As a musician, it's natural to want to be discovered and to have your music reach as many people as possible. However, in today's digital age, it's easy to get caught up in the idea that you need a viral hit on TikTok or other social media platforms in order to be successful. But the truth is, you don't need a TikTok hit to be successful as a musician. Followers aren't fans. What you really need is a dedicated audience. Rick Beato just came out with a fascinating video where he analyzes the top artists on Spotify. Only ONE of the top 250 or whatever artists was a pure TikTok star-turned-artis ..read more

I've been tempted to not even write this post because I don't want to add to the AI-is-taking-over-everything hysteria, but here we go…. I truly think AI is going to be one of the biggest revolutions of all time – like as big (if not bigger) than the internet and smartphones. It's going to disrupt something about EVERYTHING. Naturally, people have said AI is going to replace human creators. Others in response say “nooooo, a computer will never be as creative as a human.” I think both of these camps are a little off. Just from my limited time playing with AI (I do pay for ChatGPT and waste HOUR ..read more

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that the internet has brought about a ton of free exchange of information. But setting aside the amount of misinformation out there from “content creators” that have little qualification to teach the subject, I don't think it's something that you can learn from watching a ton of content on the subject over a few weeks or months. Music is an inherently emotional thing. So is mixing. Yes, it's also technical, but every technical action is about bringing about emotion for the listener. Sure videos can teach you some techniques (some more questionable than ot ..read more

The creator economy is huge and growing. We all know this. In fact, I encourage musicians to consider a business model inspired by creators of all formats – one based around monetizing your top fans. We've seen platforms like Patreon, Memberful (which is owned by Patreon), Kajabi, and a certain platform that rhymes with “lonely plans” grow into huge parts of the creator economy. So I think it's inevitable that Spotify and Apple Music will release their own versions of those creator tools for musicians directly integrated into their platforms – and it's surprising that it hasn't happened alread ..read more

So this is PURELY my personal speculation — and quite off the cuff. I could be wildly wrong about all of this. Some of these predictions are pretty safe, some are spicy. So enjoy my shoot-from-the-hip predictions. Table of Contents 1. Building True Fans and Super Fans Will Be Key 2. Content-Creator Artists Will Thrive 3. Artists that Embrace Business and PR Skills Will Thrive 4. AI-Generated, Personalized Playlists Will be More Valuable than Large Editorial Playlists 5. Consistency in Releases Will be King 6. The “Mega Single” Will be a New Trend 7. Artists Who Put All Their Stock into Social ..read more

Let's talk about hiring people to work on your music. Spoiler: you get what you pay for. This is not an exhaustive list of options/pros/cons, but more to familiarize yourself with the options out there. What Are You Trying to Do? First things first. Ask yourself what you're trying to do. Are you trying to make something you're proud of (aka art)? Are you trying to make some good sounding demos that will help you gain traction early in your career? Are you trying to just make some recordings because it's your hobby? All of these considerations factor in to WHO you should hire, and how much they ..read more

In the age of streaming and social media, it's easy to think that touring is no longer necessary for a successful music career. But in reality, touring is still one of the best ways to build a dedicated fanbase and establish a lasting connection with your audience. There's nothing quite like seeing an artist perform live. It's an immersive, intimate experience that allows fans to connect with the music and the artist on a deeper level. When you tour, you have the opportunity to interact with your fans in-person, create memorable experiences, and build a personal relationship with them. In fact ..read more

Story Time I recently had a writing session with a good friend of mine. As I threw out ideas, he pushed back at a few of them. This is normal (and healthy) in a writing session, but his reasoning was interesting to me: he thought it was too predictable. Specifically, I don't think he liked the chords I was suggesting for the melody we were working with. “It sounds too obvious that it would go to the four chord there,” he said. “Well yeah that's where the melody is leading,” I said, “trying to force a different chord there would just make it sound awkward and pull the listener out of the flow ..read more

We've all seen Spotify Canvases. It's the looping 8 second video that gets shown instead of your album cover in the player view. They obviously look cool, but just ran across some interesting data about adding them to your songs. The Data About Spotify Canvases Firstly, Spotify says that songs with a Canvas are 145% more likely to be shared by listeners and 20% more likely to get added to playlists than songs without. Now, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation – I'm willing to bet that artists that have naturally-engaged fan bases would naturally do all the *extra credit* stuff anyway ..read more

One of our clients, Anthem Worship, just released a new music video for their song, Here to Stay. Being that they are a part of the church, they had been posting all music videos and music-related content on their church's channel, but we advised them to build a second music-only channel as the target for the band is quite different than the local church and so the YouTube algorithm could do better about suggesting the songs to potential listeners. All the videos were re-uploaded on a fresh channel with zero subscribers – so not only did we want to promote the new song, we wanted to also get s ..read more