Welcome to Episode 40 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here again with Aaron Gingras of Suburban Samurai. How are you doing today, Aaron?

On this even numbered episode, I'm doing quite well. I cannot believe we're a number 40 already. I mean, not already. I guess it's been just over a year since we started taping, but still 40. Seems like that's something. Yeah, I believe this episode pushes us into September, which is surreal to say, because it's August 5th at the time of recording. So any of our banter, if you know the world, has, like, blown up by the time this episode comes out. Apologies. We didn't know about that because we recorded this like, four weeks ago.

So anyway, things are looking pretty good here on my end were 10 episodes away from 50 and we'll have to figure out something special for that. And I've got a couple ideas that I'll go over with you and Matt off the air. So it's a surprise for everyone else. But it's been a couple of days since we last had a session. And I think you had some band practices in that time, right? We did. We haven't gotten to many incense. I don't know at what point we we stop referring thio how we're going about our lives of these days, this quarantine or not, more so than not for sure.

Still, uh, staying at home and, you know, social distancing. And we're not going to the movies or or out to the pub, that's for sure. But yeah, there was a long period of time, you know, obviously, between mid March, up until very recently, where no practices. You know, we enjoyed a couple of zoom sessions, but you know, that only takes ah, punk rock band so far, unless you kind of have fully equipped yourself. And so, yeah, we've recently started to rehearse in person again, which is quite refreshing and awesome and is allowed us to come up with a couple of cool ideas that were working to implement in the next couple of months.

There's stuff going on for the first time in a while. That was the longest lag in sub sand activity ever. Which just, I don't know, made me super anxious the whole time. Yeah, I think. Unfortunately, a lot of bands can say that right now, but it's great that we're in a state that's doing so well. And you guys were able to get back together safely and start rehearsing again and all that. You know, for a lot of bands, I've seen bands who are practicing with face masks and all that.

So they're really keeping it covered. I see what you did there. What are you talking about? What did I do there? What did you dio? We have ah, super fun topic. Today we're going to talk about covers and more specifically should Or how a band might want to release a cover. Exactly. We think this is a really important topic because there are a lot of amazing covers out there that have either become more popular than the original. And people think it's the original or covers that just go badly and people just drag them on the Internet.

Which is not something we ever want someone to see when you record a cover and release it to Spotify, iTunes, Apple music, all the big players. It's a great way for an artist to highlight who their influences are or just who they enjoy listening. Thio and fans can kind of connect on a deeper level if they like the original song because they already know the song. And so this example I'm about to give isn't actually ah, studio cover, which is what we're gonna be talking about. But one of my favorite bands, Violent Soho, had appearance.

There's Ah, Triple J show, which is an Australian radio station. It's called like aversion, and it's literally just bands coming in and playing a coverage song and violent SoHo. Who, for those of you who don't know him there like a grunge indie type act, they covered Silver Sun pickups, lazy eye, which is so very different. But it was amazing, and I loved it, and I would love for them to do it like a studio release of it. But I don't think they ever will. That being said it could go horribly wrong, Lee, if they had butchered it out of them like, Oh, now I don't like them anymore.

Or at least it would have left a bad taste in my mouth, but because they did so well, I was really pleased by it. So in this episode, we're going to go over how you can make sure that you released a good cover and what you should avoid, so you don't make a bad cover. But before we go there, Aaron, I know you had something you really wanted to talk about. As soon as I mentioned that, I wanted to talk about covers. Yeah, I mean, just one of the first things that popped into my brain, and it maybe wouldn't be the first thing toe pop into everybody's brain.

But, you know, growing up and listening to, you know, all the bands that would probably fall under the umbrella of, you know, being a warped tour band at some point in their career. Um, not that the two are, you know, totally 100% sink, but a lot of bands who have played on orbit you're haven't some point played on a punk goes release. Obviously, you know, punk owes pop. Punk goes metal. Franco's crunk. Um Ah, lot of great stuff in a lot of other stuff. I'm assuming they're still cranking this out.

I can't imagine that at any point they've ever not done particularly well. It's a popular Siri's that I think fearless put out or or putting out, I don't know. That was one of the first things that popped in my head. You know, people probably either think you know total garbage or they think it's super awesome or something in between. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's, ah, successful run of records, which I feel like must have kind of served as an entry point or like a confirmation of status or presence within a scene for a lot of bands, like obviously you know, on the earlier takes, they're actually punk bands, like doing the covers.

And then, you know, we kind of got into the you know, the all time low and they to remember, sort of like pop punk power pop and then, like, kind of the m o e. Like they wore like, acid washed skinny jeans with, like, the white belts, like those hardcore people. And then I'm sure recently it was just straight up metal core, like I'm sure they're gonna end up having like if they keep going a gent band or something on there. But it's, you know, it's been super cool to sort of see that trend.

And it's a far as I could tell, always been popular within that group of people who would buy the record anyways. And I thought that was something really cool. That again, I don't particularly love each and every entry. But, you know, it's kind of Ah, a neat thing And it's, I don't know, kind of like being a work to her band. Like, I feel like that is a different club that some bands get to belong Thio. But it's, I don't know, kind of Ah, cool thing that anybody who's probably between the ages of 17 and you know 35 at this point would remember those definitely.

And I think one of my favorite things about that whole Siri's is that it takes bands out of their element or rather take songs out of their element and brings them into the band's element. So each one of those, like I remember if I was on the first one, which was punk coz metal and they did my Michelle, which is a totally different song for them. But it was really cool. And then you have songs like, What was it? Umbrella? Was that Rihanna? I think that was on there on one of them, and I don't remember who covered that.

But I know attack attack was on one of them. So there was really quite a variety of songs and artists on that. Siri's one of the first things that a good cover should be is actually what punk goes did, because if you want to release a good cover, it should be a new original twist on the original song while still remaining recognizable. And so what we mean there is that it shouldn't just sound like you're trying to sound like whoever originally recorded this song. If you wanted to cover a Green Day song, you wouldn't want to have it sound exactly like American idiot.

You would want it to sound like your song, but you're playing American idiot. So think of it this way, American idiot in your style, which could be really interesting if you pull it off right, but you have to pull it off, right? So the cover. It should be in good spirits and maintaining the original mood of the song. So you wouldn't want to make a sad song Super happy or vice versa or anything like that, unless that's what you dio, for example, shout out to Scott to Network.

I love the stuff Jeremy posts. Their content is amazing. Maybe that's just me, because I like Scott, but I love seeing those videos pop up every time they post something. It's really cool to see what Jeremy is doing, and they've now involved other people to. They've done a lot more collapse and stuff, which I think is awesome. And so in those cases, maybe the mood is being changed. And I'm totally okay with that, because that's what Scott to Network is known for. The same with postmodern jukebox.

They take all these modern hits and modern songs and turned them into, like 19 twenties, thirties and forties style big band type stuff, which is also really cool, and I love to hear that, Although I'm not as big a fan of their because I am with Scott to network, it is nice to hear what they're doing, and they are putting an original twist on it. That's not to say you have to change it that much. You don't have to take a pop song and make it a big band song or make it a Scot song.

But you know, you could take Ah pop punk song and make it a Nemo song or ah, metal core song or something like that. Change it so it fits your style. And really, what we're saying here is your style shouldn't sound like anyone else. If you sound exactly like Green Day, go ahead and cover a Green Day song in the style of Green Day. But you're probably not going to get big being a carbon copy of Green Day in the first place. So you might as well find an original style and then cover a Green Day song in your original style to just jump in here.

I know that we're primarily focusing on the idea of a recorded cover, a recorded version of somebody else song, but piggybacking off what you're saying, A great way to sort of keep yourself in check and make sure you're in alignment with all of those things. Is pretend like you were going to play it at one of your live shows. In my opinion, a great way to measure yourself for a sort of gauge it is like, Is that gonna be like the odd duck, or is it going to fit in with my set?

Obviously, it's not my song, but more or less, if there's somebody who hates me who's just waiting for the set to be over in the back, not paying attention, are they going to be able to tell, or is there like a really big shift? I think that's a good way to gauge it if it would fit in with a live set your on the right track. Yeah, I really like what you're saying there, and I'm glad you point out that we are talking about recorded studio cover.

So if you wanted to release a video to YouTube or something like that, that's just like a live cover or an acoustic cover or something like that or something that's not super high production value by all means do that. We're talking about covers released. Two major distribution going Thio, Spotify, apple music, all that kind of stuff. That is where you have to make sure that you're absolutely hitting the nail on the head every single time. And so some of the things that you would definitely want thio avoid when you're releasing a cover is having poor production.

So this goes back, Thio what we're talking about, You want it to be different, but maintain the original thing. If you have bad production, you're not gonna have a good arrangement. You're not gonna have a good mix. You want it to be living up to the original and its full capacity because you have to keep in mind that people are not only judging your cover for how you play it, but they are judging it on how it lives up to the original. So if it sounds good, but it's not great and the original was great, they're going to say, Oh, well, this isn't is good.

I like the original more. You have to blow them out of the water So that being said, you should make sure that your arrangement is not boring. You have to make sure that it keeps people interested in what you're doing. This goes back to not being a carbon copy. If I hear it cover, that's a carbon copy. I am bored. Why shouldn't I just listen to the original? What's the point? The next thing is you have to have energy and feeling. Coverage should not be lacking in energy and feeling, because again the original had energy and feeling.

If you can't pull that off, what's the point? So granted, your own songs should not be poorly produced, boring or lacking and energy and feeling. But it's especially important with covers that you get it right, because again you are being held to a higher standard. You're being held to the standard that was set with the original. So, especially if you're covering a pop song that's really famous that everyone knows and has Butch Vig or Rick Rubin or any of the big producers on it, you better kill it or you're not gonna have a good time with that cover.

That being said, I think in most cases the pros outweigh the cons. When it comes to recording covers. So do you want to tell us a little more about that, Erin? Yeah. So if you've got an idea for a cover unlock and your committed to it, you've figured out the arrangement. Whatever it's gonna be, you figured it all out first and foremost, it could open your music and your are up to new audiences. I through this next bullet point in two minutes before we started recording today.

But to be honest, I'm already a fan of the interrupters. But I still thought it was awesome. And I'm sure it would have been an awesome introduction if I had never have heard of them before. When I heard their cover Billy eyelashes Bad guy in Umbrella Academy Season two. It was awesome. Their original material is quite great, in my opinion. And I'm sure that they've found whatever level of success they want to in sinking and marrying their own original music with visual content. You know, video commercials, whatever.

But it was a cool thing. The producers of that television show, I'm sure, had a very specific idea for what feeling that they wanted that seemed to convey. And what part of that the audio should support. And so they landed on that, and that ended up being there. Cover so again, already a fan. But it's, ah, super cool way for people who are already a fan of your music. Thio see a different side of you people who are not already fans of yours to get sucked into all the awesome stuff you have going on.

So in addition to that, it's also much easier, you know, still not easy, but it's easier to go viral. We've talked about. I prevail on the podcast before they covered blank space by T Swizzle, or T. Swift just released a new album. Yeah, we just mentioned a little earlier the whole funk ghost thing. But speaking of that, a static lullaby cover Toxic by Britney Spears. And then there was a high school marching band who covered Seven Nation Army. And at the end of the day, who knows?

Your cover. Your version of the song could become insanely popular, just as popular, or maybe even more popular than the original. You know, we're thinking about alien ant farm with the smooth criminal thing. To be honest, half of Manson's songs, at least the singles. Yeah, the list could go on and on. So there are some really cool things that could come out of doing that. Yeah, definitely. And I got to say, like with Alien Ant Farm or Marilyn Manson. I didn't know those songs were covers for quite some time.

I was just listening toe Marilyn Manson's like best of record a couple days ago, and I heard like I think it was three of the songs, which are probably three of his biggest songs, recovers. It's like, Okay, like this guy did a really good job of taking a well known, well liked song and making it Marilyn Manson E and releasing it, and it blew up. It totally fits in with his life set. Exactly, And that's the thing. Radio stations were all over it because it sounded familiar because it waas.

But it was also different. It was originally it was Marilyn Manson covering a song. It wasn't Marilyn Manson playing someone else's song. It was Marilyn Manson covering a song, and that goes back to the distinction. If he had just played it the way it was originally, no one would care. He sounds like Depeche Mode whatever. Speaking of Depeche Mode, one of my favorite bands, Janice years ago did a live cover that they recorded and mixed down after the fact off. Walking in my shoes and it's totally different because they're like an Elektronik metal band.

Kinda imagine Shovel with keys. Basically how I would describe Janice these days. But anyway, now they're actually releasing a studio version of it like eight years down the road, and I'm stoked to hear it because the live version, always the mics sound a little thin to me. But it was still really cool because, like, Okay, this is live like I understand it's not going to sound like a studio production anyway. You just covered all the pros, and I'm sure there are more pros. But to get the cons, we've talked about them already.

But if you do it badly, if you release a poorly recorded or produced cover, you might become famous for the wrong reasons. And not that Rebecca Black covered Friday, although I think she didn't write the song so technically it's a cover because she had songwriters. But if you think about it, any pop song is a cover. Unless the singer is writing their own words. That's a fair point. That being said, that's a totally different subject. You could become more famous than Rebecca Black if you somehow go viral because your cover is so bad.

So be really careful with that. And thankfully, we haven't seen that yet. But there is that possibility. The far bigger con than getting Internet haters is you could, oh, million's if you don't secure the proper license. I know we keep saying it. We're gonna do a copyright episode at some point, but for a cover, it's really important to get this sorted before you release it. In the US, we have statutory mechanical licenses, which basically means that if a song has been released, anyone is allowed to cover it.

But that does not mean you don't have to pay for it. You have to pay 9. 1 cents for every copy sold, and before you sell any copies, you have to notify the publisher that you are going to do this. Obviously, with streaming, there are a lot more complexities as well. Ah, lot of the streaming platforms will pay out directly to the songwriters, but not all of them do it all depends. The best thing you could do to secure a cover licenses either do it through your distributor if they have that option, or go to a company like Harry Fox agency that will get the license for you.

When I license covers for people I'm working with. I typically go straight to the publisher, but I do not recommend that for everyone one, because that's a little more advanced and a little more complex. And you can trip up, which I do that because sometimes they'll give you a better rate. I remember about eight years ago I licensed a song for a friend's band, and instead of charging US 9. 1 cents, they charged just like 2. 75 cents per copy sold. And this was just for like, band camp really is eight years ago, so we didn't have to pay too much attention to streaming.

It was eight years ago. It wasn't that popular yet, but anyway, so you can get a little discount. But again, be warned. There are a lot more things that can trip you up. I tried to secure a license for ah song. A few months ago, and they wanted one cent per stream, which is ridiculous. Anyone who's following the news knows that Spotify does not pay you one cent per stream. I raised in objection to that with the publisher, and I'm not going to name them because they had no idea what they're doing.

I raised the objection and said, Why should we be paying this when Spotify will pay you out directly? And I said, I thought that Spotify takes care of that. We just put you in the songwriter or we put the songwriter in as a songwriter and they said, Oh, maybe they dio we're not really sure. And this is the publisher for the song they run a publishing company. So while I emailed the distribution company said, Hey, I thought Spotify pays this and they say, Yes, Spotify pays that directly.

You don't have to worry about it, wrote back to the publisher. Never heard from them again. So that's what I'm saying. It might be best to not go to a publisher because if you don't know what to look out for, you might end up in a very bad deal. Imagine if you get a million plays on Spotify and you have tow pay one penny per stream. That's gonna add up. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it does add up, and I got to do the math now one million of those 10 million divided by 100.

That's $10,000 you have to pay out. There's no way you earned $10,000 in royalties from Spotify, especially since you're not getting the songwriter portion off the royalty. You're only getting the artist portion. That's if you're D I. Y. If you have a record label, you might not even be getting much of the artist portion. So that rant aside, it could be really, really dangerous to release a cover without the proper licenses in place. And if you don't secure the license by at the very least, telling them you're going to use it in the legally required method, then you're gonna have even bigger problems because if it goes viral and blows up, they could sue you for not getting the proper license and you could end up going million's.

You could end up losing everything you've built up until that point. So I know I'm talking and really rambling on here. But I just want to stress how important it is to get this stuff sorted because you're dealing with somebody else's intellectual property, somebody else's work that gets dangerous quickly. So by all means recorded cover. But get the license for it and rant. If I had a pick of all the rants that I could have just listened to and that I think are worth our listeners hearing, that's a pretty good one.

And I just wanted Piggy back for two more seconds and say Not most people, I hope not most people, but I could absolutely see a lot of people say, What's the point? I'm never going to get 10 million streams on my cover. What's the point? I'm never gonna get 10 million streams on my cover. I'm never going to get, you know, 15,000 downloads. Whatever. Sure, there is a large possibility that those things won't happen. But at the end of the day, if you're listening to this podcast, or even if you're not listening to this podcast and there's somebody else who the listener knows, who's you know, putting the time in the energy and the learning and cover figuring it out, recording it, releasing it isn't the whole point to do.

Well, I just want to point that out that in my experience, I just feel like there's some any consistency and the logic that a lot of people use, like, Oh, that will never happen to me. It's like, Well, maybe not. But if the whole point is to, like, really try hard and do well, it's a really easy thing that you can do just toe secure the future for yourself and, you know a minimum for the release. So great rant. Thank you, James. Well, thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it again.

Not a cover, but I don't think Rebecca Black expected 145,027,433 views as of August 5th at 7:48 p.m. Eastern daylight time. No way. No. And I'm sure if it was I'm totally stereotyping. I don't remember what the deal was, but like I'm for it, wasn't it one of those you know, somebody's family member? I hired somebody to help her put the song together. And it was, you know, kind of somebody's I'm speculating and I could be totally wrong, but I'm sure there are a million other people who have been in the position of the whole rich family member.

Helps you out record to cover. Yeah, those people probably don't expect that either. But it happens clearly. Yeah, from my understanding, it was like a day in the life of a pop star thing where they're like, Okay, we're going to record a song. We're going to do a video. We're going to do all this. You could bring all your friends like it was just like an experience for a 13 year old girl. And then they released it, and somehow the Internet found it and it went viral from my understanding was supposed to be just a fun thing for her and her friends to dio.

And it quickly blew up, which is incredible. So again, it could happen to everyone. And I should also preface this with saying we cannot give legal advice. We're not Attorneys were just telling you what to watch out for. And now I'm going to suggest that if you want to do a cover and you're at all unsure, go through Harry, Fox Agency or your distributor. If they have a cover licensing thing, make sure that there's language in there that they cover your ass. You don't want to find out that they messed up the paperwork and you're on the hook for thousands or millions of dollars.

As long as you fill out the paperwork properly, they should be responsible for anything that they mess up. If you're at all unsure at this point, then hire an entertainment attorney or, even better, a new intellectual property attorney who specializes in the entertainment industry and to point out those sorts of professionals are not as rare as you would think they would be. We live in Vermont. I haven't looked at what the current population is, but it's super tiny and we have entertainment lawyers here. So I'm sure wherever you are listening from, you have entertainment lawyers available to you as well.

Should you find yourself in a position where you need one? The entire state of Vermont has roughly 624,000 as of 2019, and as of 2018, Boston has 695,000 roughly point taken on, and that's just Boston proper. That doesn't count the suburbs. Oh, my gosh. Which don't get me wrong? I love Vermont. That'll aside, Erin, I think you had another great point you wanted to talk about. So say you're covered is really well and again. That could mean you totally killed it. And people love it because of that. Or you're the next Rebecca Black.

That's still your cover. Doing really well, Believe me, you got to make sure that you've got original songs that air well written, well produced and mixed and ready to go either already or if you know, the cover release is part of the grand plan. You know, shortly thereafter, a few weeks after you know that way, maybe you can ride the momentum of a popular cover again. Like I prevailed it they released their cover. There was part of a package plan. They had original music in the wings waiting to be, you know, sent out onto the field toe, make their own play.

That was a super week. I don't know, like a football reference or something, but yeah, I think of it like a game plan. That's totally what it iss. Make sure you've got your own little soldiers. You know your own songs waiting in the wing that they're well written, produced, ready to go to sort of really drilled the point home that you're bands totally killer. That way the cover conserve is a really awesome introductory medium away to suck people in. And then once you have them, totally knock it out of the park with all your awesome original content. Definitely.

I think, just to wrap things up again, I want to reiterate that we were talking about studio covers that you plan on distributing to streaming services. If you want to do a live cover or an acoustic cover or something like that, that's obviously less produced, and people will understand that it's less produced just to throw up on YouTube or something like that. By all means, go for it. Have fun with that. After all, a cover is supposed to be fun. That's kind of the point. But if you want to do a studio release, you should Onley release it.

If you could do justice to the original song. If you can't absolutely kill it, don't bother. You should focus on your originals instead and really make sure that you get a good understanding of what you play and how you play it, and then focus on covers if you still want Thio. On the other hand, if you can do the original song Justice and really release on awesome cover that people will love, feel free to release it just again. So no one takes this the wrong way. This is for studio covers only.

If you want to do a live cover, be our guests. Please dio just secure the proper license first. That is it for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. Thank you for listening to our episode All about cover licensing. If you've ever released a cover, we would love to hear it. Just head on over to our Facebook group by searching for banned hive on Facebook or going to the site Better dot band slash Group, and you will be redirected automatically to our Facebook group. Go ahead. We'll have a thread in that group for this episode.

Just drop your cover in that thread and we will check it out. We'll be back next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time with an interview with Christian James of James and the giant sleep all about how they got their career in music started and how that turned into a thriving video career and how you can do D. I Y videos for your band. Thanks again for listening, and we hope you have a Knauss. Um, week. As I said, we'll be back next Tuesday at 6 a.m. And, of course, as always, keep rocking.