“I didn’t know anything about how the gear worked – I learned it all from reading magazines”: Rick Beato on becoming a producer at 37In an age where headlines are dominated by the youngest prodigies and award-winning musicians who seem to spring fully formed from the ether, it’s easy to forget that success doesn’t always come early.
Enter Rick Beato, the multi-talented music producer and YouTube host who says he only started producing at the age of 37, having never had prior experience before.

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“At age 35 I started my first band, at age 36 we got signed and at age 37 we got dropped. That’s the year that I started producing,” says Beato in a new video titled ‘I only have myself to blame’.
The producer cites himself as an example of a late bloomer who’s able to not only catch up but also thrive in an industry that often values youth over experience, saying “the idea that you have to do things when you’re young is not true”.
“I didn’t know anything about how any of this gear worked… I learned it all from reading magazines at a Barnes & Noble and asking questions to people that knew more than I did,” Beato explains.
He notes that his first platinum record as a producer came when he was 41, and that he earned his first number one song as a writer in 2013 at the age of 51 – hardly the age one would associate with a burgeoning career in the music industry.
“I’ve rethought my one premise of ‘you need to do things before you’re 30 because that’s when you’re able to really learn’ because when I was 54 I started on YouTube and YouTube didn’t even start till 2006 but people didn’t even have music YouTube channels till about 2010 or so,” he says.
“The thing that I’m doing now didn’t even exist!”
“So the idea that you have to do things when you’re young is not true,” Beato continues. “I could start this channel again now at 62 from scratch and I still think I would be successful at it.”
While it’d be “more difficult because it takes a lot of energy and I’m glad I did it when I was 54”, says the producer, “it can be done and you could do it too if you’re willing to work hard enough.”

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