Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast

Producer-engineers learn how Matt O'Neil bet on Houston early and built 42 plugins with AI instead of waiting on costly developers. Matt explains how he spotted Houston as an underserved music market in 2015 and worked early with artists like Don Toliver. AI removed the financial barrier that had stalled his plugin ideas for years. The conversation also covers mix translation across phones, mastering while mixing, and using Manus and Reaper MCP to automate mastering workflows inside his studi...

Artists and music industry newcomers: how Tamar Kaprelian got dropped by Clive Davis, burned out at 24, and built the support she never had. She refused a Lindsay Lohan recut Davis pitched her and lost the deal. She later launched Nvak, a company with a label, artist services, and a nonprofit that educated over 5,000 women in emerging markets. Tamar and Bobby cover direct-to-fan strategy and why radio still pays in Germany but not in Armenia. The throughline is simple: grit is what keeps arti...

Sync composers: Robina Ritchie-Barker explains why finishing catalog admin early is what keeps your music ready when a brief arrives. Robina co-founded TrackStage after missing a sync opportunity because a piano track she finished four years earlier was never cut down to the required length. TrackStage moves a final mixdown to fully tagged and cataloged in under two minutes, replacing up to 15 separate tools. Bobby and Robina also cover AI keyword analysis, split sheet automation, and how str...

Musicians curious about AI robots: Georgia Tech's Gil Weinberg shows how technology expands what players can do without replacing the act of playing. Weinberg built Shimon, a marimba robot with eight arms hitting 20 notes per second, and a prosthetic drum arm for amputee Jason Barnes using ultrasound sensing for finger-by-finger piano control. His app HearMe blocks audio downloads and delivers notation and tabs instead, so players learn from the AI. The episode also covers the Guthman...

The latest music business and production news. For independent musicians: AI copyright lawsuits, royalty disputes, and changing listener habits are reshaping the music industry right now. Bobby covers US recorded music revenue hitting $6 billion in the first half of the year, with CDs up 59%. He also explains what a San Jose Sharks arena crowd rejecting an AI goal song tells independent artists. . . Universal Music Group is suing DistroKid for up to $150 million over undisclosed AI-gen...