Music saved me. He has spent more than two decades living at the crossroads of music and technology. And the passion behind all of it has always been very deeply personal. Olin Grover was a founding member of the iHeart Radio team, helped launch the iHeart Radio Music Awards, served as CEO of the global podcasting platform Pocket Casts, and he led TrueFire Studios, the world's premier online music education platform. And in his free time, he's joined Nemono. Leading the Norwegian Audio Tech company, he's a very busy man. And he's also a board member of Sounds of Saving, a nonprofit that harnesses music as a bridge to mental health and wellness for young people. Now, Olin Grover knows firsthand that music isn't just entertainment, it is truly a lifeline. This is Music Saved Me, I'm Lynn Hoffman, and Olin Grover is next. Don't go anywhere. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Music Saved Me. So, Olin, welcome to Music Saved Me. It's really, really an honor to have you here. You've built a career sort of at the intersection of music and technology, but before all of that, I wanna know what your personal relationship with music was growing up. Like, was there a moment when you realized music just hit you in a certain way that you knew was gonna be important in your life? I don't remember a time when music wasn't important in my life. I have very strong memories of being in my early childhood bedroom, and my parents had a small, integrated, Fisher Price style record player, and I very distinctly remember listening to Beatles 45s. Again, I was too young to have my own taste, but my parents thankfully understood the enduring power of the FAB4, and so that was piped in to my eardrums. I can remember buying my first albums back then that was cassettes. I can remember my first concert so well. I had an older brother who was seven and a half years older than me, who was also incredibly influential in my life in terms of helping to develop my musical sensibilities, and I played music as a child. I played piano, I played saxophone. I don't think I was very good at it. And then starting in the eighth grade, I played in bands pretty much throughout high school and into college. So I think it's fair to say that music has had an impact on every facet of my life going back to when I was just a teeny, teeny, tiny toddler. That's for sure, and thankfully your parents had good taste, and your brother. He had excellent taste, yes. There's many stories of the Beatles affecting people. It's definitely a thread throughout most people, I'd say our age, and up, or maybe even younger, but they were very influential. So the show's called Music Saved Me. What does the phrase mean to you personally? I mean, is there a specific song or an artist or maybe like a moment in your life where music genuinely pulled you through something difficult? Well, many, many moments. I'll point to one, I mentioned my brother. He sadly passed away in 1997, and losing a sibling to anyone who's been through that kind of grieving knows is incredibly hard, and he was such an important presence in my life. Because of the age difference, we were never directly competitive, but he always had really unorthodox tastes in music. He was really heavily into New Wave and loved bands like Jesus and Mary Chain, The Cure, Peshmode, also Love Clash, Lit the Clash, and another early punk stalwart was like The Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks. And that stuff just made a really early impression on me. I would just raid his music collection. When he passed in 1997, I was listening a lot to a Boston band called Mission of Burma that was a little before my time, but they were a great, really intense, fun, sort of post-punk, angular, loud band. And but they also had quiet moments. And there's a song that they have called Einstein's Day that really meant a lot to me during those times. It has a kind of coiled, slow build to it. And it's just full of feeling. And it's not even so much that the lyrics themselves were directly relevant, but it made me feel something at a time when it felt so hard to tap in, because I was shut down to protect myself from the pain and the upset of having lost my brother. So music was an outlet for me to remind myself that I'm human. I have the emotions and help me through my grieving process. If you want, I mean, I'd love to hear other examples, because that is certainly a powerful example of that. First of all, I also didn't. I'm from Boston. I'd never heard of that band before. So now I want to check it out. And they actually continued to put out records long after their original pop in the early 80s. You remember the DJ music producer, Moby? He actually covered one of their songs when he was heard about his peak. And I think it changed some folks on. But I'm a big fan of theirs. There were lots of other examples. I can remember being in the fourth grade. I went from one school that was in my neighborhood to another school that was a private school. And I didn't feel like I fit in at all. And I felt really alone. And I was listening a lot to Mirage by Fleetwood Mac at the time. And there were two big singles off of that record. One of them was Hold Me, which obviously, when you're not feeling like you fit in and you want to belong, you want to feel a sense of belonging and companionship, there's nothing like hearing Hold Me. Hold me. Oh my gosh. Make me feel better, comfort me. And such a beautiful song, Great Harmonies. I also love that it's Christine McVee singing the lyric. She has such a unique voice. And the other one on that record that I still so musnny deeply is Gypsy, which has this incredibly vocal by the Queen. Stevie Nicks. So yeah, and she's wonderful. And so, you know, look, I listen to a lot of really heavy, really angry music. But I also listen to music that's a little more subtle and emotional. And in the case of Fleetwood Mac, I feel like they write such layered, beautiful compositions. So those songs, I remember, were sustenance to me during the time when I felt really, really isolated. And the other song, interestingly, was Steve Winwood's Ballerina, which has been recovered and made into a dance song. And like, it's had many lives. It's a very interesting song. But there's something about the way he sings. And as a fourth grader and eight-year-old, it just, it had such an impact on me. Big time. The songs were almost like a little sad. You know, like that song's a little sad. But actually, sometimes when you're feeling bad and you're feeling isolated or you're feeling low, there's nothing like a sad song to really let you feel alive. I'm a big proponent of lean into the sadness when you're feeling and when you're feeling low. Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost like it's a double negative that turns positive because you could take, you know, you feel, you don't feel alone. Well said. You were a founding member of iHeart Radio, the team at a time when digital music was just starting to reshape everything in our world. What was the energy like in those early days? Did you feel like you were, you know, building something that could change people's lives? This was what, right around 2000-ish? 2000, this was a little later. It was 2007, 2008 was when we really started to bring the brand to fruition. The brands had many lives, but the team that originally started this was sort of a ragtag crew of sort of digital specialists inside what was then an enormous radio company. I think at the time, the company owned 1180 stations across the United States and in close to 900 markets. The company iHeart Media still owns, I think 850 stations or so, but it was even bigger then and they had just spun off, you know, the Live Events business, which became, you know, the biggest concept promoter in the world, essentially, LabNation. And so it was a time of great change inside the organization. And, you know, our mission there was to actually build a substantial digital platform. What we noticed was, was that this thing that people were carrying in their pockets was becoming a way, you know, not just a phone, but a way for people to access content and music. And when the App Store launched, my boss at the time, a lovely man called Evan Harrison, who's out in the world doing great work. You really should talk to him. I'm writing it down. Evan Harrison, lovely man. And he's in the not-for-profit world too. He's really a special guy. He really challenged us. You find a way to make our radio stations live in this new world. And so it wasn't the original move to sort of desktop internet. It was really in the wake of the move from desktop to mobile that IHAR came into being, which was in many ways just as profound a shift. But to answer your question, the energy was chaotic. It was incredibly innovative. We were doing things that had not been attempted at a traditional media company before. We were in some ways swimming against the grain. It was often a subject of some contention, even with our beloved radio markets, to get them to think about the digital audience, to get them to promote the radio station website. And then this thing comes along, and it's very easy if you have a particular mindset to imagine that this could be even competitive. But instead, what we were doing was we were trying to showcase all of these great radio stations that we had, and the personalities and digital-only offerings in a way that made it convenient to the listeners. And I just think that these kinds of tectonic shifts didn't really make or break you as a company, as an individual, but there's special moments that create special outcomes. Absolutely. It's funny, because when you said 2008, it just feels like it's been around a lot longer. You know what I mean? It's crazy. In 2002, I believe, was the MTV Network's launch into digital, because that's when I started working for the VH1 Classic. And they had never done that either. And it was crazy, crazy times. For television, for some reason, they saw that. You mentioned radio. It's almost impossible to find people who had that vision down the road. Everyone was so much more focused on today versus in the future. So that must have been difficult for you to get people's minds or to influence them in a positive way to get them to move forward. I couldn't even get my PD to play a song unless it was tested for eight or nine months. And there were PDs that we worked with that saw the vision and were extremely supportive. And those folks continue to have really wonderful careers. I worked really closely with Tom Pullman. He was a terrific advocate for all things digital. And there were people who were seamlessly going from one world to the other. I really want to take a moment to acknowledge Tina Burns, who was so pivotal, worked both in the digital team at, you know, corporate, you would say, but also worked really closely with the New York radio markets and had a birds eye view and a worms eye view of what digital meant as a transformational set of technologies for broadcast. And, you know, there's no iHeart radio without. I mentioned Evan. I mentioned Zina. There's a bunch of other folks I'd love to shout out, Susie Schultz, who's still in the business and is amazing. Larry Linietsky, who's doing incredible things at Amazon. The people who are really there building something special. I'm sure I'm forgetting a million names and I apologize in advance to all my beloved colleagues. But the people who are there really digging in the dirt and trying to make real things happen, you know them because they're still out there doing amazing things. Those folks that I mentioned are still out there doing amazing things. Oh, and you can come back on and mention those people you forgot, again, down there because we'll have to have a catch up part two. I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, you just joined Nemono, which is a Norwegian audio technology company. Tell us about the mission of the company. It sounds really cool. I love this company. I've been so excited since I've joined. It's pretty extraordinary. And I've spent quite a bit of my time at the intersection of music and technology. But also, I've really loved my time in podcasting and spoken audio. Here we are doing that thing right now. Yeah. I ran a podcasting platform called Pocket Cow. I partnered with public media. I've worked really closely with lots of creators in space. I'm a big, big proponent of spoken word audio. I'm a diehard podcast listener. But creating audio is still quite messy and difficult. And there's lots of steps to it. And God forbid you have to produce something outside of the studio. There's cables and wires and expertise. And then you have to transfer that audio and into some kind of post-production workflow. And then you've got to edit all the noise out. And there's just a lot of work that needs to be done and a lot of specific expertise. And what I love about Nemono is it's like a storytelling engine. And it takes all the chains, all of the effort, all of the friction away from this entire process, everything from recording the audio so it sounds incredible, studio quality, even if you're on an airport tarm back, to a set of really, really well-developed cloud software features that allow you to do everything from collaborate to edit. And then it's just an industry-leading suite of enhancements that take all of that messy work of cleaning the audio out of your hands and just handles it in one click. And then you can sync it to video. You can create a podcast, episode. You can do lots of stuff. It's so powerful. And but again, features aside, what I love about it is it's there to help a creator realize a vision. It is a storytelling engine. And with one simple set of hardware in this studio cloud, I mentioned, you can sound like a real pro working in a million-dollar studio or wherever you are. So to me, it's like, are you doing something to move the creator experience forward? Are you helping humans tell better stories? And that's what this product and this team does. I'm so proud to be working with them. It sounds very exciting. Now, you were very careful not to say the words. Well, not that you were very careful, but you chose your words wisely because it can be very polarizing. But it sounds like AI type of tool for producers and creators, like you said. I find it to be just the next level tool for a creator, like you said, that can help them sound professional. And that's only a benefit for those creators who feel like they can't do that right now. Like a truck just drove by and I thought, if we listen to this back and you could hear that truck, we can take it out with that product. And Nimono does it automatically. That's the thing. You don't have to see dialing up knobs or hitting faders or adding expensive plug-ins or any post-processing headaches. Look, the fact of matters, Nimono has 17 different AI and ML patent families. It's part of the reason I joined the company, because like you, I see where this is all going. But I'm going to quote my dear friend Greg Glenday, who was the CEO of ACAST, one of the best independent podcast production hosting monetization companies out there, publicly traded. But they're a podcasting peer play. And I'm going to paraphrase him. I always believe that the voices need to be human. The creators need to be human. And likewise, the audiences need to be human. But everything in between and before and after, there's an opportunity to profoundly enhance everything that we do through the power of these tools. And I think AI is going to be transformative in helping people create better content more quickly, more efficiently, and so on. But I'm not a fan. I'll go on the record of replacing human voices with AI. So if it can take what you do, Lynn, and it can force multiply you, and it is helping you achieve your goals as a creator, I am all for it. If it's AI-lit and you don't have any control over that, or some variation of that, no. No, I don't think that these tools ought to be used in lieu of human creativity and storytelling. No, I agree 100%. I think it's phenomenal. And by the way, can we back up? What's their stock symbol? They're a peer play. Sorry. Yeah, ACAST. ACAST, yeah, they are publicly traded. That's cool. What is ACAST's stock ticker symbol? I don't know. We can look it up. Anyway, I only say that because I'm a big admirer of Greg. I think he puts it right. So I just stole his framing, but I believe it just as strongly as he does. I think it's amazing. I mean, in terms of radio and television and movies and things of that nature, I mean, it's basically putting the power and the control into the creator's hands and with Nomonoh even better. Because especially if it's like a one button. That's exactly what it is. It just takes it all out. It's just we have to simplify things for those of us who are talented and really learn how to work the equipment. You know, the irony is I was just having this conversation for folks who either don't have experience doing their own creative, don't have their own experience creating their own, their own audio, music, what have you. It's an incredible time saver just in the sense that you can just lift the lid and hit a button and go. But even for really sophisticated people, because I spent most of my time working for the company in the last call, last month or two, talking to sophisticated, talking to the Audibles, talking to the I-Hearts, talking to the Audices and the world and so on. Those folks are all blown away by it because they know just enough to know how much technology is built in that can accomplish all of these, all of these really, really important workflows. So for me, it is the power and the simplicity together that make it so special and why I'm excited to be a part of it. Yeah, you are a visionary in all of the sense of the word. We'll be right back with more of the Music Savely podcast. Welcome back to the Music Savely podcast. Now, you serve on the board of Sounds of Saving, which uses music specifically as a mental health tool for young people, which I think is amazing. What drew you to that work and what have you learned from it, especially about music and the power to heal? Well, it's just that, right? Music is an incredible source of strength and healing, and it's also really often quite relevant in the lives of young people. Sounds of savings specifically aims its programs and curriculum at young people ages 14 to 24. And it really is on the forefront of understanding how to utilize music to support mental health and wellness. I have known the founders since they started. One of the founders is a dear college friend of mine, so he came to me rather early in the process of forming the organization. And his partner lost the beloved uncle to suicide, and that was sort of the genesis of the organization, the origin story, if you will. But I was so moved by the mission that I asked to play a role as an advisor early on and then joined the board about a year and a half ago. I'm going on two years ago, and then just recently became board chair, and I see my role here is helping them develop the three pillars of the organization. One of them is content creation, where they work with incredible artists, and they capture both performance, but they also capture those artists talking about the resources that they've leaned on, their experiences that they've had with mental health and regulation and emotional regulation. The second piece of this is finding young people where they are. So being on site at music festivals and concerts and so on, delivering the resources that young people need so they can get access to life-saving mental health resourcing. So that looks like tabling at an outdoor festival, a table that's set up instead connecting people with therapeutic resources, connecting them with therapists and so on. That's a big part of it, right? Because you can't ask young people to find you, you need to be where they are. And then the third piece is the development of curriculum in schools. And I'm really proud that in just a few days we're going to be at my alma mater doing an assembly with the 10th graders to talk about how this program is going to be integrated to help serve them. So those three pillars are core to what the organization does. And I'm just thrilled to be able to contribute my time and energy because it's such a worthy, worthy cause. It certainly is. And congratulations on that milestone coming up. I would love to be a fly on the wall to see the students' faces because ever since I've been in school, I've had an instrument in my hand. But I'd never put the two and two together of why it made me so happy. I do think that in some ways this is not just about music curriculum. There are a lot of great organizations that do that. I think this is really about giving students tools to bring in the music that they love and that they resonate with. And whether it's play listing, we bring artists into schools, leaning on music, looking at frameworks around how to lyrics evoke emotional responses and all of the issues relating to emotional vulnerability and regulation. This stuff is just not taught. Even health courses and health classes don't talk about this stuff. And a lot of the students, particularly marginalized communities, don't have access to any real resource in. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Those are the first things they cut. And that should be the last thing that they cut out of the schools. 100%. By the way, Clarinet, not just as hard, I think it's the saxophone I tried that. Clarinet and the violin, which I loved very much, but the guitar ended up being the winner there. Me too. I think it dabbled in the drums too a little bit. But anyway, who knew what it was that we were connecting with so long ago was just what you're talking about now. Only we didn't have any of these programs back then. So it's amazing that you're getting to do that. We're really, I think you would agree with me, we're in the middle of a mental health crisis right now. Not just talk about why and what the reasons are, I think we all kind of have an idea. But particularly among young people, I mean, that's where it's just cutting right to the heart of it. Do you think that, you know, the music industry, streaming platforms and labels and educators, they have like a responsibility to lean into that? And do you think that they're doing enough? And if they are not, what do you think they should be doing? I think there's always more that can be done. I think the music industry is a reasonably, you know, vague and amorphous collection of different folks in different industries and professions. We feel strongly that folks who are interacting directly with young people do have maybe more of a responsibility. Labels are go-betweens, right? No one, no young person interacts directly with the label unless they're signed to the label. And also the importance of the major labels has somewhat waned over time for lots of reasons that we don't need to get into here. But I think if you're a concert promoter, you're developing music festivals and so on, whether you're Live Nation, AEG, any one of the, you know, the sub producers that are underneath those banners. And many of them do, to be fair, many of them do have programs, work with nonprofits, and many artists who are touring with these, have, you know, touring arrangements, touring agreements, or a part of these festivals have their own causes that they care deeply about. I wouldn't say that there is as much organization around that as there could be. And I think there are folks who are, you're doing a great job, and others who could be doing more. In general, it's sad, I think, that we look to corporations to take care of this. And at the end of the day, AEG and Live Nation and the labels and the publishers and every other part of the music industry, the DSPs, they're just big corporations. And I would rather see that we take these into our communities and that these be adopted with greater rigor by our municipalities, by our school boards, you know, and, you know, the Department of Education has been essentially dismantled. So there is definitely, I think, a challenge here. And I think there's always, just to be really clear, I think there's always a risk when you say, hey, these big for-profit, you know, commercial entities, asking them to replace what is essentially a community-oriented service, I think comes with a lot of risks. It doesn't mean we're not going to lean on them for help and support. It doesn't mean we're not going to ask them for money or visibility or the opportunity to get in front of their sponsors. But I do think that we should be careful and I think we should ask more of our elected officials, quite frankly. I agree. I do agree with that. That's, well, if you could go back to your younger self, one thing about the role of music that it would play in your life and career, what would it be? Did that make sense? Yes. I would tell myself to be something that I'm not, which is patient. And I spent a lot of time when I was a young person worrying about how I would ever figure out a way to take these things that animated me and make a career out of them. And for a long time, I just assumed I wouldn't. My father, who is a very wise man and was actually very successful in business and he ran a direct mailing company. So nothing that I'm involved in directly. But he always talked about the difference between vocation and navigation. And vocation is what you do to earn a paycheck. And what you're advocating is the stuff that really turns you on. And he served on boards and he was involved in history societies, the Yiddish Cultural Institute. He was very engaged. He was involved in UJA. These causes were very near and dear to his heart and in many ways they required just as much energy and effort as his day job did. And he worked both of those things very hard, but there was a distinction. Direct mailing had very little to do with any of those vocational pursuits. And I just thought to myself, man, I don't want to live such a bifurcated life. I'd love to see if I could bring it all together. And I didn't have any idea how I was going to do that. I didn't have an uncle in the business or a cousin in the business. I remember I had a cousin with a friend in the business. And I was like, can I meet your friend? I was in my early 20s and the guy who is a well-known guy, I'm not going to blow up the spot, couldn't have been less helpful or friendly. He took the meeting because his friend asked him to take the meeting, but there was no follow-up. And so I just understood at that moment very clearly it was up to me to try to figure it out. But I worried about it a lot. And so I would tell my younger self, don't worry, right? When you're in the flow, when you're working towards your soul's purpose, it's when you fight against it, it's when it feels hard. When you're moving towards it and moving with that stream, actually everything feels pretty easy. And that's how I feel now. And of course, I'm a lot grayer and older. And I've enjoyed some success and I've had a lot of really wonderful working experiences. So I would say that to the 19-year-old me or the 22-year-old me or the 23-year-old me. And I don't know, he would probably turn to me and go easy for you to save pops. Did you, Owen, did you ask a lot of questions when you were growing up as a kid? Did you want to know why this person had the store or why, how do you work for yourself, those kinds of, were you curious? I think of myself as a generally curious person. I always think I could be more curious. We don't have to get too personal, but I do think that there was a big part of my personality where I felt like I had to show that I kind of had under control and everything was copacetic, that I had a kind of young wisdom. I remember once in the second or third grade, we were asked, what do we want to do when we grow up and I remember seeing this, but I didn't think it would make such a stir. I'm like, why would I win the Nolga Bell Peace Prize? The teacher was like, oh, wow, that's amazing. But I think a lot of what, yeah, I actually don't want to take credit for that. I think there was a lot of me trying to do what I thought would reflect well in the eyes of the grown-up surrounding me. A desire to perform, a desire to be pleasing. Achieve. Yes, to achieve. And that other directed desire for achievement doesn't get you through the hard times because it doesn't come from inside of you. What comes from inside of you is your passion, the love of the game, what you would do even if nobody was looking, even if you weren't getting necessarily paid or paid well. And it took me a long time to figure that out. And not to say I wasn't curious, I was very curious about certain things and I had like an endless, endless appetite to learn more about music and bands and scenes that I cared about and wanted always to meet new people. But it took me a while to focus on the me part of the equation and not what I thought the world or my parents expected of me. Yeah, gosh, that resonates with me so much. And I hope it does our listeners as well. I have so much in common with you. I could probably talk to you for another three hours about this stuff because, you know... Episode two, episode three, episode four. I'm telling you, but you know, it's funny because it's cathartic for me as well. You know, I feel like we're here to help others in our discussion, but it always ends up making me feel better after the discussion as well. I hope my guests yourself feel the same way too because it helps everyone. I feel like if we all lift each other up, then we all win. That's right. So why don't we just continue doing that? You know. And I always feel like you can do that better. It's not a requirement, but you can always, in my opinion, you can do that better when you start with, how do I take care of myself? How do I make myself feel grounded and connected to what I'm doing and what I care about? And how do I demonstrate compassion for myself in a world where compassion is hard to come by? It is not a requirement that you be healed to God and do great things for other people. In fact, sometimes you heal yourself by the being of service to others. By doing it. Yeah, exactly. Just by doing it. Hopefully it's an engine, like you say, that feeds the people you care about, the communities you want to impact, and then circles back to feed your soul and your heart. And I just find that, you know, particularly for guys, a lot of us are pretty broken. We're not taught how to think about those little versions that live inside of us who are scared and unsure and just wanted to be loved and feel connection and we're told not to cry and we're told be tough and don't be so sensitive and we're just told that our feelings were wrong. And then you see a lot of this, like, really inappropriate bad behavior that comes out of the shadow of all of them. And as I get older and older, it's more important for me. That's all what I think about in my own life is, you know, how do I make peace with my shadows? Wow. Make peace with my shadows. That is, did you just come up with that off the top of your head? I wish you could see him right now. He's like, I don't know. Well, I'll add to that oxygen mask on you first and then you can do it for others. So while you're learning your way, yeah, it's hard though, because when you want to help others, you put yourself aside and that's what takes you so long to figure out who you are because you're too busy helping everyone else. Amen. Oh, and it was so great to meet you. Is there anything we missed or anything or a message that you want to get out there right now to young people? Yeah, I mean, I actually really want to encourage people who are listening to VisitSoundsOfSaving.org, Sounds of Saving. So sounds with Vanessa at the end, savingnoes.org, because there's a lot about the organization that I want to share. I believe very, very strongly that music can save lives and improve the quality of the lives of young people and that is my desire in paying it forward. The rest of the stuff about this on LinkedIn, you can just look it up. All right. But if anyone's interested in learning more, soundswithsaving.org and find me, I'm easy to find and I'd love to hear it from anyone who wants to learn about that or any of the adventures I've had in music. Owen Grover, thank you for coming on Music Saved Me. Thank you for all the work that you're doing and continue to do and I can't wait for part due. Let's do it. Let's do it. Thank you. I'm Buzz Knight and thanks for listening to Lynn Hoffman and the Music Saved Me podcast, produced by Buzz Knight Media Productions. Please check out our other shows, Taken a Walk Nashville, hosted by Sarah Harrelson, Comedy Saved Me, hosted by Lynn Hoffman, and Taken a Walk, hosted by yours truly. All shows are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and are part of the iHeart podcast network.
