Rick Beato

Rick Beato was born in 1962.⁠[1]

He was born in Rochester, New York.⁠[2]

He grew up in Fairport, a suburb of Rochester, in a large Italian Catholic family with seven siblings; his father collected jazz records, his mother played piano by ear, and two of his aunts taught music.⁠[3]

He recalls that his first real love of a song came from his older sisters’ Beatles records; his middle-school music teacher encouraged him to take up the upright bass, and his father introduced him to jazz and Joe Pass’s album Virtuoso.⁠[4]

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in music at Ithaca College and, in 1987, a master’s degree in jazz studies from the New England Conservatory of Music.⁠[2]

After graduating from New England Conservatory, he returned to Ithaca College to teach.⁠[5]

After five years teaching jazz studies at Ithaca College, he signed with Polygram Publishing in 1992 as a songwriter.⁠[6]

In 1994 he moved to Atlanta and joined the rock band Billionaire; when the band did not take off, he pivoted to record producing.⁠[6]

In 1995 he founded Black Dog Sound Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, going on to work in studio engineering, mixing and record production, and co-founded the record label 10 Star Records with his partner Johnny Diamond.⁠[2]

His production work began at Atlanta’s Tree Sound studio; he later added a 4,000-square-foot addition to his Stone Mountain home, where engineer Ken Lanyon handled engineering while he produced.⁠[7]

In 2002 the Charleston band the Working Title recorded at Black Dog and then signed with Universal, followed by local acts including Skin Tight and Jump Little Children; Crowfield recorded all three of its albums there and became the first band signed to 10 Star Records.⁠[7]

He was one of three producers, with Bob Marlette and Tony Battaglia, on Shinedown’s 2003 debut album Leave a Whisper and shared writing credits with singer Brent Smith on songs including “Lost in a Crowd,” “In Memory” and “Stranger Inside”; in 2008 the two co-wrote “Son of Sam” for the deluxe edition of The Sound of Madness.⁠[8]

Needtobreathe recorded The Heat in early 2007; the album was co-produced entirely by the band and also featured production work by him and Collective Soul frontman Ed Roland.⁠[9]

Parmalee’s single “Carolina,” co-written by the band’s four members and him, reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Country Airplay and Mediabase/Country Aircheck charts the week of December 9, 2013, and earned gold sales status; the label said its climb was the third-longest No. 1 trek in the Billboard Country Airplay chart’s history.⁠[10]

By his own account, in December 2015, at a friend’s request, he filmed his son identifying complex chords to demonstrate perfect pitch and posted it on his personal Facebook page; he then began making videos on music theory, music history and film scoring.⁠[11]

He initially doubted anyone would watch an older man with white hair on YouTube; a year and about 340 videos after launching, he quit his day job to become a full-time YouTuber, with early content focused on playing instruments, composition and improvisation.⁠[12]

In July 2020 he testified at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property on the DMCA and fair use, explaining that his educational music videos regularly receive takedown notices; he argued such videos should be covered by fair use and proposed a “fair use registry.”⁠[13]

In a New Year’s Eve livestream he announced that Gibson was developing a signature model for him based on his TV Yellow Les Paul Special DC, and said he would donate all proceeds to a music charity.⁠[14]

Gibson released the Rick Beato Les Paul Special Double Cut, limited to 500 units worldwide, with a thinner-than-usual body and a new color called TV Blue Mist; he pledged all of his royalties from it to the Save The Music Foundation.⁠[15]

He made his first television appearance, discussing the music of The Walking Dead on AMC’s Talking Dead; as of December 2022 the channel had nearly 3.3 million subscribers.⁠[6]

He staged a live version of his YouTube show at Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse, which also featured a reunion concert by Billionaire; his channel then had more than 3.5 million subscribers.⁠[4]

He took part in an artificial-intelligence forum convened by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, proposing a “music dataset license” so that consumers and rights holders would know what music AI models were trained on; in a later video he said he had also proposed that AI-generated music not be eligible for copyright.⁠[16]

As of February 2024 his Everything Music channel had almost 4 million subscribers; jazz pianist Keith Jarrett had invited him to his home for an interview.⁠[3]

He predicted that some listeners would come to prefer AI-generated works, and observed that country and rock had risen in popularity over the previous few years while hip-hop had declined.⁠[17]

In a radio interview he described an experiment in which he used ChatGPT to invent a fictional singer, Lyra Vega, and the song “Neon Ghosts,” Claude to write the lyrics and Suno to generate the track; he judged its melody stronger than much current pop music.⁠[18]

He posted a video saying he was disputing copyright claims, chiefly from Universal Music Group, over music clips in his interview videos, without which his channel of some 2,000 videos could be taken down; he argued that playing clips to discuss music is fair use.⁠[19]

As of November 2025 his YouTube channel had more than five million subscribers, with lessons and interviews covering subjects from harmony to songwriting.⁠[5]

He appeared on episode 492 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing topics including the greatest guitarists and guitar solos, perfect versus relative pitch, Miles Davis, Beethoven and Bach, AI in music, YouTube copyright strikes and Spotify.⁠[20]

He posted two videos criticizing the New York Times critics’ “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters” list; the critics had defended their choices on a May 7 episode of a Times podcast. His channel then had about 5.4 million subscribers and 6 billion lifetime views.⁠[21]

He publishes The Beato Book Interactive, a digital music theory textbook in which most written examples have an audio player and video lectures are interspersed, aimed at musicians of all levels from beginner to advanced.⁠[22]

Personal website: Public link: https://rickbeato.com (opens in a new window)⁠[20]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/RickBeato (opens in a new window)⁠[20]

X: Public account: https://x.com/rickbeato (opens in a new window)⁠[20]