Man down, man down, man down. Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. Let's talk about a bit of a tectonic shift that just happened on music YouTube.

A fellow content creator on this platform who for a long time, really for a period of years, has operated in the music space, has recently called it quits. No more YouTube or music or even Twitch content. Totally done. Caput. Talking about Mr. Finn McKenty, aka The Punk Rock MBA. Finn is somebody whose content I have consumed for a minute. He is somebody with whom I have done some crossover content. I have literally met this man in person.

For a while, I watched his channel from afar. And regardless of whether or not he covered artists that I like, regardless of whether or not he expressed musical or even political opinions that I personally agreed with, he was somebody who was very persistent and consistent with his content release schedule, with what I saw to be his content quality. Disagreements aside, he was somebody who, I don't know, I didn't really have a whole lot of smoke for because he just seemed like somebody who worked really hard at what he did and knew what he was doing when it came to just making music content.

I mean, for anybody who is uninitiated, the brand proposition for Finn McKenty for Punk Rock MBA was essentially that he was, as a content creator, marrying his passion for music and his background as somebody who was involved and engrossed in the underground West Coast music scene decades ago. You take that and combine it with his background as somebody who successfully has worked for years in marketing, and you get an analysis emphasis that tries to understand and contextualize why certain artists and music movements, be they underground or mainstream, took off or got popular, where they went after the wave interested.

I mean, Finn did have a history of making pretty thorough and usually well-received videos, which is why it's shocking for certain comments to come to light in this recent interview he did with hardcore and underground rock commentator, Jesea Lee.

Jesea: Is that why you stopped making videos? Just because of all the negativity?

Finn: No, it's because I don't really have any interest in music. I was just doing it for the money, and I hit my financial goals. So there's really just no reason for me – I don't have to keep doing it. Our time on this Earth is limited. Don't spend it doing shit you don't have to do if you don't want to. It's like, I made enough money from this. I don't have to keep making videos about the System of a Down, so I'm going to stop.

Jesea: You really didn't enjoy it at all? Is there no part of you that was like, 'Oh, I'm excited to talk about this band today, or anything like that? Is it always just completely transactional for you?

Finn: Yeah, I don't have any interest in music at all

Jesea: You don't miss it then?

Finn: No. The money is nice, but I made enough from it that I don't... I'm good.

Yes, at least a few times in this interview posted to YouTube, he confirms a general and total lack of interest in music He even confirms that he has never actively sought out listening to bands like System of a Down.

Jesea: You just seem like such a wealth of knowledge. You knew so much about the topics you were talking about that I was like, 'Dude, I can't make content. I don't know the encyclopedia history of all these bands.'

Finn: Well, neither do I. I just literally look it up on Wikipedia. I don't know. I've never listened to System of a Down in my life.

I mean, he puts it a bit more bluntly than that. I want to give the guy some credit because I'm presuming at some point across his life, that time, he has to have heard "Chop Suey" in passing. No? But yeah, despite the fact that this man has made content about System of a Down, he claims to have never really listened to them, which I guess you have to presume is the case for maybe a lot of the artists that he talked about on his channel on a regular basis.

But when you analyze, I guess, the genetic makeup of Finn's content for the most part, I guess it's not that hard to believe because a lot of his videos would have more to do with the historical background and context of a certain band, how they started, where they started, what their influences were, what basically the musical and, again, contextual DNA of a certain group or genre was within the era that it existed, which, yeah, I guess you don't necessarily have to be a big music aficionado in order to research these facts and bits of information and then compile them into a video.

Jesea: Well, yeah. I heard you say that one time in an interview. You're like, Yeah, I just basically read a Wikipedia page and they all show some pictures and some context.

Technically, I could, without ever having her develop a Velvet Underground song, for example, probably use the internet to find a bunch of information about the Velvet Underground and who's in the band and what songs they wrote and which songs are the biggest and what they inspired and what other artists borrowed from them and what artists they borrowed from and so on and so forth and incorporate some stuff about Andy Warhol in there somewhere.

Yeah, especially with my journalism degree, I probably could pull together such a video about a band such as VU without having heard their music. However, would I do that, especially as a YouTuber, just starting out and trying to build a channel? No, probably not. Not only because that would be a little disingenuous, but on top of that, the process of making that video would be pretty grueling, and it would be odd to me personally to sink all of that effort into something that I wasn't even really all that invested in in the first place. But in this interview with Jesea Lee, that's essentially what Finn admits to doing.

Again, you may be wondering, if Finn has no interest in music at all, why was he doing this all of this time? Well, I mean, short answer, the money. I mean, that's literally what he says in the interview. He is now quitting now that he has reached his financial goals, so I guess he has made enough money. Now, instead of doing YouTube, he just wants to focus on LinkedIn and maybe start some thing where he is doing consulting for other people who are looking to make content and build brands and social media pages and so on and so forth, which I think he may see a very successful career in, given just how was able to so cynically operate in the music field for so long with no real interest in it.

Look, though, at the end of the day, I do want to give Finn just a touch of credit before I really lay into this story and say... I wouldn't say that this channel and Finn's content didn't come from a place of love, at least a little bit. It just wasn't a love for music. And that's the thing, as you listen to this interview with Jesea Lee, if you do, it becomes very apparent that what Finn's drive behind the Punk Rock MBA was really a desire to build himself up and market himself and have a really first-person, hands-on approach to the entire experience of building a brand from the ground up.

However, building a channel such as the Punk Rock MBA is not It's nearly just a general exercise in social media marketing. At the end of the day, it was, in fact, a music channel. In order to execute that marketing and execute it well, you're going to have to engage at least a little bit on some level with the music world and music, and drama in the music world, news stories in the music world, the history of the artists that you're engaging with on a regular basis, and their fan bases, which Finn displays open contempt for at multiple points in this conversation.

He really reduces a lot of the viewers to some of his content down to just being like, "smooth-brained, low-vibration people who just want some negativity to fucking blurt out their dumb fucking opinions about." Granted, in my own experience as a music commentator and reviewer, if you go through the comments of any one of my videos, especially the ones where the reviews are not very positive, yeah, you're going to catch a lot of negativity. You're going to catch a lot of hateful pushback on the stuff that I say and the opinions that I give.

It doesn't feel good to get those kinds of comments and engagements on a regular basis. But if you are coming at this from a place of love and passion for music, what usually ends up taking the edge off of that inconvenience is the fact that you get to continue engaging with this art form that you love so dearly. In the moments when you're not doing a negative review or maybe a critical assessment of something that people might not receive well, you also get the opportunity to heat praise on artists and projects and records that actually are fantastic and worth people's time and are worth praising and being excited about.

I could see from Finn's perspective if that is not something that drives you and that is not something that you're interested in, then the process of doing a music channel in any form, even one that's mostly just around history and context, would become very tiresome and really grueling over time because you're constantly dealing with an audience, with a crowd of people who, frankly, you don't really identify with in any way whatsoever because you don't align in terms of passions or interests.

Their interest, the reason they're to your channel is music. Your interest, the reason you're doing this channel is marketing. I mean, this is just psychotic and sad. Imagine being a long-time Finn McKenty fan, and you love the guy, and you love his channel, and you think he does good stuff, and then you come to learn that he just hates what he does, and he just doesn't really think all that highly of music fans. And even sometimes it points in this interview, musicians themselves.

Finn: If you can't make money, if you're getting millions of eyeballs on your shit, and you can't turn that into money, you suck. It's the only way you can think of to monetize that is to fucking go get people to show up to a venue, you suck. Musicians are a lost cause. They can do whatever the fuck they want. I don't care. I know lots of people on LinkedIn with less than 10,000 followers that are making way more money than anybody in any band.

I mean, look, at the end of the day, while I have met Finn in person, he is somebody who I wouldn't say I know super duper personally and intimately. So I don't want to come on here and just straight up say, Finn McKenty, he's a terrible, bad, awful guy. But the fact of the matter is, whether or not he intends for this to be the case in this interview, he really comes off like a freaking jerk, a guy who clearly got into the music content game for the wrong reasons. And rather than in journalizing and reassessing his own bad decision making and just think, 'What the hell is the point? Why did I do this? This was dumb of me.'

Yeah, instead of being self critical, he is taking his own terrible decision making out on music fans and musicians alike just being really nasty and dismissive, and frankly disrespectful. You're the guy who made a fucking music channel at the end of the day. Nobody made you do that. That was your choice.

Yeah, there are people on my YouTube channels who in the comments are just like, 'Anthony, when are you going to start a movie channel or review some video games?' While I enjoy those styles of media and art, my passion and my focus for those things only run so deep.

I mean, yeah, movies are great, but would I want to run a channel where just my entire life is movies and all I'm thinking about and talking about and consuming every fucking day is movies? No. And that's why I don't do a movie channel. The amount of movies I consume and the amount of engagement that I give to the world of movies for me right now is at a happy medium. I'm fine with it. It's music that I want more of, and that's why I do the music thing.

Let this video be a warning and a reminder to anybody else who is potentially considering entering this space, doing some content, doing some whatever. If you are to engage with the music world in the way that I do or in the way that even Finn did, please do it from a place of passion.

The amount of legitimate and steady and stable careers in the world of music, they're few and far between as is. If you are actually going to take up a spot, take up a space that somebody else could potentially be in, if you're going to be there doing something filling a role, filling a void that someone else could. If you are going to achieve such a position, regardless of what that position is, you should at least be excited to be in that spot.

You should be talking about music because you're excited to be talking about music just as I am. Whether I'm doing a Kendrick Lamar GNX review 30 minutes long, I know it's going to get a couple million fucking views. But also, I'm pretty damn excited to review albums on a regular basis that, frankly, not quite as many people on my channel watch. I just know and understand that is the nature of the beast. People, for the most part, want to hear about records and artists and albums that they are listening to or happening upon casually or that they are already big fans of. It is what it is.

I will admit, having a good and steady career in content creation of any type typically will require you at some point to follow trends and various happenings within your field of choice just so that you keep your finger on the pulse and you're engaging in the kinds of conversations and discourse that people want to have. If music is your passion as it is for me, even some of the most mainstream or accessible discourse to engage in is pretty fun and entertaining to do.

Yeah, this is not really a great look for Finn, at least within the music world anyway. I suppose if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you're just looking for somebody who is going to just mechanically find out ways to market something that you're trying to push to the world, regardless of whether or not they care about it or have any passion for it, Finn may, in fact, be your guy.

I guess I wish him all the luck in the world with his marketing efforts into the future, as that seems like it's just better of a fit for him, personally. But yeah, disappointing. Weird and disappointing.