How to blow up your YouTube channel and create a new career path with The Chopin Pod creator Ben Laude

Michelle Lynne: Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast today. I’m super happy to have Ben Laude on. Ben, welcome to the show, and thanks for being here.

Ben Laude: Thanks for having me, Michelle.

Michelle Lynne: So we got in touch through Pokie, our podcast producer, and he was like, “You’ve gotta have Ben. Ben has so many cool things to tell you about. He’s got all these different projects. He’s a pianist. We love pianists.” Pokie has his own podcast now about him. And I don’t know if you know Walter, they just like sit around and they talk about…

Ben Laude: How I know Pokie? ‘Cause of…

Michelle Lynne: Oh, really?

Ben Laude: I met… Yeah, I met Walter at a piano camp.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, fun. Okay.

Ben Laude: Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: I missed that part of the story. Anyway, I love their podcast ’cause they just sit around and talk about nothing, and it’s actually so interesting.

Ben Laude: Some of the best podcasts have no point.

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Yeah, absolutely, ’cause you get to learn a little bit more about how they think. Um, so anyway, I think that’s what we want our listeners to have from you today because you are very, not only an accomplished pianist, but you have a ton of other cool projects that you’ve built into your career. So I would love for you, if you could introduce yourself to our audience, and we’ll go from there.

Ben Laude: Well, I’m Ben. I am a classical pianist and music teacher, uh, first and foremost, and it’s turned into a career of content creation in various ways. Uh, so I have a YouTube channel, and yeah, I, I suppose I podcast some, but it’s just an excuse to make more YouTube videos.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, yeah.

Ben Laude: I worked for a company called Tonebase for several years, and we made a bunch of piano videos. And, um, that company is, you know, expanding and doing its thing, and I am trying to go it alone now and have kind of started my own content creation business, uh, partnering with arts organizations in the classical music space, my own channel, being my own boss, and, you know, trying to, to see where that takes me. So, um, yeah. I suppose I’m an entrepreneur. Does that…

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Yeah, you’re definitely an entrepreneur.

Ben Laude: Cool.

Michelle Lynne: Is he a nice guy?

Ben Laude: Me? Yeah, not really. I’m really exploitative to myself.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Ben Laude: You mean my former boss?

Michelle Lynne: No. You said you’re being your own boss, so how is he?

Ben Laude: He’s… Yeah, no, he’s not good. He, he overworks me. Um, he over-assigns me things because he’s overly optimistic about, um, how long it takes to get things done. I mean, it’s actually some kind of pathology, I think, that he has. So, I, I have meetings with him a lot inside of my head.

Michelle Lynne: I’m sure.

Ben Laude: Uh, they always end up with grand ideas that are supposed to be executed on really short time spans, and it never works out. But then we just keep chasing the tail and doing it again.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, because you have, you have executed quite a bit. I mean, you have, uh, I think, how many channels do you have right now? I know you have the Chopin Project.

Ben Laude: Yeah. So, I mean, the main channel’s YouTube, but there’s multiple projects kind of going at once. The Chopin Project is… the Chopin Podcast is kind of in its culminating phase and, um, I, sorry, I just had to quit my Slack, uh, which I feel like is relevant because I was being bugged by…

Michelle Lynne: By your boss?

Ben Laude: By, uh, my coworkers who I’ve just hired to help me actually kind of bring this whole Chopin Podcast to, to its denouement. So, the Chopin Competition is in October.

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Ben Laude: This is airing, so I’ll…

Michelle Lynne: Probably in October, actually. So, this month? Uh, yeah.

Ben Laude: Tense. Check me out. Right now, I’m in Warsaw hosting the International Chopin Competition on their channel, Chopin Institute’s channel.

Michelle Lynne: Cool.

Ben Laude: Hosts, and that came about because I did all this Chopin podcasting. But, um, through this sixteen-part, thirty-something-hour series that, uh, I’ve edited more or less all by myself, um, both video and audio formats, with dozens of guests. The main star is Garrick Ohlsson, the great pianist and Chopin player. Um, through it all, I realized I created this big library of Chopin knowledge in video form, you know, in multimedia form, and, uh, it needed a reference tool. So I have some, some people helping me just generate the transcripts, proofread them, and, uh, a web developer who’s built an app so that you can go to the Chopin Podcast and look up any given Chopin piece during this competition. And, uh, rather than just a block of text, you’ll be directed to that timestamped moment in the…

Michelle Lynne: Oh, smart.

Ben Laude: …where you have Garrick Ohlsson, you know, sort of demonstrate this piece and show you what’s interesting about it. So, uh, and, and also, well, many secondary references from the podcast, ’cause I had other guests talking about all the same pieces. So, I, uh, actually, I’ve thought I would grow sick of Chopin by this point, but not quite. Although I am looking forward to moving beyond Chopin and, you know, returning to some other composers I love, uh, and future content projects, so.

Michelle Lynne: So just for everyone listening, the Chopin Podcast, you said thirty hours of content. I just found it on Spotify. I actually didn’t realize it was also video, so I’ve gotta check all that out. Um, where did this come from? The idea for this sparked with…

Ben Laude: So it started with me getting an email from one Barbara Muse, who’s the director of the Chopin Foundation of the United States. She was looking for somebody to host the US National Chopin Competition, which took place in January. So she, in Miami, she reached out to me about a year and a half ago. Um, so it’s like late spring 2024. I had just kind of left Tonebase and started my own channel. And I’d also, one of my last videos for the Tonebase YouTube channel, which I had sort of built up and grown, um, before I decided to do my own, basically do that, my own version of that, one of the last videos I produced was called, um, “Snuck into Juilliard to Interrogate Pianists in Their Practice Rooms.” And this was a very popular video, and of course I staged it, but it made it, I made it seem like I’m just banging on the doors of random pianists and asking them how they’re practicing. And then I edited it with, with the score, and like if they ever talk about a certain passage, I’ll, I’ll sort of show the details. And it was a very fun video, and Barbara saw this video and was like, “I know a lot of those young musicians, ’cause they’re involved in the Chopin Competition and blah, blah, blah. Who’s this Ben guy? He should be our host.” So she reached out. I…

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Ben Laude: …phase, mental space. Well, I don’t call it entrepreneur, I just call it, um, desperate hustling. But anyway, I was on my own and no, I was just like, “I need to, I need opportunities.” So if somebody invites me to be their host of their competition, which will have live streams on their YouTube channel, and their YouTube channel’s relatively small, my immediate response to them is, “That’s great, but I would like to help you build your channel, build, you know, some kind of hype around this competition so that more people will actually tune in, and you don’t just expect people to tune in.” And so I pitched back to her this idea of, “Well, why don’t I make a series around Chopin’s works and you can sponsor it and I will put it on my channel, which I’m growing? It can be a podcast. It’ll have audio versions that we will put on Spotify, Apple, all those platforms. And I’ll also edit videos for every single moment of those, uh, of those interviews and scripted segments that I put together.” And so I started on this, and it was supposed to take four months and be done before January 2025. So it was just gonna be, it was supposed to be in the fall of 2024. And I launched it about a year ago, and here I am still, uh, still doing it because it just kept growing. I was gonna make one, one-hour episode per genre, and there’s about twelve Chopin genres, you know, so like Preludes, Nocturnes, Ballades, Scherzos, so Waltzes, these, these are the genres. There’s about a dozen of them. I was like, “Okay, three months, one one-hour podcast a week, we’ll be done by Christmas.” And already in the first episode was an hour and a half. By the second episode, I’m getting into two, two-plus-hour territory, ’cause I kept inviting more guests to be on these episodes, uh, besides Garrick Ohlsson, you know, there’s lots of great concert pianists, scholars, and it just got really involved, and everyone was saying yes, and I couldn’t say no. I had meetings with myself and I wasn’t saying no, wasn’t saying no to myself. So, I was just like, I found out that, um, it’s very easy to, to, uh, move your deadlines back when you’re your own boss, and that’s been both a blessing and a curse. And I didn’t sleep at all for most of the fall of 2024, producing this thing, but it culminated in the Miami event, which ended up being in the middle of the, the series. It was supposed to be at the end of the series, but it still worked out because that attracted something like three hundred thousand livestream viewers. Not unique viewers, but still three hundred, three hundred thousand views in one week. And I think their previous competition had something in the low thousands. I mean, it was, it…

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Ben Laude: …completely blew the, blew it out of the water. And everyone was like, “Yeah, we’re here ’cause of the Chopin Podcast.” So that concept worked, and, um, Barbara was very pleased. And…

Michelle Lynne: She was.

Ben Laude: …while I was there, the spokesperson for the Chopin Institute in Warsaw, you know, the epicenter, Chopin headquarters was there in Miami. And you know, he met me in a hotel and invited me to basically, uh, do the equivalent in Warsaw, although I’ll have less control. I mean, in, in Miami, I was like the producer, the, the host before, in between, and after every single round. And I was running around with a headset, grabbing pianists, interviewing them. In Warsaw, I’ll be just, you know, one host among multiple hosts for specific studio sessions during the sort of intermission of, of some of the, um, breaks or if I’m speaking in present tense right now, you can see me doing that there. But in any case, it was a big opportunity. It came about because of all this hustling, and once that all took place, I decided to extend the series and have it wrap up in the, uh, on the eve of the International Chopin Competition. So I just finished, past tense, although in my reality right now, I am finishing, uh, the final episodes of the podcast. And, uh, if it was just audio, I actually would’ve finished by Christmas maybe, but it was video too… And I, I am masochistically love video editing, which is actually a very tedious thing, and, uh, I love making it really fun to watch and stuff. This has been, again, something that’s really helped my career, um, but, uh, not something I’ve solved in terms of how to sustain doing these things. So I’m hoping this is all setting me up for something that can be more stable moving forward. But it’s been a fun ride, so.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing that you have this, you know, this passion for video editing, interviewing, Chopin’s music, and then somehow all of that together has led to this massive project, this huge success, three hundred thousand streams, views. Um, if someone told you, you know, the Warsaw thing is coming, could you have imagined that it would lead to something this big?

Ben Laude: Um, kind of, only because I’m obsessive and I had had some success at Tonebase, but…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Ben Laude: …so I had in the back of my, my mind it was possible I would end up in Warsaw doing all this. I’m not, I’m somewhat ambitious, but I just…

Michelle Lynne: I…

Ben Laude: …kind of be down to earth about it. So when I embarked on all this, there is part of me that’s thinking, “This could lead where it could end up.” And so I’m not, I’m not like, you know, in all modesty, I’m aware that this, I was aware ahead of time that this could work, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it, you know?

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, but it’s good to have a vision.

Ben Laude: I believed in myself and I did have a vision, and that’s what gave me the energy to do it. It was like, “I know this can work.” You know? It wasn’t like, “Let’s try something out and see if people care.” I was just like, “If I do this…” And I, and part of it was I should probably talk about Tonebase. Just, I had the benefit of meeting a lot of great pianists and getting experience YouTubing and creating content and creating video, videos, uh, in different formats at this company. And so, um, I was able to kind of partly ride the, the wave that, uh, I’d already helped sort of create there, and…

Michelle Lynne: Because you built their YouTube channel to the first one hundred thousand, right? Yeah.

Ben Laude: Yeah. And so, and by the way, the, um, the live streams of that Miami competition were, whatever number I said, something in the hundreds of thousands, but the podcast, which again, it’s very long, so these numbers are relative to the length of it too. But, every episode is, you know, averages about two hours. They’ve been longer of late, but that means for the videos, I was like, “No one watches a two-hour YouTube video, but they do watch twenty-five minutes, sometimes half-hour-long videos.” So I just split up those long, you know, Spotify podcasts into segments for their video versions. Each of those gets, you know, an average of a few tens of thousands. Some have gotten over a hundred thousand, and there’s like sixty, seventy of these little segments by now, ’cause it’s like sixteen episodes times three or four. So, um, those have gotten over two million views, and the podcast downloads are over a hundred thousand now. So it’s, I mean, people are into it, and, uh, there’s some part of me that’s like, “Yeah, but there’s still more people out there who could be,” you know? So I, I do have a kind of part of me that always wants to, um, just find as many people as I can to just share this music with.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing. Why do you think it worked, and how did you get the word about the podcast out in advance before this Miami competition that you said that their, their live stream views were so much higher because of the podcast? What was the, what was the flame on the fire?

Ben Laude: I had my channel sort of growing video by video that started January or February 2024. I had just left Tonebase. People knew me from the Tonebase channel, and I thought, “Okay, I’ll sort of finish a series I had been doing on Tonebase on my channel about, um, this pianist Yunchan Lim, Van Cliburn winner.” So I kind of strategically started with him because I, I, I kind of knew the algorithm would pick me up, and it did. So the first video did well, and I had a couple other videos in mind that I just had a good feeling about. And I developed these instincts from trial and error at Tonebase. I mean, I started there, and my main job was to create, uh, basically lesson content, but also interview content with great pianists for their streaming platform. For that. I mean, I would help to organize, you know, uh, production crew, videographers, and crews, and I would sort of produce and direct these, sometimes, you know, show up in the interviews, help the artists with lesson plans if they needed them, things like that. And that would all go behind a paywall. But, you know, we would release different kinds of things on social media. The marketing team, I would help them with that. But, you know, it was kind of always in our minds from the start of Tonebase, which the piano platform started 2019. We were like, “We gotta do something with YouTube. We’re a video, high-quality video creation platform.” So, um, we started by just kind of releasing clips, shorter clips from the long-form content. And that never does that well, actually, ’cause it’s not, it’s not content that’s made for YouTube, it’s not…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Ben Laude: …the audience. It’s always like, “Hey, go pay for our, the longer version of this.” So even some of…

Michelle Lynne: I…

Ben Laude: …okay. But it wasn’t until I started consciously editing for YouTube that anybody started watching. It’s just like they could feel that it was different.

Michelle Lynne: Yep.

Ben Laude: Um…

Michelle Lynne: Not repurposed or something.

Ben Laude: Yeah, exactly. And so I started, and I, I kind of always knew, um, you know, it might work best if I eventually start hosting these…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Ben Laude: …you know, being a, a mediator between the music or the artists that I’m talking to, or the music I’m talking about and the audience. And, you know, just providing that kind of inviting, fun, um, kind of vibe to, I don’t know, get people to come in and come in the door and experience this, some of them, you know? And, and it started working. Uh, and it really took off after the, the Cliburn in 2022 when I made this video about Yunchan Lim where I got just almost like a sports analyst. I like his performance. I like pause the video, I break it down, zoom in on things and highlight the score, compare him to… And everyone was just already kind of obsessed with him. And that video was something that, you know, countless people in the comments were saying they had watched ten times, ’cause they just, they were so obsessed with his performance. And then here’s somebody like helping them understand what’s so great about it. And then it made them go back and listen with, you know, with even more, um, perspective. And so, uh, people were so thankful, and I still get approached by people or messages from people who say it was that video or those videos about Yunchan in his Cliburn performances at first, you know, made people really wanna follow my channel, and I’ve done a lot of other kinds of videos since then. Uh, that really put me in a position where I felt comfortable doing that. And, uh, it was on, in my head for a while before I ever got the courage to just be like, “I might, I might make a fool of myself. I feel a little bit like an idiot doing this, but I am gonna sit in my bedroom, just record myself animatedly talking about this piano concerto performance.” And, uh, all the way up until when I pressed upload, I was like, “This might be a total bust of a video and flop.” Um, but it didn’t, and people were like, really excited to see somebody so excited about music, talking about it the…

Michelle Lynne: Exactly.

Ben Laude: …way, you know? So that I’m glad I had, I guess, Fearless Podcast, right? So I was, that was me being fearless. I think I was thinking I was being stupid, but some part of me was like, “Just do it. Just see what happens,” you know? And, uh, none of this Chopin podcasting, none of my own channel and the other collaborations that I’ve got, I’ve been lucky enough to, um, be part of recently would’ve ever happened if I didn’t just go for it. So…

Michelle Lynne: So the difference between this video was you really inserting yourself as a sports commentator, as you’re saying, and like analyzing the score, showing people what to listen for. You’re kind of, I mean, you introduce yourself today as a music educator. So in this sense, you’re really educating like tens of thousands of people about active listening, which is something that is really missing from people today. We don’t get it in the school system growing up. How do you view your role as, um, educating, maybe bringing people to concerts, bringing ’em to the podcast? I mean, you’re, you are singularly responsible for hundreds of thousands of people discovering this.

Ben Laude: Thank you. I, um, I think it traces back to my own insecurities about loving classical music in high school. Being somebody who, you know, for, not necessarily proud of this, but I was conscious of not being popular in high school, and maybe if anybody was my friend, it was ’cause I was the kid who sort of said sarcastic things in class and they thought that was funny. But I was quite shy, and I played the piano, but I was on sports teams, so I kind of had, I, you know, I had like my foot in these different social worlds and I did look up to the bros. It was just like, “How are, you know, why are they, why do people like them more than other,” you know? That’s, I don’t know. Um, but also, like, made fun of me for playing piano. So it was very weird. I, I should have just been like, “Screw you guys. I’m gonna go hang out with my own friends over here.” And I totally, um, you know, those would, those people would become my friends, you know? The ones who were like, uh, “We’re not hanging out with the popular kids. These jocks, they can, uh…” Anyway, so this is all by, this is me just psychoanalyzing myself. I think at the time I was, I noticed that I had this private obsession with music and I didn’t know anybody else who liked it. Classical music. And like literally I would like drive to high school listening to Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto or something. And then when I would get to the parking lot, I would like turn it to, you know, classic rock or something, which I also liked, but I didn’t, I I didn’t want to be seen or known as, or made fun of for this…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Ben Laude: …private thing. And so, yeah, I mean, long story short, I’m like, “It’d be nice if I could have just rolled my windows down and kept that Rachmaninoff like blaring and had, uh…”

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Ben Laude: “…the jock team come up and be like, ‘Yo, is that Horowitz?’” You know, whatever. Um, but that’s not the way the world works. So I, I think on some level I’m like not, I never wanted to teach or, or preach to the choir. I never wanted to just share my enthusiasm with, you know, my other friends who are already initiated, uh, and people like them. I wanted to get people who didn’t care about classical music or know that it was beautiful or think that it might be actually interesting and cool to learn more about, um, I want to get them over here and, you know, and so I kind of made, wanted to make videos that could potentially appeal to totally uninitiated, uh, types and partly my, just the fact that I had a sports background and I’ve always followed sports. It’s been, I, I, I suppose it’s a guilty pleasure. I’m not very guilty about it though. Like, I’m not ashamed like many of my peers are in the classical music world, “You watch football?” You know, uh, “Could you, you know, that’s so vulgar.” Um, and so, but I just, I noticed that sports media, to a fault, to an extreme, is analyzing everything that’s going on in these, uh, in these games. Um, what athletes are doing, you know, there’s opinion, there’s analysis, whole range, you know, and the classical music world is like, has a much richer culture in history, and yet seemingly no media, I shouldn’t say that. There’s just very little media and almost no media that bears any resemblance to this kind of engaging style in which you don’t dumb things down for people. You analyze and highlight what’s going on in the X’s and O’s of a football game or in the defensive formation in basketball, or what a, what a pitcher and a catcher are, how they’re communicating in a baseball game. Actually, I noticed there’s a, a, uh, YouTuber called John Boy who makes these baseball videos, and he analyzes moments from baseball games that are really interesting for reasons that aren’t readily apparent. And he shows through multiple camera angles exactly what happens, and he’ll even show like audience reaction and stuff like that. And when I was making the Yunchan video, I was consciously modeling certain moments after John Boy videos where he’ll zoom into a crowd and into the crowd and notice that, uh, this person is reacting this way and, you know, the person next to him didn’t even see what was going on. You know, it was just, it’s, it’s funny and also just adds to the, um, the viewer’s interest. So at the beginning of the Yunchan video, I point out that the orchestra, who usually is kind of like after concerto ends, they’re like, “Yay,” whatever, they’re just a cellist is putting their bow down and like clapping over their head. They’re going crazy for him. So I noticed that in the video as if I was reviewing sports tape and in this YouTube style, John Boy style in particular, I was zooming in and also just commenting, commenting on the, um, whole experience, you know, of, of being at this like, kind of remarkable event, this musical event, but also, you know, going into the music, going into how he played, and, and what kinds of decisions he made. And so my thought was why do we need to avoid being, um, specific about about what we do in, in as classical musicians, the kind of things we talk about in studio class and conservatory?

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Ben Laude: It’s like, there’s a, there’s a thought that that’s gonna alienate people. I’m like, “Actually, I find that YouTube’s a good medium for taking very highly specialized areas of knowledge, whether it’s chess or science, or even, sports nerd-dom.” There’s a whole world of being too analytic about sports. All these areas. It’s just like a perfect medium for inviting people into the really particular niche world. It could be both niche, but also you can popularize niche worlds with the right kinds of formats. And so, um, I was excited that, and I’m, and I’m still excited and trying to do more and more, um, you know, basically on that initial premise. And it, it’s been working to some extent, ’cause people are literally in the comments saying, “I didn’t even know what a Rachmaninoff was,” or “I never cared about classical music.” For some reason they say, and I’ve got these filed somewhere, “I can’t stop watch, I couldn’t stop watching this video.” And it’s like, that’s my favorite comment. It’s, it’s, it’s me getting those people in high school who didn’t care about what I was doing and, you know, my piano lessons to come over and actually pay attention. So, um, yeah, that’s, that’s really what drives me, I think.

Michelle Lynne: This is amazing. There’s so much to unpack here. Um, I love this baseball analogy because specifically what you said, not dumbing it down. So there is a way to bring people into our world of classical elite, uh, knowledge, education, the rich culture that you mentioned, and make it accessible to them, and you’ve done that through this narration, talking to them, explaining things, showing things that they might’ve missed, the reaction in the orchestra, “Here’s what to pay attention to.” It’s kind of like, when you go to the museum, you get the audio guide ’cause it tells you what to look for. So now you’re doing that in a way that everyone’s on YouTube, they can get excited about it. Your passion is contagious. This is like, it’s like the biggest hole in the market. You’ve figured out how to, like, we need to go get the people and bring them to the classical music world. Instead of saying like, “Oh, classical music is dying.” It’s like, “No, they just don’t know what to listen or look for.” So there’s a way to go reach them where they’re at. And some people have used social media for that. But the argument is usually, as you said previously, dumbing it down or the content doesn’t quite fit because you actually just want them to go watch the full video. And it’s, a lot of our colleagues too don’t wanna post on Instagram ’cause they’re like, “Oh, well, the sound is awful on Instagram. I can’t let my my playing be heard because it doesn’t sound like me and all this stuff.” And so we’re trying to wrap our minds around how can, how can you then bring an audience in or build an audience? And it sounds like, I mean, this is the perfect hole in the market.

Ben Laude: Yeah, and I, I don’t even know if dumbing it down is exactly the right way to put it, because I, I see a lot of strategies in classical music publicity world, which they’re not dumbing it down, they’re not dumbing anything down, but it’s just that I think the techniques for reaching people, um, there’s, uh, there’s a lot of traditional techniques that haven’t proven to reach people beyond just the traditional boundaries, if that makes sense. So, and, uh, I, I’ve gotten to know some of these publicists, you know, through working at Tonebase and, and since. And they’re interested in my work precisely because I seem to be able to help grow potentially the audience rather than what they’re usually forced with, which is let’s try to get all the people who are already the types who might come to a concert to come to this next one. They’re, they’re focused on a market that they already see as existing and being yay big, you know? And, um, my always my thought is like, “Yeah, why isn’t it bigger? Just like, let’s try to open it up more.” So, um, uh, you, you, you do need both. You need both. I mean, you need to be focusing on getting the turnout among those who already love classical music. But that, that’s the thing about the stuff I make, those people still like it too. It’s not just for the uninitiated. I, I have a lot of, um, I mean, a lot of, a lot of my peers and my mentors, uh, people are an older generations, great teachers, performers, uh, I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of them. Or they’ll reach out to me and they’ll say they follow my stuff. They really like it, so. Uh, that’s where not compromising the, uh, on the technical side of things, but…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Ben Laude: …showing what’s technical about what we do, showing what’s interesting about it, and what is under relatable in it. Um, and I don’t think, yeah, I don’t, I don’t think we should be, I don’t think we should, uh, we, classical musicians should think that we’re rocket scientists of some kind. Uh. Yeah, it’s like there’s technical terms, and, and we, we do something very specialized, but it’s very human and emotional, and, and the things that are technical are kind of fun to, to teach people about, and they don’t take that long to get someone to grasp them. If you…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Ben Laude: …explain a technical concept, also, rocket science is taught on YouTube videos in a very popular way. So why can’t music be as well, you know? So, um, sorry, I, I can’t remember what your question was, but…

Michelle Lynne: No, no, I was, I was just commenting on how you, you know, you’re keeping the intelligence of what we do, what we talk about in studio class, and yet making it accessible in opposition to what some people argue social media is. You know, we have to make it, uh, something that everyone can understand, but you’re not doing that. You’re keeping integrity, and it sounds like, you know, I’m, I’m getting flashbacks to undergrad. We would meet once a week and go nerd out about a certain interpretation and talk through it as the pianists of the studio. You’re basically doing that in a expanded version. People can come in and be like, “Oh, what’s this world? This is weird and interesting, and oh, maybe they wanna stick around.”

Ben Laude: I mean, I, the example I give is, uh, chess, although I currently not in a chess phase, I kind of go in and out of, I am, I’m horrible at chess. I, probably have a negative rating if, if I got on chess.com and, you know, I would immediately checkmate myself somehow. Um, and yet for a period of time of multiple years after the Queen’s Gambit came on, actually in 2020. But, uh, after that show, and I had already been interested in it, you know, there was a big, especially during COVID, there was a big, uh, surge of chess content and chess streamers and this type and chess commentators on YouTube who were like down, you know, games between Grand Masters, a level I could never achieve, who know different lines and openings and, and middle game strategies that I could never even grasp in the technical terms of, which still fly over my head. And then I’m sitting there in awe that there are masters, Grand Masters, who have this knowledge somehow, through some combination of experience and study and instinct, know that this move is somehow going to affect this entire game. And I, it is just a beautiful thing. And, um, yeah, it was definitely like YouTubers showing that in engaging ways. There’s one very famous one, Gotham Chess. I mean, Levy basically calls a chess game like it’s a boxing match, you know? So again, sports analogy. Now chess is sort of a sport. Magnus Carlsen calls it a sport. Uh, and so it’s a little different with classical music, and I’m still always thinking about this. I’m like, “Okay, yes, there’s competitions, but people also hate competitions.” Um, no one’s directly competing. Sort of more like ice skating or gymnastics, but even there, there are specific technical criteria that the judges are, you know, judging you on. So it’s a little bit more objective. But nevertheless, these are extreme events that we participate in when we do live performances, especially when they’re memorized and there’s high stakes, and, uh, took years to get to this point. So there’s a lot of parallels with worlds of other, you know, high, high-performance elite domains, whether it’s chess or athletics and, uh, gymnastics of different kinds. So, um, yeah, I think, I think I’ve just, I do it my way, but I think there’s a whole universe of media yet to be created about music, about classical music, about music in general, um, for those who like music, which tends to be everybody. I don’t know if you noticed, there’s very few people who were like, “Yeah, I don’t like music.”

Michelle Lynne: Right, right.

Ben Laude: Um, and if they like music, then I think they could like classical music. Why not?

Michelle Lynne: Are you seeing anyone else take this approach of the kind of sports commentator, live hosting, getting people involved?

Ben Laude: Um, I definitely not the first piano YouTuber, and I should shout out to somebody who definitely influenced me, uh, Nahre Sol.

Michelle Lynne: Oh…

Ben Laude: Great…

Michelle Lynne: …she went to school with, uh, Deanna. Yeah.

Ben Laude: Yeah. And I, I actually knew her at Juilliard as well, and, um, she, uh, it was just so funny ’cause I have a memory of her playing in a performance class and, you know, she was kind of reserved and, and unassuming, and I never would’ve thought, you know, she’s gonna have a, you know, huge YouTube channel one day and be reaching millions of people creating. But she’s somebody who is, I think probably more introverted, but found a way to express herself in her own skin, in her own authentic personality. And she did a lot before me, certainly, that I was taking note of and, and studying, uh, her techniques. But, you know, she did a lot of these videos where she would play, she would show pretty quickly and in a very engaging way, the aspects of a different, uh, of different composer’s styles. She’d have annotations with, you know, colorful adjectives describing the techniques that she was using to sort of make something sound like it’s Chopin. So maybe it’s “Happy Birthday” and you’re playing it in the style of different composers. That’s one of her famous videos. It’s, it’s not saying, “Oh, you’re using this ninth chord and, uh, you know, it’s not using like technical music theory terms, but colorfully describing what are essentially improvisatory keyboard harmony techniques, compositional techniques that are characteristic of certain composers.” So she’s doing that on YouTube and getting lots of views, and, you know, her channel is still way bigger than my mine probably ever will be. And she was in that, I would say, that sort of golden age era of late 2010s YouTubing when finally people were starting to create this kind of thing. And she was one of the first on the scene, I think, to, to really do it in a colorful, creative way. About the piano. And she’s also composer, improviser, interested in other genres. And so she does a lot of those kinds of things. And also not just piano, she’s into lots of different, um, kinds of classical music. So, and I am too, but I’ve mostly restricted myself to the piano and, you know, building my niche through that. Luckily, the piano is kind of the universal instrument, or it’s the instrument that’s able to stand for or have all other instruments be transcribed onto it. So it’s not about instrument too. It’s also multi-genre instrument. So if I did want to collaborate and kind of cross-genre or find people where I could maybe make a video sharing my knowledge with them, what I know, and they share from their, you know, it’s like piano is kind of the place. It’s a nice playground, I think, to meet musicians and music lovers of different types across genre too. So, uh, yeah. I play the right instrument. No, but um, yeah, so I, uh, I, I’ve definitely, I didn’t start this. I think I’ve brought some of my own techniques to it, and I am, what I can tell in, in meetings with my boss in my head, um, obsessive about it. And so I think that’s made me just produce a huge volume of this stuff. But again, I have my interests and my ways of doing it and my things I wanna try out. And there’s just so many, I think, en routes. I don’t, there are, I, I see some other channels cropping up and they’re cool. I just want, there should be more of them, and I hope those succeed, ’cause there…

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Ben Laude: …is not a, not a big enough ecosystem yet to really say that there’s a network of classical music or classical piano media. It’s still independent creators trying things out. And I’m, I’m, I’ve been lucky and fortunate to be, be, uh, doing that for piano and, and getting some attention for it. So.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing. So what are you looking most about forward to the most in Warsaw, and how is this gonna help continue to grow this world that you’ve created?

Ben Laude: Well, this is where I can share some of my entrepreneurial secrets. No…

Michelle Lynne: Ooh, you heard it here first. Everyone. Fearless Artist Podcast from Ben Laude.

Ben Laude: …to my project, so I don’t know how they’ll translate to any, but, but you can get a sense for my thinking and, uh, I hate to use the word capitalize, but it is sort of what I’m doing. So I’m not going to run from the term, but I’m gonna try to capitalize, right, make the most for my career…

Michelle Lynne: Take advantage. Yes.

Ben Laude: …take advantage of the opportunity that I was given when I was invited there. And considering that this whole Chopin Podcast is, you know, I don’t mind using that term, by the way, because I’ve worked so hard on this stuff I’ve been doing and I put so much time and effort into it without any compensation. It, capitalize isn’t even the right word. It’s me trying to finally pay myself back for all the work…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. And we believe that musicians deserve a, a good living. So we’re, we’re okay with talking about money too.

Ben Laude: …and so I do have a Patreon. When I was at the Cliburn earlier this year where I was invited just to kind of be there to, um, cover the competition. I wasn’t working as a partner with them, but I was just media. Um, I made, produced public coverage for my channel for free, but I also did daily recap videos of every single note I heard sitting in the, in that hall in Fort Worth, for Patreon subscribers. And then I, you know, posted on my social media, “Hey, um, come watch my detailed breakdowns if you’re following the Cliburn.” And guess what? A lot of people were following it. They wanted to, they didn’t see anybody else with a kind of sports highlight commentary and analysis, you know, video at the end of, of every day of the Cliburn. And so I was the only one doing it. And so no competition there. Lots of people signed up, and I was able to sort of expand my community that way. Um, and, uh, of course, then, then it’s like, “Okay, well, now the competition’s over. I have to keep,” you know, “I, I have to retain viewers.” So there was some drop-off, but also I, I never went down. I’ve just kind of stayed steady since then, which means I’ve, everything else I’ve been producing through the podcast and various sort of bonus content and other things that I make available to my Patreon subscribers has been, you know, they’re great. They, we have conversations inside that community, and I want that to grow even more. So…

Michelle Lynne: Amazing.

Ben Laude: …my plan is I’ll go to, I’ll go to Poland and, uh, even though I’m officially hosting some, I’ll have time, and I’m gonna make extra content commenting on the competition. Some behind-the-scenes video interviews with competitors, maybe jury. Just, there’ll be a lot of special people there. And so I’ll just make some stuff that’s behind the paywall, and then people, I’ll have a lot of visibility from, um, again, maybe this is present tense. Hopefully, you’re watching me. Please watch. Uh, and then, you know, it’s on YouTube, Chopin Institute Channel, but I’m also on YouTube. The algorithm’s not stupid. It will be promoting anything I post on my channel during that time. And so, all the many hundreds of thousands of people around the world attending the Chopin Competition live streams should have recommended right next to them, Ben Laude posts about that competition, especially ’cause I’m a part of it. And so the algorithm should promote that. I’m aware that that is there, and so I want to take advantage of that, and I have a, a sort of lineup of both public and then paywall, Patreon videos that I want to come out with. I might even do live, live streams just for my channel after each round with different guests commenting on the results, things like that. Again, it’s a little bit like Olympic coverage of the Olympics, you know, and, and again, Medici’s there. They’re actually covering the finals. I’m… they even reached out to me and they were like, “Can you make little videos for our channel in which…”

Michelle Lynne: Uh, amazing.

Ben Laude: …So like, I hope maybe that can even continue because, well, here I am talking publicly about this. I don’t know if this would ever materialize, but they already have this infrastructure, and…

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Ben Laude: …you know, to, and they’re already doing it a little bit, but like, they could go even further in terms of they’re already covering competitions and classical music events. How about that extra analysis, you know, after show, right? The, the…

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Ben Laude: …what sports does so well, so stupid. I mean, the Super Bowl is literally two straight weeks of just pre-game show. It’s…

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Ben Laude: …a two-week-long pre-game show. Classical music has like, lectures, I guess. Well, let’s make them engaging video versions of those things, like for, for big events. So, um, anyway, so experimenting while I’m in Poland with this. And then, uh, yeah, I built out this resource that I was mentioning at the very beginning of the podcast so that people following the competition can also, uh, look up through what we’re calling the Opus Index on the Chopin Podcast. “Oh, someone’s playing, uh, Nocturne B major. Nocturne. I don’t know that one.” Go to the Opus Index, type it in. Boom. You have Garrick Ohlsson talking and demonstrating beautifully and eloquently for eight minutes. You know, so it’s like kind of a fun companion resource to have, you know, split screen with the Chopin Competition as you’re following it.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing. It’s kinda like Tonebase on steroids, right? Oh, you have merch.

Ben Laude: I got merch.

Michelle Lynne: Amazing.

Ben Laude: The sticker’s really good. These are, I haven’t advertised these yet, but…

Michelle Lynne: Well…

Ben Laude: …so…

Michelle Lynne: I’m gonna jump into your Patreon just to get a coffee cup. Um…

Ben Laude: I haven’t set that up yet. So…

Michelle Lynne: Oh.

Ben Laude: …but pretty soon. Yeah, we’re just about to launch, um, the merch and the sort of Patreon, merch, whatever, discount thing. So…

Michelle Lynne: Okay, well…

Ben Laude: …you know…

Michelle Lynne: We’ll be in there.

Ben Laude: So, yeah.

Michelle Lynne: We’ll grab some for our Fearless Artists. We’ll do a giveaway on our page. Um, I love this idea of, uh, yeah, being able to jump at the timestamp to that specific spot because once again, it’s like we will teach you whatever you wanna know, and we’re gonna make it so accessible, and this is the easiest way for you to do it. And I mean, I think it’s a brilliant idea, the sportscaster commentary thing for classical music. And then you can keep the hype going, as you said, two weeks before, and then it can go across any competition. Does it have to just be Chopin? Like this is a massive visibility opportunity for you and the brand and, and what you’re doing.

Ben Laude: Yes. I, uh, I hope I, I wish I could just retire after all this. Um, I need to take a break. And part of this is like, you know, really, really trying to, um, again, earn back or earn, earn something of, of value. Besides the value, you know, the intangible value I feel, and everybody enjoying my things and stuff like that, um, to make some money…

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Ben Laude: …so that I can take a little bit of time off, reset. Like just take care of myself, spend time with my wife, figure out what’s next in 2026, and I’m, I don’t trust the boss up here to do this well, so I, I am gonna need help, but really need to figure out how to, to do a version of what I’ve been doing in slightly more sustainable ways. I mean, one of the, one of the real risks when you go it alone like this, when you in any domain, everybody knows this and business people talk about it, in classical music where you really, you, you have to work extra hard to monetize the stuff you’re doing ’cause it’s not so naturally, uh, designed for that kind of payback, um, can really strain you and if you have obsessive creative tendencies like I do, uh, and no limits to that, this sense that I, I always need to do the extra thing because I need to optimize, optimize, optimize. There’s no natural limits. There’s no clocking out. I’m always thinking. I mean, I’m, it’s not just that I’m physically and mentally working day. It’s, you know, on a specific project. It’s that I’m thinking about it even when I’m not working. I’m checking something on my phone that’s giving me a notification about it. So I’m truly on at all times, and I just, my body is telling me that’s not healthy or sustainable. And so, I need to find ways to observe, not the Sabbath, but you know what I mean? Uh, may well…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, rest.

Ben Laude: I need to, I need to take time off. Yeah. And have it, not just not be like two months of time off after sixteen straight months of craziness, but like maybe one day a week. Hmm. I feel like there’s a day a week we’re supposed to rest. No, but you know what I mean? Like, I, I actually…

Michelle Lynne: Absolutely. Yeah.

Ben Laude: …have a life. So, um, I…

Michelle Lynne: No, thank you for…

Ben Laude: …I don’t have any advice for any of your listeners about that, ’cause I’m still figuring it out myself.

Michelle Lynne: No, I appreciate you bringing that up, ’cause rest is, uh, something we talk about a lot to avoid the burnout, avoid the mental overload that you’re describing. Um, is YouTube not a good monetization source then, even with the views that you’re getting?

Ben Laude: No, because I use a lot of copyrighted content and I get content ID claims, and although I dispute most of them in the name of fair use, um, still many of them are rejected. Many of those disputes are rejected. I don’t get copyright strikes because it simply demonetizes the videos.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Ben Laude: Um, I think one of the appeals of my videos is, is that I’m commenting on perform real performances that other people own. And…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Ben Laude: …what it is. I’m grateful that YouTube even has a system on the backend now to handle those copyright ID claims, ’cause in the 2010s they didn’t. And it was, it was very dangerous for creators. Now they have a buffer and a system so that creators can, can create, and for the most part, only risk demonetizing individual videos. Some of them still get monetized, some fair use appeals are accepted, and I even have found partners among some rec, you know, in the record industry. And I’m in contact with them, and they’ve permitted, I mean, Chopin has been very gracious, the Chopin Institute in allowing me to use, uh, lots of video from their past competitions. For example, I’m in touch with representatives at basically, I mean, Universal Music. I mean the, big bad guy. No, I shouldn’t say that. Uh, lots of good people working in those classical, in their various, uh, classical record labels who are just trying to like, you know, uh, sell, uh, classical music records. And actually they’re, and more embracing of what I’m doing because they realize it’s good for them too. Like…

Michelle Lynne: Yes. They’re bringing massive audiences. Yeah.

Ben Laude: …we should let this guy do this and not demonetize him even, or maybe even share revenue. There’s different options, uh, because he’s like literally giving us publicity about this album or whatever. So some of these are, now it’s reaching the point where people are like, “Decca, Deutsche Grammophon.” If I’m getting messages from them, “You know, if we send you this box set, will you make a video about it?” So I, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do these kinds of…

Michelle Lynne: Yes, I will, and here’s my fee.

Ben Laude: Yeah, exactly. Um, uh, could, you know, could you, could, could you ask me about some other, like, I, I have to have some more organic interest in the or the artist? I, it would be very hard for me to make a video and be honest if I don’t have any strong feelings about, or strong feelings or the kind of feelings that they would want me to have if, you know, if they wanted it to be positive. So it’s a tricky business because some of the people are, when you’re trying to market something, you know, you’re not necessarily gonna want to go to a, an opinionated, independent creator to comment freely on it unless they’re gonna comment freely in a positive way. But how can you be sure of that? So it’s tricky, and I’ve been trying to figure this out too. You know, it can get me into a little bit of trouble. Like I, I want to preserve my independence as a voice in the classical music world, but I also want to help in the, uh, industry out who, um, are promoting all the, this great art form through existing media and existing channels. So that’s, there’s some contradictions there that I’m working through, but that’s just, I think, part of the, uh, the…

Michelle Lynne: There has to be a way that you could get a cut of tickets sold because people came through your channel. Like if you had some kind of code that you could track, like tickets to the competition, either live in person or, or online, people paying the competition that they’re watching, you can track that. They came through you so you get, you know, a cut of that.

Ben Laude: I think this is where I hire you, Michelle, to come up with these ideas for me. No, I’m serious. Like I sometimes have this kind of thought that you just had spontaneously, but like, I’m so focused in other areas that, you know, I have my own, I started my own LLC, and I’m the most irresponsible business owner I’ve ever met, just because I don’t know what I’m doing. You know, I’m a creator. I, I really, I, I need help. I need help from people who do think in those ways. And so I have a feeling that there’s a lot more value I could be earning back or, you know, while whatever ways of monetizing the stuff that I do, that I have not have not even occurred to me. And, uh, my wife would be very happy if I figured out more of those ways or more of them occurred to me. But, um, I’m doing the best I can, but that’s actually a really good idea. I, I haven’t figured that out yet. Like, how do I, that’s that’s for after all the Chopin stuff, I…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, after the, after Warsaw, yeah.

Ben Laude: …can sit down and be like…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Time off.

Ben Laude: “…what have I made here? What can come next?” And also, “Who do I wanna work with?” Like, what other people…

Michelle Lynne: Can you partner with?

Ben Laude: Yeah. And other…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Ben Laude: …musicians who are really smart, who have other skills would lend themselves to this, that would be cool to, to work with. And some of their skills might be more in the sort of, uh, business side of things.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben Laude: I, I’m a conservatory grad who was, you know, good at video editing and, and content creation. There’s other conservatory grads who have other skills and, uh, you know, we should probably be uniting in more ways to, to also sort of combine forces and help each other out, which I think is maybe one of the, one of the missions and, and benefits of your, your work as well.

Michelle Lynne: The community. Yeah. And just coming back to you in high school, I mean it’s, we’ve chosen a career that’s very isolating. We lock ourselves in a practice room. It’s a very niche thing to be interested in. So it makes sense that, you know, we have to be alone to work. So it’s very lonely that feeling. So we love building the community to be able to find people with great ideas. Um, I’m excited for your time in Warsaw. I’m gonna be following. We’ll be sharing it on all our channels and supporting you, and, uh, yeah, I just wanna thank you so much for all of your thoughts and time. I have a thousand more things to ask you, but maybe I’ll have you on after the Warsaw uh, competitions. Get your, your feedback on that.

Ben Laude: I feel like we didn’t talk about enough things and I just talked about myself the whole time.

Michelle Lynne: No, but I love it. I love it. It was so awesome. No…

Ben Laude: Uh…

Michelle Lynne: …it was great. And I just wanna tell everybody listening, can you just tell us what’s on your shirt? ‘Cause it’s so cool.

Ben Laude: It’s really stupid. Uh, uh. I don’t even know. I would never wear this one on my, you know, I’m, I wear my like Chopin shirts on…

Michelle Lynne: Okay, so he’s got Chopin in a cardboard box on one side, and then on the other side, Chopin’s not in the box. It says Chop Out. Chop Out, I guess, is the…

Ben Laude: Chop…

Michelle Lynne: Chop In, Chop Out.

Ben Laude: …is that it’s not even pronouncing his name correctly, I guess to say.

Michelle Lynne: Chop In, Chop Out. It’s okay. It’s on brand. I love it.

Ben Laude: What I love. That’s, it’s really, it’s really dumb.

Michelle Lynne: No, it’s on brand. It’s Chopin. It’s funny. It’s you. Your personal brand’s gonna blow up. Um, just wanna encourage you to keep going. I think you’ve hit like a total gap in the market. This is super fascinating. A lot of people are gonna catch the fire and go for this. Um, I’m definitely gonna be checking out your YouTube channel more and more after this and listening to these two-hour podcast episodes. Um, if you had an action point for everybody listening today, what would it be?

Ben Laude: Can you define action point for me? Is that like…

Michelle Lynne: They have to do something. You just like gave us so much wisdom and, and information about how to think outside of just, I mean, we didn’t even touch about your, your piano career, but, you know, for everyone listening, what? I mean, their action point can just be to go follow the, the Chopin Competition and watch your, your…

Ben Laude: It’s not, it’s not…

Michelle Lynne: …commentary.

Ben Laude: …for action points for them in terms of what might be, um, good steps in their own careers. It’s…

Michelle Lynne: But it could be super inspiring to watch you do your thing and you being in your zone of genius, so…

Ben Laude: I don’t wanna make it about that ’cause you’ve…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Ben Laude: …listened to me for an hour talk about how you should go watch Chopin Podcast. So, um, maybe just to generalize an action item, if you’re in, if you have any creative instincts, and I think it, something that’s really helped me and that I wouldn’t be able to do anything without is, um, I, I, I’m a writer, I write everything down. And so if you have a thought, even if it’s half-baked or one-quarter baked, or you think it might never amount to anything, it excites you in any way. Um, if you have ideas, creative ideas, even in their germinal phase, just write them down. Have a place where you, um, are, are always in interacting with yourself and in conversation with yourself. And, uh, I just have endless notes with, um, with ideas I’ve developed that will never see the light of day, so that a few of them can. And so action item is, is write more. And if you’re young, read more, because I’m not, not, I’m not singling anybody listening out, but I’ve worked with a lot of younger people lately and I’ve been, I don’t know if I’m over-generalizing, but I’ve been dismayed at the level among even very smart students at their writing levels. It’s, they’re extremely poor. And especially with AI creeping in, I wonder if we’re just not reading and writing anymore. So I think, um, my action item, if it, if it is even the right kind of thing to have for an action item is, be a, be a writer. Be your own writer, and take, take notes, and, uh, be able to formulate your ideas, and it will take you very far, uh, because the, that’s the, the foundation for expressing yourself in whatever ways you might end up doing creatively and professionally.

Michelle Lynne: I think that’s brilliant. Thank you so much. Um, everybody listening, go follow Ben Laude on Instagram and of course YouTube. Ben, we look forward to seeing you in Warsaw, and, uh, thanks for being here.

Ben Laude: Thanks, Michelle. It was a lot of fun.

Michelle Lynne: See you guys, be fearless.