Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
AI is the biggest technology shift of our lifetime. This show is about how to profit from it together. Each week I talk with the founders and CEOs closest to AI and Content, the ones figuring this out in real time. I’m also building an AI content business myself and share the lessons I learn along the way.
WHAT WE COVER
THE TITANS: How companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI are moving, and why their decisions matter.
THE INCUMBENTS: How content giants like Disney, News Corp, Universal Music Group, and Reddit are responding to AI, and what it means for creators and publishers.
THE PLAYBOOK: Real lessons on AI business models, content strategy, IP licensing, distribution, and getting paid.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: Rob Kelly has interviewed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, helped pioneer early web content licensing, and built multiple companies with more than $100 million in total sales. His work has appeared on CNBC, CNN, TIME, and Entrepreneur.
Beyond business, every episode explores what AI means for jobs, creativity, families, and the next generation.
If you want clear thinking based on real experience in AI and media, Media and the Machine is your guide
Thanks! -Rob
I'm Rob Kelly, this is Media and the Machine, a show about the biggest technology shift of our lifetime and how to profit from it. Each week, talk with the founders and CEOs closest to AI and content, the ones figuring this out in real time. I'm also building an AI content business myself and share lessons of what I learned along the way. You know, life's funny. I began my career lucky enough to interview leaders like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Rob Kelly:Then I went on to be three time founder and CEO, driving a $100,000,000 plus in revenue and some failures too. And now I'm back at the table, interviewing this new world's current and future leaders. This isn't only a business story, it's a human one. So every episode ends with me asking my guest what AI means for our jobs, our families, and the next generation. We'll figure this out together from the inside.
Rob Kelly:Welcome to Media and the Machine. My guest today is Jimmy Hutchison, the CEO of Spin, and a private equity investor hunting for the next great media brand. If you like music and tech, you're gonna love this one. Jimmy bought Spin from Billboard about six years ago, and since then, the company has grown revenues 17 x. It's TikTok following rivals Rolling Stone.
Rob Kelly:Today, Spin is far more than a magazine. It runs major events, licensing deals, brand partnerships, documentaries, and even a record label. Spin might be as close to an AI proof media company as any I've seen recently. Jimmy shares why he'd love to buy Pitchfork from Condie Nast. We talk about whether Spin would ever go IPO.
Rob Kelly:No one's ever asked him in public. He also shares how he'd launch a media company today from scratch. And Jimmy tells some funny anecdotes about what he found when he first entered the storage locker, holding Spin's entire archive going back decades, including a photo of a famous rock star that had to be touched up because that is it. We, of course, talk about how Spin is approaching AI, from blocking AI scraping to exploring new licensing deals with AI companies. Please enjoy my conversation with Jimmy Hutchison.
Rob Kelly:You're a media guy. You understand media super well. I wanted your quick take because Meta is already a media company. They make their money from advertising. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Google, already a media company. Yeah. You've got OpenAI who most people think it's inevitable they sell advertising in some form. Can you just give me your quick take, for instance, just on those three companies? If you're sitting down with, you know, Sam at OpenAI or Zuck at Meta or Sundar at Google, what advice do you have to them to better understand media?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Well, I would say let's start with Google. I think Google's nailing it with YouTube. We're in this new era of media where creators, you know, are like kind of the ruling class. So it's this democratized creator ecosystem. The reason Google's nailing it is because they pay creators.
Jimmy Hutcheson:It's from the earliest days. It's a 55% revenue share. So there's a program to compensate creators on YouTube. It's very well known on how that works and the analytics and the stats. The opposite of that, and it's not because I don't like x in Twitter, it's just you get a check from x for your content and you have no clue why.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They just pay people And they give you no data. So that's the opposite. And I know that wasn't one of your three. But you don't know what the payment like, is it because I got a lot of comments on this?
Rob Kelly:Gotcha. I didn't know that.
Jimmy Hutcheson:There's no transparency though. So that's, I guess, if the fourth person on the list is Elon, it would be give creators like spin, give media companies transparency into how you're calculating their payments. So that's what I would tell, I guess, now if I'm adding a fourth, would tell Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Elon, be transparent about the how and the why someone's getting paid so they can optimize the content they're making for your platform. And, yes, Google's doing that. Google's pretty good at that with YouTube.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're probably number one. And they probably have the most payouts. Now, I'm not saying it's perfect. There's definitely people that go, well, you could do this, could do that.
Rob Kelly:Sure. Yeah. For the most part, so creators are are happy with it. Right?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. I mean, there's people who aren't. There's there's a lot of creators. There's gazillions of creators on YouTube. It's a pretty broad statement to say they're all happy.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're not. But Google's better at it than some of the others, and they're providing some transparency way more than x. And I like x. I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying they could be more transparent about how and why people get paid on the platform as a creator on x.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Meta. So Instagram, Facebook, like they all have content monetization programs. I think Meta got kind of forced into paying creators. And again, my advice, I guess, to Zuckerberg and Meta would be truly strike lots of deals with media companies and creators for the long term. Don't pay them one day and not pay them.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Like people and especially publishers, they've had a love hate relationship with Meta. There were days eons ago where Facebook was a huge portion of publishers traffic. It's not anymore. And they changed things on publishers and pulled the rug out from a lot of people. That their traffic died overnight because Facebook changed how they sent traffic to publishers.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And now you have publishers publishing on the platform and Instagram and Facebook are sharing. Right? That's pretty common. It's widely known. You can get a rev share going with with Meta.
Jimmy Hutcheson:It's just you don't know how long it's gonna last, and you don't know if they're in it for the long term like the creator programs of YouTube. So I guess that's the next piece of advice is like be in it for the long term and support your creators if you wanna be a media tech company. And then with OpenAI, I would say, go to the top authorities in every content vertical and strike deals with the people who have the most authority, not just the most quantity of content. So in music, it'd be like Rolling Stone and Spin, and in sports, Sports Illustrated and all even YouTube creators could be on that list too. Like the needle drop, Anthony Fontana.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Like, I'd put him in music, and you could put Stephen A Smith in sports. Personalities, media companies, Sam Altman should go to the top authorities, not just the people who own the most quantity of content, and strike licensing deals with them because they have authority and trust with readers.
Rob Kelly:You mentioned traffic before. I'm just curious. What was your reaction when you started to see, I assume, like others, you started to see Google traffic decline? Was it a big deal? What'd you do about it?
Jimmy Hutcheson:It is not a big deal for us because that's not what we're relying upon. With Google and others, you're building a business on rented land. You can't rely on organic traffic as your whole business model. The biggest pivot that publishers have needed to make in media has been to subscription away from this world of like quote unquote free traffic. So AI is eating that world of free traffic.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And it's really about the type of content when you get really nuanced with it. I think I saw you had a blog post or something about trust in AI and high trust contents like say medical content. Like, yeah, you want to know before you like take these pills that you like, you trust the author who wrote the post that's a doctor or something. Low trust, like, you messed up a recipe. It's just like, okay, added too much butter.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Wish the AI would have told me not to put that much butter in it and it tastes bad. So the stakes are much higher with medical information and you want that trust. With recipes, it's not. So you're a recipe site and AI is eating your lunch and destroying your traffic because everyone's going into ChatGPT or AI, Google AI overviews just summarizing the recipes. So, yeah, I would not be building a media business around SEO and all of that.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And there's some experts out there who can go like really deep on this. But philosophically, since in my whole career in media, I've never felt like you want to double down on something that's quote unquote free. Nothing is free. You're just borrowing traffic from someone else until someone else is better at optimizing Google Search Console and doing SEO in your category. And there's some massive sites that are type in sites.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yahoo.com. People type that in and go there and their Yahoo email like they have a ton of traffic at Yahoo MSN AOL. The old school like that, you know, like that's like mass traffic powerhouse. But you're like in the content space and you're really deep and say recipes or something and you were at the top. It's like, that's not gonna last forever.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And I think that AI is completely going to decimate how traffic goes to these publishers. And to alleviate that, you need a way to figure out how to pay for your marketing, pay for traffic. You need to have still do some of the SEO. You need to have traffic partnerships with maybe some of the big players like old school, hey, how am I getting out of the Yahoo homepage, etcetera. But it can't just be reliant on Google anymore.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And at the end of the day, there's just no free lunch and being on rented land is never a great idea.
Rob Kelly:But when the Google traffic started to drop for you, literally no no big deal? Like, it was such a small part of your revenue source that it was just kinda shrugged it off?
Jimmy Hutcheson:I wouldn't say we shrugged it off. It's just we had already put a plan in place to help mitigate that risk.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And it didn't affect our business because we weren't so reliant on Google as other sites. And I don't even like thinking of us as a site. I would also say we're not just relying on traffic as a revenue source. So it's not only like pivoting away from search traffic into other diversifying your traffic sources. It was diversifying the revenue away from being in this like we are a mediacompany.com.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Like, no, we're in fashion. We have a label. We have all this other stuff going on. So, yeah.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. It's really interesting how probably you don't use the word magazine anymore, obviously, in the name SPIN. Yeah. And you probably are not using the word site as much because it's certainly important to SPIN, but it's not you know, it's you got so many more ways that people consume SPIN. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Alright. You bought Spin almost six years ago now. Right? We're talking 2020, early two thousand twenty?
Jimmy Hutcheson:That's right.
Rob Kelly:What's the revenue difference between 2020 and 2025?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. I it's 17 x. Yeah. I love to talk about our revenue growth. When we acquired Spin from Billboard, we being our investment firm, we saw a lot of opportunities.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And so we've, you know, dove in headfirst and 17 x the revenue. So it's been awesome.
Rob Kelly:Our mutual acquaintance, Brian Morrissey, he asked a great question of you, which was kinda stack ranking the revenue sources. So I'm not gonna make you repeat that, but I am gonna ask you for an update. When I listened to that conversation, it was branded content seemed to be at top, events, licensing, advertising. And then since then, I think you've launched subscriptions, maybe you call it memberships. You got a label now too.
Rob Kelly:Can you kinda give me an update to stack rank those revenue sources?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. I think it's ballpark the same in media, you know, the big growth areas or things like events. And when I was on Brian's podcast, we hadn't launched, for example, our clothing with Aviator Nation. We've got shirts and hats now in Aviator Nation, Spin Magazine, and they're branded. They're really cool looking.
Jimmy Hutcheson:If you know Aviator Nation, they have retail stores in LA, Nashville. They're wildly popular online. Really soft material. And these are like really high end sweaters, you know, hooded sweater, like a $120 sweater, really cool trucker hats. And that's probably a new one as far as licensing goes.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And then on the event side, Spin just celebrated our fortieth anniversary. So we threw our fortieth anniversary party with Klipsch and CeeLo Green and we had Chance the Rapper there. We threw a massive fortieth anniversary party back on December 4 at Art Basel in Miami, and it was wildly successful. And again, it's another example of events being, you know, great sources of revenue with ticketing, sponsorships, VIP. It's, you know, it's a really great revenue source for us.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Subscriptions, right now, we're pivoting still to more digital subscriptions. You can subscribe online to print, and then we're going to be rolling out a more robust, what I call membership program that'll give people access to some of those events. So, yeah. As far as ranking goes, I don't think too much has changed wildly.
Rob Kelly:I'm a fan still of print, but I just also wanna ask, what's the reason to keep print around for Spin?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Spin has always had its roots in print. When we first acquired Spin in 2020, I never thought we would go back into print. It had been out of print at that point since 2012, so eight years. And we thought, man, digital's where it's at.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Well, what's happened is we had vinyl shops, record stores call us, say, man, we'd love to sell spin again. We the nostalgia kind of became like this, I guess, just from demand, you know, Barnes and Noble, kind of the bigger retailers all wanted to carry it again. We're in Hudson News, of airports, all the parodies. We're at newsstands around New York City, you know, Grand Central, Penn Station, all over Soho. We're in 600 plus Barnes and Nobles.
Jimmy Hutcheson:We're in the cool trendy bookstores too, Book Soup on the Sunset Strip in LA. Like, it's just a one of those pieces that for us is more about the marketing and about the true fans, those hardcore fans of our brand. They love print. A lot of them tend to work in the industry or they're creative types or they're, you know, music enthusiasts, they're vinyl collectors. There's people out there that collect spin.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And it's not an easy feat to print a whole magazine. Like, our our issue that came out in the fall with Kurt Cobain on the cover was like a 130 pages. Like, these are thick, you know, the nice paper stock, glossy, big, like, they're really nice. And then we just had Chance the Rapper on our end of year cover. So, yeah, we're really excited about print.
Rob Kelly:It's also I've heard you talk before about scarcity. There's an element still to me of, you know, there's only so many places where you could be on the cover.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And then when you go on to social media and I'm scrolling in my phone on, say, TikTok, there's no scarcity. It's just unlimited swipe swipe swipe swipe. And you get the algorithm is feeding you everything like through a fire hose. And it's the opposite of scarcity. So I think when there's a human curation piece to like, okay, this belongs on the newsstand and here's where it's placed and it kind of signals that something's important.
Rob Kelly:Is it in and of itself, is the print magazine profitable if you just looked at it as a line item?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Well, it's yes and no. It's it's one of those endeavors where we don't necessarily just sell the magazine when we work with advertisers. They'll buy an entire bundle from us. It'll include the magazine edition, the website, email newsletter, and event. So I guess if you were to literally say like, okay, just this big ad buy is allocated this much revenue.
Jimmy Hutcheson:It would probably be, I guess, breakeven ish. So it's not like I'm on your podcast saying, go back into print, kids.
Rob Kelly:So branded content though, number one, if you had to break them out. True? Is that still true?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. I'd say that's toward the top.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. Can you just give an example with real brand of branded content?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Sure. Yeah. One would be, like, we've worked in the past with Bose headphones, and we created an entire narrative for Bose around going back to artists' original albums, going back to hometowns. So, for example, we went back with Cypress Hill to South LA and interviewed them in their barbershop and they talked about the thirtieth anniversary of their biggest album. And then we did the same with Blur in London, Damon Olborne and all the guys coming back together.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They hadn't done an interview together in like fifteen years. And we were one of the first. And then we went year two of that, we started talking to some newer bands like The Last Dinner Party and others. And they're wearing the headphones. And then Sublimes really had a huge comeback.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And wow, we captured that early. Go back to the hometown. Let's go and celebrate an album anniversary. And then the artists are wearing the headphones in the videos. We did a lot of stills as well, like really cool product shots.
Jimmy Hutcheson:You know, it's Jacob from Sublime who's, you know, the new lead singer who's Bradley's son. I mean, that was great. And he's, you know, their star has risen a ton. If you're a Sublime fan, like you've seen like the rise again. It's very cool.
Jimmy Hutcheson:We're trying to help Bose sell more headphones, but we're also trying to entertain an audience. So that's what I call branded content. It's that perfect intersection of entertainment and product placement.
Rob Kelly:So you have branded content events, licensing, advertising, memberships slash subscriptions. What did we miss there? You got a label? Is that in one of those?
Jimmy Hutcheson:We released a single with the All American rejects not long ago. That did really well. And then we have a bunch of baby artists. And the way this works with I call it spray and pray. You have to kind of spray and pray with lots of artists like as far as attention, capital, everything, hope one of them pops.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Then sometimes you sign a big artist like All American Rejects for one single and you're going, oh, this did really well. Like, it's a good song. And so, yeah, I'd say the label's been good. It's not been a massive amount of zeros, but it will be as the artists develop and as we nurture the artists and help them grow.
Rob Kelly:Now, I see this partnership with one zero one Studios, and they've dabbled in things like podcasts and even I think they're related to some documentaries as well. I know actual feature TV shows and things like that. Are documentaries or podcasts on the horizon for Spin? Are you already doing them?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. We're working on those right now with one hundred one Studios. Yeah. They're a great partner. Most people know them for the show Yellowstone.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yep. And then also now, Landman, Lioness. They have lots of shows they produce with Taylor Sheridan. And then they have a non fiction division where they're doing docs and reality and other projects. It takes a long time to get these things off the ground, but we've planted some really great seeds and shot some interesting content in the documentary space.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And the dream, I think, is that we'll eventually have a full blown spin documentary about the last forty years of spin. One of the coolest things we did was brought the founder of spin back, Bob Guccione Junior. And, you know, he's a part of the company now. He's our editor in chief and he runs all the editorial. Nice move.
Jimmy Hutcheson:It's great having a legend like that back. And I think there's a really great part of our story that involves him and involves all these, you know, rebels who ran spin in the nineties and then the eighties. And and then, you know, you fast forward to now and it's like we're a completely different company where now it's like we launched on TikTok six years ago and where it's it's just a completely different type of way to communicate with your audience. So
Rob Kelly:So is the first documentary would likely be about spin? Would you also do ones, you know, about bands and all the access you've got to great artists and or would you stick to just doing one about yourselves?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. I think the first project will become the spin doc if I had to guess what comes out first. And then, yeah, there's been some artists that we've talked to like, could our editors, our content team, could we collectively make a doc about an artist that's kind of a spin type of artist? The answer is yes, a thousand percent. I see us kind of staying true to our audience and maybe we'd even air the docs on our channel.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Like, we have a fast channel called Spin TV which is, you know, on Plex and a bunch of others. And I think what would be cool is like we make some of these docs about really specific types of bands and then they air on the channel and then we kind of curate almost like a documentary channel but Spin's version of that.
Rob Kelly:How are you going to you and Spin, how are you gonna monetize AI? How are you thinking about monetizing through AI?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. A lot of different ways. One would be an AI, like a music AI agent to possibly help us with subscription marketing, almost like a marketer to try to help us acquire more subscribers, help with media buying. And then, I I think there could be some innovation. I mean, we have a a group at Spin called Spin Labs and we're innovating with some tech companies.
Jimmy Hutcheson:We're doing some investments in some tech companies and we're not necessarily looking for like the next open AI, but if we find someone with a well, who wouldn't look for that? I mean, great. Like, yeah, that'd be nice if we were in that cap table. But at the end of the day, you know, we're looking to protect our journalists, grow our relationships with artists, grow our business and our brand. And if AI can help raise revenue, cut costs, that's how I see it.
Jimmy Hutcheson:There's a gold rush happening and the people who want to invest in the picks and shovels and then in the gold itself. We're a forty year old brand. So we're trying to build upon our brand equity more than I'm trying to find like a quick win in AI revenue, if that makes sense.
Rob Kelly:With the lab, those tech investments, are those like music tech companies?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Music tech. Anything that can help artists. Because again, we care deeply about artists, about how we're promoting artists. So, exactly.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're music tech companies.
Rob Kelly:Are you blocking the AI companies from scraping Spin's content right now?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. We use Cloudflare and we have that feature turned on. And what that basically does is we can either charge a toll to the company that wants to scrape the data or they're just completely blocked from doing it in a way at scale where they would have data without paying us, basically.
Rob Kelly:What kind of learnings have you had from that so far? I know they got a cool dashboard. I've seen it.
Jimmy Hutcheson:So far, I one learning, every day is different in AI. Two, you're either partnering or suing. And I'm more of the mindset of partnering than trying to sue a bunch of AI companies who are taking my data, taking my content. I think the biggest concern is coming up with a way to come up with, like, basically micro payments where if someone's making derivative works based on articles and spin, then how do they attribute what spin gave into a new derivative work into the work as a whole? Like, if we're one piece of a new work, what piece should we get?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Are there micro payments? Like, there's a lot of stuff that's just not solved yet. And if you're a Universal Music Group or the New York Times or, you know, an IP owner and you have a lot more content than say what Spin has, those deals are done a little differently. They're just these like blanket deals. I think with more mid tail well known media companies like Spin, you're trading on the brand and you're trading on the authority, not just the quantity.
Jimmy Hutcheson:You're trading on like the quality journalism that we've done for x amount of time, not just, oh, we've got a good news section. Look at all this news. Like, that's somewhat of a commodity. I mean, we write good news pieces. I'm not saying that's that's not important.
Jimmy Hutcheson:But there's a lot of trust and authority with like the name SPIN. And then SPIN kind of curates it and then goes, wait, okay. And then so that needs a signal to the AI like, this band's important. The way we talk about them is important. There's something to that being worth more than just a random album review from a blogger.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. It's interesting though. I mean, because on the one hand, you could look at Spin and see like a standalone mid sized company, however you just described it. But, you know, forty years of spin content is gonna be super valuable to is super valuable to AI, call it models for various reasons. Have any offer to pay you for the spin content yet?
Rob Kelly:You've got a licensing business already, not Yeah. Content per se in this way, but you do licensing. You're an expert on licensing. Would you just tuck it into that and it's a new AI content licensing revenue stream?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. That's what we're doing. We've had companies approach us with that.
Rob Kelly:Have you taken any money yet? Like, turned them into a customer?
Jimmy Hutcheson:There's some negotiations going on. Nothing as of yet, but interesting negotiations with very well known companies. I would just say, I wanna know who's paying them for what they're paying us for. Because when I'm in Aviator Nation with shirts that say spin or whatever, I know Aviator Nation is selling those to teenager or whoever's shopping at Aviator Nation adults. Like, there's customers on their website.
Jimmy Hutcheson:There's customers at their store in Nashville and in LA. Like, they're buying those products. I don't know. Like, on a license deal with AI, like, I guess they're selling it to, like, institutions, libraries, universities. Like, who's buying all of that?
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're propped up right now by a bunch of investment from venture capital firms, and the AI companies are also propped up by investing in their customers and their customers investing in them. And I don't even know who some of those customers are. So that's propping them up. So, yeah. Like, I would love to gladly use some of their venture capital money for them to pay me revenue to then license content.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I guess what I'm getting at is I just see that as another avenue for licensing. It's maybe not like a means to an end. It's like, oh, here's an AI company to help Aviator Nation sell more spin hats. And then I'm like, oh, well, that's kinda cool because I kinda know who the customer is. But over here, when it's just this black box of AI, you're like, you're helping them with their database.
Jimmy Hutcheson:What so ChatGPT can charge users more or ChatGPT can run ads in the search queries? I guess. You know, I know how YouTube makes money. I know how our other licensees make money. I that that to me is always the interesting part.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Right? I mean, ChatGPT obviously is making a ton of money charging big companies for stuff. Right? Again, not to get too nuanced because perplexity is different. They have, you know, all some of these companies have browsers.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I'm probably going on a little bit of a tangent here. But you're basically saying in this mass world of people doing AI queries, you can monetize them with ads or you can charge people subscriptions. So what piece of their customer with ads can I get? If I had AdSense on my website, I get a piece of like the AdSense money. And then if it's subscriptions, it's like a big corporate entity paying for the database of ChatGPT.
Jimmy Hutcheson:How do I get a piece of that? And I don't know. These are the conversations when you're not in the New York Times, you know.
Rob Kelly:It makes total sense. So I mean, step one sounded like getting control, which is like, okay, use something like a Cloudflare to at least stop the scraping, maybe get a little bit of data on who's doing what on the scraping, and you get a little fee. You know? I I imagine well, I'd ask you, like, you're not expecting much in terms of the dollars per block that CloudFare might pay you, I assume, but I should Yeah. Make sure you share that.
Rob Kelly:If that's kind of a step one, step two, starting to understand and talk to maybe companies who would pay you for your content, it sounds like you just want visibility into, like, what am I sharing here in as a partner? Is this subscriptions? Is it advertising? Is it something else? And, obviously, there's not a lot of transparency right now into that from the AI companies.
Rob Kelly:Although, I did just chat yesterday with the cofounder of this RSL Collective, and they seem to be on the right track in terms of representing content companies and then pushing big AI companies to pay and then Yeah. You know, get to share in the in the revenue.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Like, we gotta find ways to help the AI companies make more money from their license. Like, they're paying me a dollar. They need to make two. So it's not just this.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're stealing our content. Turn on Cloudflare. Like, that that's right. It's like the first step is like protect what you have. Like, protect your IP.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Step two, help your customer, mister AI company, make $2 off the $1 they give you. There's not enough talk of that. There's just this like, we have to protect it's like, look, I own the content. I own the IP. There are people making derivative works, which scares the crap out of me.
Jimmy Hutcheson:But there's going to be ways to monetize this. And companies like the one you're talking about, yeah, it's not like there's gonna be a place for them in the marketplace, just like companies popped up helping people manage their AdSense royalties on YouTube. That became a whole industry, helping people claim money on YouTube when you had like a song and a video.
Rob Kelly:100%. How's Spin using AI to cut costs?
Jimmy Hutcheson:You know, you have to be very careful. I think artists matter, journalists matter. You know, we don't need like a Tilly Norwood who's that actress that's AI. Like, there's probably a place at some point in the very long future where, you know, maybe there's an AI journalist who can do some of the transactional stuff to cut costs. But newsrooms and journalists, that's like freaking people out if I say that, right?
Jimmy Hutcheson:So you still need a prompt. You still need to have this person looked over by a real human. We just had Chance the Rapper on our cover. Do you think that an AI agent and someone on Chance the Rapper's team are gonna talk to each Like, okay, you're gonna interview Chance the AI is gonna be like, like, Chance the rapper's gonna be like, this is b f. Like, interviewing by an AI agent.
Jimmy Hutcheson:But someone will. Someone will come up with some kind of, I don't know, an AI agent who's acting as a journalist just like this Tilly Norwood thing. And that day will be somewhat scary. And, like, one of my favorite pieces in Spin from decades ago was this piece we did on Kate Moss. And if you go and read it, it's like, woah, this really flies off the page because of the way the journalist is talking to Kate Moss and the way he's talking about her.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I'll go philosophical here for a second. So I think 95% of what's out there in AI is just total noise. I even told Rob before we got on the podcast, I'm like, hey, if we talk about AI, remember, 95% of this stuff is garbage and it's not actually functional for a business. I need to provide the best content to my users and I want AI to help me do that.
Rob Kelly:What about music discovery through AI?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Well, this has been going on a while. Spotify's algorithm can tell you what to listen to. Sure. But eventually, you wanna experience the texture of the band. Where are they from?
Jimmy Hutcheson:What inspired them to write the music? Now, like, are they real people? Or are they AI creations? And then part two is people come to Spin as a destination to find out about a new artist, along with going to Spotify and others.
Rob Kelly:If you go back to, you know, Spin famously had Nirvana on the cover, you know, so you could say Spin helped break Nirvana. Right?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Right behind me, there's a spin cover There
Rob Kelly:you go.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Green sweater. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Is that still likely possible today in today's world?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Oh, yeah. That happens now. We we were pretty early on, like, Jack Harlow. Like, we got there pretty early. And that always feels good because outside of an algorithm, you've also like pointed people to something because they read spin to find out about new music.
Jimmy Hutcheson:There's artists like we were the first to write about. Nobody had written about them. And Spotify has some editorial as well. But I think the difference is that Spotify is like a utility. It's like, this is my music listening service.
Jimmy Hutcheson:This is my DSP. Like, I listen to my songs on Spotify.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. They're tech. They're tech. They're not taste.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're tech. Yeah. They're tech. They're not yeah. Like, I don't think Meeha, this electronic artist had ever been on a magazine cover and we put her on a cover.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I think we got behind Rufus DeSoul in a really big way. So the discovery now is you probably find it first on Spotify or Pandora or wherever. And then you go to Spin and learn more. You go to YouTube to watch their music video.
Rob Kelly:Back to sort of partially AI and tech certainly, but I know you worked with Kiss or worked with their management back in the day. My son would be thrilled about that, by the way, 10 year old.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Oh, Kiss fan.
Rob Kelly:Because he's continues to be super excited about the fact that Kiss said they'll keep going, but only in holograms. You know, they played this Master's Courtyard Gardens show in real life, and then they showed the holograms and said basically hinted that that's, like, gonna be the future way you see KISS is just through their holograms, except live still. Yeah. It's my take on it, my son's take more importantly. How do you feel about all that?
Rob Kelly:It's kind of a there's much AI I'm sure they're using to build all that stuff. Is that a future part of music?
Jimmy Hutcheson:I remember back in the day, more than a decade ago when Coachella brought the Tupac hologram out. And that was very forward thinking. And I think there's an ABBA show now that's holograms or that was a thing two years ago. I think there's an audience for it because, again, it's not because you wanna go see the technology. It's because you're a fan of KISS like your son.
Jimmy Hutcheson:You're there because it's KISS. Buy the hat. You buy the shirt. You know, you stick out your tongue like Jean, whatever.
Rob Kelly:I get a brand.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Fan. It's the brand. The hologram is just a means to that. Like, I don't think they're gonna sell out Madison Square Garden with holograms. It's probably gonna be more like Irving Plaza kind of like, it's not gonna be this like massive, you know, show.
Rob Kelly:Or maybe it's like just IMAX.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. IMAX. Yeah. Exactly.
Rob Kelly:Or the next IMAX.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. And maybe they'll release some exclusive music that they've never released before. I'm sure that the whole team with Kiss, like, they'll figure out how to do that and make it relevant to the next generation even when Kiss is long gone. Also too, these kind of groups tend to reinvent themselves based on the core fan base. Like the fans will dictate how that hologram program will roll out and what will make that special.
Jimmy Hutcheson:That's the key, I think. It's it's specialness, it's storytelling, it's how are you going to do something beyond the functional hologram? Like, new music type of venue, something cool maybe, like, with the surviving members signing autographs after the show, like
Rob Kelly:Or like bringing back Peter Chris. Like, okay.
Jimmy Hutcheson:There you go.
Rob Kelly:The show's got Peter Chris back.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Exactly.
Rob Kelly:Peter Chris' stake gets paid, you know, a nice little chunk of change.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. And people will will go to that and it it won't just be a shtick. It'll be like something sustainable for the band to continue to make that revenue. But it's also like you're giving fans like a special experience that they're not seeing anywhere else.
Rob Kelly:What's your take on using AI to create new music? So pure AI generated music as opposed to call it human made music with instruments and voices and so forth?
Jimmy Hutcheson:My take is and there's a lot of it out there now and you're you're seeing it chart on Billboard, all of that. You've got a label if it's AI or not. You think so? I do. And here's why.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Artists are not influencers. Influencers aren't artists. They are in some cases. But usually, like when we're talking, I saw that I think it was it was either an AI musician or an AI actress. The person who created it is like a poet.
Jimmy Hutcheson:But they're not singing. But they're like an artist. So an artist created this fake AI thing that's real to that person. But that's art. Right?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Like, you could have a poet that now like, I'm gonna make this sure. But that needs to be labeled that way because that's someone who writes poems for a living. They're not a singer. So it needs to be labeled as such so that people know, like, this isn't someone who's actually singing. The second part is the people who have the real talent.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're not always the ones who make the most money or get the most notoriety. Some of the best music is underground stuff you've never heard of. It's not all just Taylor Swift. So you want to give credit where credit is due to the artist. And where people are getting lost is everyone's up in arms, like, this is fake.
Jimmy Hutcheson:This is whatever. It's like it's taking something from artists. Like, no, it can only add to. But it has to be labeled that way. And maybe people who want real human music don't really like the AI or they do like it and it's just a matter of taste.
Jimmy Hutcheson:But people who like really underground whatever music, like, that's always gone on forever. Right? Like, this indie stuff, no one's heard, like, oh, I read about that in spin or something like and it's not super mainstream. Right? Well, that could also happen with AI on both ways.
Jimmy Hutcheson:You could have like the AI Taylor Swift megastar that's created by like, say, a poet. You can have all this cool underground stuff that's like a completely different sound that nobody pays attention to and makes no money. And you have that with real artists too. So I guess my point is that it's gotta be labeled in my opinion, so it's fair. And then two, don't run from it.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Embrace it. Like it's going to be out there. Nobody's trying to take anything from anybody. Like if it took a spot from someone on the billboard charts, then make something to outthink it. It being the AI.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Like, do better. Make better quality. Make something that people wanna listen to more. Right now, it's like this new thing where it's still kind of a new shiny object. It's kind of this gimmick.
Jimmy Hutcheson:So it's kind of in this like what I would call early stage of being gimmicky AI music. And artists who are art like real artists are freaking out and they're really upset. And I can see why. There's people making something that's completely fabricated that's not made by, you know, real artists. Now, there's also real artists using AI.
Jimmy Hutcheson:So that's where things are gonna pan out over time and people are gonna calm down a little and go, okay, there's a place for this and let's not rip off artists. So I'm fully in support of like artists need to make as much money as possible and this stuff needs to be labeled so that people know what they're listening to.
Rob Kelly:Last week, Chad, you told me you're spending about half your time on spin, half your time on Next Management, a private equity company. What's working well at Spin that you want more of in your next acquisition?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Great question. I would say what's working well at Spin is licensing. It's how we do a lot of our marketing and media buying, subscriptions, big initiatives that are gonna have really big impact and and go bigger and faster. And that's what we'll be able to do as we look at these future acquisitions.
Rob Kelly:Why not buy to me, from the outside, Pitchfork looks just like Spin looked when they were part of Billboard. Why not buy Pitchfork?
Jimmy Hutcheson:You know, I'm not going to say I haven't tried. It's I think it's
Rob Kelly:I didn't
Jimmy Hutcheson:know that. Somewhat ingrained in the bowels of Conde Nast, and it's, you know, it's now part of GQ.
Rob Kelly:But how confident are you you could turn it around in the way you?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Oh, I know I could turn it around.
Rob Kelly:You grew
Jimmy Hutcheson:Spin. I don't even know if they would say they need it to be turned around. It's just they folded it into something else for cost savings and whatever. Pitchfork's a great brand. Like, I amazing things with Pitchfork utilizing the tools that we've used at Spin.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I love the Pitchfork brand. Just to be frank, it's just not for sale. But I would love for it to be. I think we would do amazing with it. I have so much respect for the brand.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I followed it forever. I would love to bring the Pitchfork Festival back in Chicago. There's been editors from Spin who have gone on to lead Pitchfork. Like, there's so much synergy, I hate to use that word, but between the two companies. And, yeah, if they would sell it to me, I'd be right there in line.
Rob Kelly:Would Spin would you ever IPO it? Take it public? How do you feel about that? I don't know.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I mean, I I have never thought about that and no one really has asked me about that on a podcast. I I think it's probably more suited for a large publicly traded media company to acquire one day or another private company to acquire than for say an IPO. But you never know. I mean, there's there's definitely crazier things that have happened. So I just think IPOs don't treat our industry very well in terms of like valuations, and it it's a tough, tough business in media right now.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Case in point, BuzzFeed. I'm not knocking BuzzFeed, but like it's they've been it's been a tough thing for them being public.
Rob Kelly:You mentioned if you were to start a create a media business from scratch these days, How would you start?
Jimmy Hutcheson:I would start on YouTube. I would be a YouTube creator. And I would try to build my brand on YouTube first for several reasons. One, monetization. There's ways to make money on YouTube.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Two, it's video. Video is key when you're in media. Three, from video, then you can go into these other avenues. Substack, newsletters, you can go into maybe sharing across TikTok, etcetera, vertical video. But, yeah, I think a creator is the way to start.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Now, if you're more thinking like a corporate type of setup, like a creator network, a network of x y z type of content, network of news journalists, a network of sports reporters. You could do that on YouTube. Like, if you were to relaunch The Athletic, which was acquired by the New York Times, like, maybe that would have started on YouTube today, not on, like, a.com.
Rob Kelly:How do you sorry to interrupt, but how do you square that with earlier you're talking about like you're renting, you know, renting versus owning where you're on someone else's platform versus, you know, like, Spin owns its own you're in control. Right? Yeah. I mean, you're on social media channels and things, but
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah.
Rob Kelly:You really own your brand. But you would still start with renting someone else's platform in effect?
Jimmy Hutcheson:If I didn't have capital and I wanted speed to market, yes. If I had Capital, I'd probably do it like the information or the free press. Free press is a great example. Like, you have Barry Weiss who had been in the New York Times. You have Capital and you have like a really clear vision.
Jimmy Hutcheson:That's one where, like, she did that right. Like, start on a.com and then move into events and social and everything. Now, she's the head of CBS News. Like, it's a really quality But if I'm just, you know, a dude with no capital, I would start on YouTube. But you're exactly right.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Renting someone else's platform is only done when that's the only way you have to go. But if you have capital, I would probably say start your media brand on a.com and don't maybe call yourself a media company. Call yourself something besides just media.
Rob Kelly:No. It makes total sense. Yeah. If you have no money, you gotta kinda piggyback on someone else's property You're
Jimmy Hutcheson:gonna rent until you can own. Then Totally. When you own, you probably start on a really sophisticated .com type of setup. It doesn't have to be that sophisticated. But yeah, that's like the highlight.
Jimmy Hutcheson:You nailed it.
Rob Kelly:Who's the person you felt had the most electricity around them? Not while performing, because you're around a lot of folks like that, but just walking in the room, so to speak, in your life.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I would say, like, Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, like, you know, I've been on stage when they've been performing before and, you know You
Rob Kelly:fist bumped him. Right?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Fist bumped. Yeah. I I may have told you that.
Rob Kelly:But what about off the stage? Just, you know, literally, like, in the room.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I would say maybe, like, Bob Pittman from iHeartRadio. Like Nice.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I had lunch with him. Yeah. Like, the guy is magnetic and just a great guy. I ran into Adam Sandler a few times. He's that way.
Jimmy Hutcheson:He used to play basketball up at Pepperdine where I went to college. Then I saw him twenty years later and, you know, like, electric energy was outside this restaurant I was at in Brentwood and went up and talked to him and, hey, I played basketball with you twenty years ago. Like, yeah. Like, they they just, like, everything kinda stops everyone. You know, it's good to be a fan sometimes because that How good a player
Rob Kelly:is he?
Jimmy Hutcheson:He's good. Yeah. He can kinda get in there. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:I heard you mention once that Bob Guccione Junior might be the most prolific journalist ever. I'm a writer. I wanted wanted to hear more.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Oh, yeah. Bob's incredible. I think he's a savant. And he is you know, the editing that goes into spin and then the lieutenants under him. Yeah.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I just think he's covered some of the most important stories, not just in music, but in culture, especially in the nineties, etcetera. Also, Bob's been fearless. Like, he wanted to investigate Live Aid and like, Spin's the one who told everybody, like, Live Aid did not put the money where they said they were going. And Live Aid, if to not, maybe somewhat their fault, but maybe not. Like, they had people telling them money was going places it wasn't going.
Jimmy Hutcheson:SPIN followed up on and got that, you know, story done. I think SPIN's been contrarian in that way. Bob's led the helm of that. So not just the literal writing, but the mission of Spin and the fearlessness and the leadership. You know, he's been a big like, he's the founder of Spin.
Jimmy Hutcheson:So What'd you learn from Don Olmire? Oh, man. Well, Don Olmire was the president of NBC during its heyday. You know, definition of a good story. How to tell a good story from a bad story.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Learned about leadership and how to work with people in media and advertising. Learned really how the TV business worked before TV kind of fell apart. But I would argue those rules apply to streaming now. I learned so much from Don. I mean, I was so lucky to have him as a mentor, as a professor.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Really cool thing a few years ago, got to meet his son because somehow we got connected and the mutual friend. And I'm like, I can't like, I didn't know Don's son when I was younger when Don was my mentor, but I knew of his son. So, yeah, I I still feel like some of these guys kind of walk on water. They were just legends in their own right in media and learn so much from Don. The only thing I didn't do that Don did, paint.
Jimmy Hutcheson:He was a good painter. He painted at the end of his career. And, yeah, he was an incredible guy.
Rob Kelly:I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Rob Kelly:So I've got some, you know, I kinda call it humanitarian questions, and you just give me your quick take on each of these in our final time here. You consider yourself an AI optimist, an AI pessimist, some other qualifier?
Jimmy Hutcheson:AI optimist.
Rob Kelly:Alright. How do you feel about AI replacing your job? Will it happen in your lifetime? CEO of a brand media company?
Jimmy Hutcheson:No. No. Yeah. Just that there's kind of some c level decisions. Like, you've gotta I may have lots of AI agents under me supplementing the tasks of the rest of my direct reports, but I think CEOs are gonna be somewhat insulated.
Jimmy Hutcheson:You might have very large companies where there's one CEO with his, like, assistant who might be human or not, and then everyone else is an AI agent. Every VP is an AI agent. Every c level person is an AI agent. Gonna be the CEO running it. Like, multi billion dollar companies could come out of that type of What
Rob Kelly:are your thoughts on universal basic income? Well,
Jimmy Hutcheson:I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm kind of of the mindset that part of society's responsibility is to provide for those in need. I think that's been ingrained in America's founding documents, like we provide for people. Part of it is that I think people eventually have to move from universal basic income into something greater and have the opportunity to enter the middle class and, you know, have a chance to kind of pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But I think it's it's also part of society's responsibility to lift people up like that.
Jimmy Hutcheson:So, you know, there's a big part of my heart that goes, man, you gotta take care of everybody. And then it's once you've kind of given people that push, they then pull themselves up in society, and then they're there to help the next person.
Rob Kelly:What are you telling young kids in your life? You've got kids of your own, I know. What are you telling them about the impact of AI in their world?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Well, mine are so little that they don't even know what that means. Like, I've got a couple kids under five, so they're not that's not even like a thing. I think it's
Rob Kelly:It will be. It will be.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I guess a few years from now, I'll be guiding them in a completely different way because AI will be so different. It's more about leadership in critical thinking. I'm very much of the mindset that I want to teach my kids how to be critical thinkers, and how to discern information, and how to sort through fake information. AI is gonna get really good at fraud, spam emails, like, give us your credit card number. Like, hey.
Jimmy Hutcheson:That's not real.
Rob Kelly:So Yeah. My whole my whole family just got tricked into this awesome video of a new Star Wars movie just on Darth Maul. You know, it had everything down to Lucasfilm, a trailer. And my son showed it to we all were bought in. We didn't think for a moment that it was fake till we Googled and looked it up and learned that it wasn't, you know, it was fan fiction.
Rob Kelly:I shouldn't say fake. Was fan fiction.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Fan fiction. Yeah. Wasn't And then Michael
Rob Kelly:Lucas Jesus. This thing's gonna get even harder to curate in the future.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. I think that's exactly right. Like, critical thinking, being able to discern what's fake from what's real, and being able to utilize AI tools in a way that's gonna help you further your career because there may not be as many jobs out there with the way AI is going for humans. And we, I think, need, especially with critical thinking, people to be able to think for themselves and think critically about situations and people and opportunities. And that's what I want to teach my kids.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And those are the kind of skills that last forever even beyond just, oh, there's a new AI tool. It's like being critical thinkers.
Rob Kelly:A lot of people think AI is going to, you know, free us up with a whole bunch of free time. Let's just say it freed you up a 100%. You had a 100% free time. What would you be doing with your free time?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Definitely spending time thinking about faith, family, kids, parents. Like, I I would be spending tons of time in those areas. You know, take family, for example. Just spending more time with my kids, going to more theme parks, not missing the days my son says he's going to Knott's Berry Farm with my wife's parents. Like, I wanna go too.
Jimmy Hutcheson:And like, I I wanna, you know, do that. Right? Dave's like, I'm gonna go to the theme park. Cool. That's I would be doing a lot more of that.
Rob Kelly:How do you think of an AI avatar of yourself? Let's say, your family, your friends, maybe business too. But, you know, for folks who wanna have a conversation with you when you're not around, both not around physically but like literally, if you've passed away. How do you think about that?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Oh, I would love that. Yeah. Yeah. I would want it to think and talk like me. I would embrace it.
Jimmy Hutcheson:It would it would need be to be good and a really quality product and would talk like me, think like me. I mean, that's what's so interesting about me doing the podcast that I do when people ask me to come on. Like, theoretically, AI could, with my permission, could take all of my sound bites, take the way that I think about things, and then output something to my kids to have one day. And I would love that. I mean, I'm I would need to kind of have some control over that.
Jimmy Hutcheson:But I think an avatar like that of myself would be, you know, incredible for my kids to experience. I also think too about the the kind of philanthropic side of my heart is like, we haven't gotten into Spin Impact, but Spin Impact is this initiative that we have where we're trying to help nonprofits highlight what's important to different artists, and help artists highlight their own nonprofits. One of them is helping highlight charities that have to do with foster care, education. Another one is called The Phoenix, which is helping with addiction recovery. So the philanthropic side of me too, one one of my avatar to know how I think about giving back, I'm thinking about prevention.
Jimmy Hutcheson:So how do you prevent kids from going into foster care? How do you keep families together? I would want my avatar to, like, think through that and how do we solve really big problems and maybe take a private equity approach to nonprofits and philanthropy.
Rob Kelly:So when you bought Spin from Billboard, you found out that there was this storage locker in New Jersey. Was there anything cool that you found in it when you visited? Took ownership?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. It was a lot of old, not only the magazines, but photography where there were covers and then there were marker, like, someone editing in the old school days, like, hey, let's touch up this person's zit on their like, like, that stuff was kind of fun to me to see how people were editing photography in the old days, so to speak.
Rob Kelly:Wait. Who did it?
Jimmy Hutcheson:Man, I don't remember. It might have been like Bruce Springsteen or something. Like, I don't I remember a lot of cool photos. Like, there's one really high quality printed photo, like, you'd see it in a museum. And it was all of these legends of rock, from Tom Morello to whoever.
Jimmy Hutcheson:They're all standing in line at a porta potty at, like, first year, second year of Coachella, whatever. I was like, woah. This photo is, like, kinda fun. Like, it's at this, like, really cool looking festival in the background. All these rock stars are standing in line for a porta potty.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I don't know why that one sticks out to me. Like, that type of weird fun photography that was in spin in the old days, and it these were, like, printed out huge high res super high res photos on, like, the really thick paper. There was a don't get me started. A Shepard Fairey spin tenth anniversary poster that Shepard had designed, and I just hadn't seen that before. I'm like, woah.
Jimmy Hutcheson:This is cool. Lots of photos. Lots and lots of photos. Old giveaway items from spin parties from back in the day. Yeah, dude.
Jimmy Hutcheson:I sound like a kid in a candy store. Right? I'm like, oh, this was so cool.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. That's so awesome. Yeah. Hey, Jimmy. I really appreciate it.
Rob Kelly:I enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for investing the time.
Jimmy Hutcheson:Yeah. Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me and appreciate it and have a good one.
Rob Kelly:Well, this is Media and the Machine. A few things about you and me. If you wanna hear about the next new episode, make sure you hit follow on the show in your podcast app. If you wanna go a little deeper, head to mediaandthemachine.com and subscribe. When you share your email with me, you can see handcrafted transcripts, read the essays in my newsletter, and be the first to hear about who the guest is on the next show.
Rob Kelly:You can also email me directly from there. Maybe you wanna recommend a guest. I'll give you a shout out if you do. I love paying it forward. From time to time, I also open up office hours and host small meetups for subscribers, just to meet, talk, and build things together.
Rob Kelly:And if you're creating something of your own or thinking about it, I'd love to help. Maybe you've got a podcast in you. Finally, I don't have a marketing budget for this show. So if it's finding you and others, it's because someone like you passed it along. I'm genuinely grateful.
Rob Kelly:If you have a moment, an honest rating helps me make this better for you. You just go to the show page and click one of the stars. And I'd rather you give me a low rating than no rating at all. I mean it. It pushes me to get better.
Rob Kelly:Thanks again. See you next time.