Episode 457 – Spotify Skip Rates, ChatGPT Tube Screamer, And Engineer Kevin Paul

My guest this week is Kevin Paul, who started in the music business as a DJ, but then discovered sound engineering and immediately knew that was his true calling. Starting at Soho Studios in London, he later moved to the Kink’s own Konk Studios. At Konk, he worked alongside a bevy of successful producers and engineers, as well as bands such as The Kinks, Galliano, Terrorvision, UFO and Elastica. After working on archiving the Depeche Mode back catalogue in 1994, he was offered an engineering role at Mute Records’ in-house studio, which eventually lead to a position as Head Engineer. Since 2008, Kevin has been in charge of mixing and remixing the exclusive performances at the coveted iTunes Festival UK and Germany events. He has mixed over 100 artists to date including David Bowie, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Calvin Harris, Foo Fighters, Jack White, Linkin Park, Florence & The Machine, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Norah Jones, Oasis, Mumford & Sons, Paul Weller and many more. During the interview we spoke about the producer that influenced him the most, why he worries about immersive audio being accepted, his views on audio education, where mixing and mastering will be in 10 years, and much more. I spoke with Kevin via Zoom from his studio in the UK. On the intro I’ll take a look at Spotify skip rates, the one super-important metric that’s still a secret, and AI-driven ChatGPT codes up an Ibanez Tube Screamer plugin.