so like culturally there was this big pushback on like this is evil technology, it's putting musicians out of work, it's canned music, it's fake music, it's fake art, it's not real sound, it's fake sound. 30 years later the Beatles recorded Abbey Road and like it blew all of our, actually Revolver even before Abbey Road. There were records that they made where they approached recording as a new, they weren't trying to replicate live music. They were using it as a new medium and they made beautiful things that gave us feelings that we could have never had live and moved people in a whole new way and expressed themselves in a whole new way. It's a very roundabout way of answering your question but I think this is a very important moment for artists right now. Mhm. They need to be thinking about how can I use these tools, whatever tools, to help me accomplish my dreams as an artist, to help me express myself. Um, there is no way that in 20 years people aren't using AI tools to help them express themselves. There is no way. The cat is out of the bag. Yeah. And whether it's good or bad or which I think are silly labels, there is a, and this is something about my personality, there's a pragmatism that I have about some of these things where it's like what am I going to do? Like I run a technology company. If I don't adopt these tools and have our team adopt these tools at a blitzing clip, Patreon will be dead in 3 years. 100%. Dead. Mhm. And the billions of dollars that we send creators every year will be up in smoke. Yeah. Um, I can't let that happen. Mhm. Um, it's the same thing around when Patreon got started. One approach for me could have been this whole internet thing sucks. It's not paying creators. I'm out. I'm boycotting the internet. The internet is unfair to creative people. The internet. I'm not using it. That could have been my approach, but it wasn't. Instead, my approach was I'm going to use this thing called the internet to build a better way so that creators can be compensated for their labor. Mhm. Um, I want to take all these cool systems and tools and intelligences that people are making and I want to aim those things at getting creators paid. Mhm. That's what I want to do. Mhm. And I think if we don't do that, we're not honoring our mission. Mhm. So, now I'm not saying it's like black and white or like it feels great or like I'm excited about it. But I want to and must be pragmatic about it at the same time. As sad as it is, as depressed as I am about these things, I also want to take the same approach I took with Patreon, which is I'm not going to boycott the internet. I'm going to use it to make something better.

And I so appreciate you. Thank you, Spence.