The AvA Connection

The Weekly Buzz:

Spotify is adding music videos in 85 additional markets (not the U.S. yet!), after it rolled out the feature in limited markets this past March. Video remains king for music discovery… but what about music retention? According to Spotify, users who discover a song and then watch the music video are 34% more likely on average to stream the song again the following week.

HYBE, the K-Pop giant, is scrambling to repay $293M in debt. This comes on the heels of the company’s stock falling more than 25% this year amid a public dispute between the company and it’s former CEO. It’s disappointing earnings this year no doubt can be attributed to the continued hiatus of BTS, K-Pops biggest name, whose members are serving their mandatory military services.

TikTok has been sued by 12 states due to it’s “addictive features.” Uh… you don’t say? (opens TikTok). NPR also revealed that “TikTok executives traded internal messages acknowledging that the platform was addicting young people,” (NOT GOOD) but they continued to deceive the public even with the risks in mind. Full story on NPR here.

After a series of attempts, Triller finally went public yesterday in a bid to further compete with TikTok. The price of shares have tanked 27% in the first day and a half of trading. Read more on that here.

The current (and future) is female. Three of the leading female acts of the year – Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Charli XCX are dominating the charts and culture right now:

This is the most insane job posting I’ve seen maybe ever?

📞 The Call Log: Cory Wong, Grammy-Nominated Guitarist, Songwriter, and Producer

AvA: In our digital age, the role of artists stretches beyond simply making music. Can you talk about how you've adapted and shifted focus throughout your career?

Wong: I think one of the things that I focused on so much early in my career, was that I want to just be the best guitar player I can be. And then it shifted into: “What do I actually have to say?” and I think that went a lot deeper than just what the instrument was: “what do I want to say as an artist and how can I bring my true self to my artistry?” I started to explore what it was that was unique about my voice. Not just on the instrument, but who I am as a person and as a professional and bringing that into my artistry. I finally locked in on that, and I'm still continuing to develop and evolve. One of the things that I've shifted in the digital era is not just pandering my work to platforms. I see a lot of artists pandering to, “oh, this is a fun thing that's happening on these platforms right now. So maybe the platform will honor the fact that I'm pandering to it.”

I'm just not interested in that. If something feels like it fits within my artistry and my vision, great, but really I'm just focusing on doing what feels fun and true to who I am, and not just catering to the platform.

AvA: Where do you continue to derive inspiration from?

Wong: I think there's a lot of artists that are great examples in different realms. I mean, the easy guitar ones are Prince, George Benson, John Mayer, and Pat Metheny. George Benson is somebody who has such great pop sensibilities and an incredible authority over the instrument and just understanding of so many different aspects of music. And Prince as a performer, multi instrumentalist, and visionary is just so great. It’s a similar thing with John Mayer. He’s just an incredible artist, somebody who writes great songs, plays great guitar and understands the role of the guitar in modern music in a really true way that honors the history of the guitar. But also just where the guitar is today, that's really inspiring to me. Then there’s Pat Metheny who just has this relentless curiosity about the instrument and performing live, as well as improvising and that sort of stuff. I just continue to get inspired by them because of all of those things, and I'm trying to accomplish that. And then there are a lot of artists that have a very unique voice that you hear them for two seconds, and you just know without a doubt it's source material.

AVA: How are you seeing artists stand out and effectively break through?

Wong: I think exactly what I'm talking about in the other two questions are artists that are doing something that feels really unique and compelling in their own way. You see all these really technically proficient instrumentalists out there, it's like, okay, cool, you're great at the instrument, but you're just saying what everybody else has said. You're just doing the same thing that other people are. Study the masters, but make it your own. How do you bring your life experience in the day that you are living and the inspirations that you had growing up? How are you bringing those together? 

So for me, as somebody who grew up as a skateboarder kid in the MTV era, I have all those inspirations, but I live in the modern day’s time, and I grew up with the heritage and family that I have. I'm a half Chinese and Irish Norwegian American boy who grew up in the late 90s, early 2000s listening to the music that I did, and I had an interest in jazz. It's like, okay, how can I bring all those things together? So it's not just “oh, this guy's trying to sound like Weezer and Pat Matheny at the same time.” How can I draw all of that together to be uniquely me? I think that's one of the things that makes artists stand out, is when they try to really hone in their own voice.

AvA: Collaborations have been a cornerstone in your career. Who have been some of the most memorable ones, and do you have a dream collab that hasn't happened yet?

Wong: The wonderful thing about what I do is that for a lot of guitar led groups, it's so much about the guitar and lead guitar. What I bring to the table that feels more compelling is in the rhythm realm though, and I pride myself just as much as a guitar player as I am a producer and a writer and an arranger and a music director. So I think I make a good collaborator, because I don't have to get my guitar licks in during the verse of the song. If the song calls for it cool, but I'm just as happy being an arranger and writer and producer who's playing guitar on this stuff too, and when it's my time to go, I'm gonna go.

Collaborations are very fun because it also really draws different things out of me. What's most memorable in collaborations is the ones that draw something new out of me and I'm able to draw something different out of an artist. They might not put it on their own album, but it's something that they've always wanted to explore. So Doty was a great example of that. Some other really great collaborations. Joe Satriani was a really fun one. Bruce Hornsby, Alan Stone, there's been a lot of really, really fun. I mean, there's so many dream collabs. Brad Meldow, insane piano player, incredible artist. I've been such a huge fan of his artistry for so long, and somebody like John Mayer, I would be interested to see what he could draw out of me and what we could draw out of each other in our guitar playing. Not even playing vocal music, just playing something instrumental that I think would be cool and could be unique. Maybe he'd draw certain sensibilities out of my playing, and if I could collab and give him an opportunity to do something that he hasn't done on his albums, that would be awesome.

AvA: You’ve toured a lot during your carer so far. How do you manage to stay on top of it all while focusing on things like your mental health and your personal life?

Wong: Honestly, that's one of the harder things. In the current state of the industry, if you can grab the attention of the zeitgeist, of the internet and just general things that are happening in the music world… grab it. You don't want to lose that. And I think for me, I'm trying to strike while the iron is hot, but also continue to just explore my artistry like I'm talking about. I stay on top of it by not doing things that feel obligatory. There's certain things that managers or agents will be like “you definitely should do this. This is a great idea. It's gonna be good for your career.” I'm like “I guess I agree, but oh man, I feel like that's just gonna suck the life out of me.” Or "that doesn't seem fun, that's gonna be more work than what's going to be I don't know that.” It feels like if I do that kind of stuff all the time, that I just won't feel like I'll have much longevity in what I'm doing. Part of what also keeps me excited is that I'm having so much fun doing this. I never dreamed of being able to have a career like this in my own artistry.

I figured I would play guitar for other people, and I'll like do some of my own music locally and cool. But now I've reached new levels that I could only have ever even remotely dreamed of in all three of the bands that I have, which is Vulfpeck, The Fearless Flyers and Cory Wong. These things are are really fun because they challenge different sides of who I am as an artist. My personal life and my mental health are things that I just have to constantly be in check with, and I haven't always been the greatest with. I sometimes have consequences of a busy schedule, but I really try to avoid burnout by focusing on doing the things that are fun and not just things that are career driving.

AvA: What advice do you have for musicians entering the industry?

Wong: Number one is to study the Masters and learn them inside and out. What is it that makes your favorite artist so magnetic? What is it that you love about them? Try to distill down what is the thing that makes them unique, the thing that we all love about that artist, and dive into all the aspects of it. Then do it for another artist and another artist, and absorb their thing. Then try to just get used to searching for that. The more you search for that, the easier it will be for you to find that in yourself.

Number two, my biggest inspirations, and continue derive inspiration from them other things, is not just musical art form. I've tried to find inspiration in visual artists. There's people like Claude Monet whose artistry arguably got deeper and deeper, and the art got better as he aged. Of course what's really inspiring is to see artists that aren't just making their best works in their 20s. Nobody really cared about who I was as an artist until I was 30, and now over the last several years, it's been great that people started to care, and it's inspiring to just have some examples of people who have started to find success and are making their best works later in life. I think that's really cool.

AvA: Do you have anything coming up that people can check out?

Wong: I have a tour coming up in the Midwest and the East Coast, and it would mean the world if even a few people took the time to come see us play!

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