Rick Beato is one of the most popular and influential music YouTubers, with more than five million subscribers and almost 1.5 billion views.
The multi-instrumentalist, teacher and producer has attracted such names to his channel as Noel Gallagher, Brian May, Sting and David Gilmour. He is coming to the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin in November.
Did you grow up in a musical household?
On my mom’s side of the family, a couple of her sisters were music teachers, her brother played bass and my grandfather was an amateur guitarist. And then my dad was an avid record collector, even though he never played an instrument. And myself and my youngest brother, John, both played guitar.
Do you think there’s a music gene? Or is it just that you’re playing music at an early age and you’ve got somebody to teach you?
I think there’s some of both of those. I think that motivation is inherited, and I think motivation is the strongest predictor of whether someone learns to play an instrument, because the learning curve is very steep. It takes a while for something to become enjoyable and not a chore.
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Today it’s more difficult. My kids don’t want to practise their instruments. Pretty much everybody that I knew played some kind of an instrument when I was growing up, in the 1960s and 1970s.
Do you think everybody has the ability to play music?
I won’t say everybody. There are people I’ve met that are literally tone deaf, but I can count them on one hand. Anybody who can carry a tune can learn to play an instrument.
You taught music for six years. Do you use any of those lessons on your YouTube channel?
Absolutely. Every day I use things that I learned in college. My undergrad degree was classical based; my master’s was in jazz guitar. The things I learned about ear training, about music theory, about music history, improvisation, all these are things that I regularly talk about on my channel.
You joined the band Billionaire and made an album. Is it fair to say it didn’t quite work out?
We put out a record and within a month there was the first label consolidation. That happened in 1999. Universal Music Group acquired the record label I was on, and virtually every artist was dropped at that point. That was it.
You said somewhere that your first record cost $500,000 to make. Is that right?
Basically yes. It was a disaster. The producer was having some issues at the time and not showing up very much. And that studio time, that clicker just keeps going.
I went into producing after that. When you’re in a band you only make one record a year, or one record every couple of years, but if you’re a producer you’re constantly working on new things. Making records is fun. It doesn’t matter what the style. If they’re good songs it’s fun to do. And it’s diverse and it’s not boring.
I started producing full time in 1999. But the [financial] crash in 2008, which was a worldwide thing, was pretty much the end of the record business as we know it, and the end of rock bands.
I would work with a lot of solo artists after that, until 2016, when I started my YouTube channel, but there were no budgets and there was almost no one getting record deals. There was very little incentive for people to even start bands. I worked with a lot of solo artists and things like that.
Rock bands seemed totally unassailable. There are no new rock bands any more. Why is that?
Nobody has any place to practise, or time. My son, for example, plays guitar, and he’s got a buddy that plays bass, but they can’t find a drummer.
I went to high school with about 2,500 kids, and there were 25 to 30 rock bands. There were so many people that played every instrument. The other thing is there’s no incentive for people. Most of the people that I’ve interviewed were incredibly successful financially, in addition to everything else.
When there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, there’s not a lot of incentive, especially for rock bands, because you’re splitting the money multiple ways. So nowadays you find mostly solo artists.
You started your YouTube channel with a video of your son Dylan, who has perfect pitch
Yes, that was actually on Facebook, about six months before I started my YouTube channel. I’m an accidental YouTuber.
Why would anyone want to listen to a 54-year-old guy with white hair? Apparently, a lot of people, as it turned out.
How on earth did your son do that? Is this just a natural talent?
I played this really sophisticated music for Dylan before he was born, modern classical music and jazz, mostly solo piano. Some of it would be Bach. And I would play that for about 30 minutes a night on my wife’s stomach, starting at about 15 weeks.
Then, when Dylan was born, I sat with him every day. We’d listen to music and I’d dance around with him, like you do with your little kid. It just was by accident that I realised, when Dylan was three, that he was singing these songs in the right key.
When did you realise there was an audience for your YouTube channel?
I started posting videos mainly to answer questions people emailed me about Dylan’s video – “What kind of music did you play for him?” – and all this kind of stuff. I talked about the music theory behind it.
I probably had 3,000 subscribers in the first month. Then Dweezil Zappa reached out to me, and Steve Vai soon after. My channel was really for professional musicians.
Do you think the reason you attract big names like Sting, Dave Gilmour and Brian May to your channel is because you know and understand how music is created?
Definitely. Almost everyone I’ve interviewed, I’ve broken down their songs. I talk about the construction of it, I play all the different parts, I analyse the melody. People respect you when you really have an in-depth understanding of their works.
Do you think in some ways you understand their music better than they do? You wonder how much music theory The Beatles had before they wrote all those songs
Nirvana is one of my favourite bands. I always say, “Kurt Cobain didn’t know the theory behind this, but I know it, and now I’m going to teach you about it.”
It doesn’t matter whether they knew it or not. It’s just learning the names, really. A lot of people who don’t know anything about music theory are still able to play music. And you don’t need to be able to read music unless you are in an orchestra.
You critique a lot of contemporary music. Was popular music better in the old days?
When I do my Spotify breakdowns, people are always expecting me to trash everything. A good melody is a good melody, regardless of when it was written. And good production is good production.
I can find really good things about stuff. I can even enjoy music that I don’t even like.
A lot of songwriting is almost by committee nowadays. You had a recent video about Sabrina Carpenter’s Manchild, pointing out that she probably didn’t write the song. Do you think that’s a bad thing?
There’s a couple of things going on. In the past, people that came up with arrangements never got a songwriter’s credit.
A lot of the people that played with, say, Michael Jackson or Steely Dan, they played these iconic parts that nowadays they would get songwriting credit for.
I think about Steve Lukather’s guitar part on Human Nature. It’s a main melody line, but he didn’t get songwriting credit. He was just expected to do that. Nowadays people get credit for any little thing they do.
Are people entering the music business nowadays seriously disadvantaged compared to your generation, or is it a more democratic medium?
I think it’s both. It’s a good time to be a musician, but you just have to have a different strategy. Music is promoted in a different way than it was. And anyone can promote their music.
Not everyone can get on Spotify or on Apple Music, but you can get on DistroKid or TuneCore. You can survive without a major record label, but it is way more difficult. Obviously, live music is where a lot of the money is generated. It’s hard to generate money through streams.
A billion streams will pay between $3 million and $5 million to the writer, but there are very few billion-stream songs. The Beatles only have one: Here Comes the Sun.
In Ireland we have Music Generation, which gives a musical education to any child who wants one. What do you think of that initiative?
I am a huge public-music advocate. I went to a public school. The school I was in provided instruments for every kid. I talked to my old orchestra director, and they have over 500 stringed instruments in our district alone, which is insane – violins, cellos and basses in a small town in upstate New York.
The disciplined study of a musical instrument is the most important thing you can do for a child’s brain development. Period. There is nothing better.
What are you hoping to talk about with your live audience in Dublin?
I will talk about some of the things I can’t talk about on my channel. I’ll take questions from the audience. I do song breakdowns.
There will be a component where I talk about where music is today in the face of AI and how musicians can insulate themselves from the effects of that. I think the threat is overblown and I’ll talk about why. People still want to hear real artists.
Your YouTube channel has been accused of multiple copyright violations by record companies. You claim fair usage. Are they deliberately targeting you?
They will keep doing it and we will keep fighting it. It’s been going on to YouTubers forever. I feel it is my responsibility: I have a big channel and can afford to make these videos about this.
I’m doing whatever I can to try and bring a focus on the fact that labels like UMG have found that this is an easy way to make money from YouTubers.
Rick Beato: Unedited is at the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin, on Wednesday, November 5th
