The two clips below are taken from an interview with renowned singer-songwriter, spoken-word artist, writer, comedian, publisher, actor and radio DJ Hentry Rollins.

Rollins shares  some insights about why the internet is such an essential tool for artists – at all stages in their careers – that want to develop close relationships with their fans and build a strong following:

Jeff Rabhan is the chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). A seasoned writer, music industry executive, manager and consultant, Jeff got his first job in the music industry fresh out of journalism school, when he wrote articles for music magazines such as Rolling Stone, Spin and Vibe. During his over 20-year career in the music industry, he has worked in almost every area of the music industry, with artists that have earned over a dozen Grammy Awards and sold hundreds of millions of records, including Kelly Clarkson, Lil’ Kim, DMX and Jermaine Dupri.

I recently got to sit down with Jeff and talk to him about his experience in the music industry , the value of a well-rounded music business program and some advice he has for aspiring artists and executives that want to achieve success in the modern music climate.

Musician Coaching:

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Jeff. Tell me a little bit about your experience in the music business.

JR:

My first job was when I came out of school as a journalism major. I did some writing for Rolling Stone and Spin. I also did some freelance work for The Source, Vibe and some other magazines before I moved from New York City to California, where I did A&R and soundtracks for Atlantic and Elektra. After that, I did some music supervision, A&R consulting and managing. I also worked at HITS writing two columns. One was called “Wheels and Deals,” which was a service to the A&R community. The other was called “Shoots and Scores,” which was a film music tip sheet as well. I was a partner at a company called The Firm for five years as a manager. I also had my own management company and a label through Universal.

Over the years, I have worked with artists including Michelle Branch, Kelly Clarkson, Kelis, Everlast, Kelly Rowland, Jermaine Dupri, Lil’ Kim and DMX.

Musician Coaching:

What does your position at NYU entail?

JR:

I am the chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. I oversee all the faculty, the curriculum, admission, etc. for this program, which is the premier training ground for tomorrow’s music industry entrepreneurs. We train executives, digital marketers, techpreneurs, artists and producers. The curriculum is very holistic in the sense that everybody has to learn all the different areas – business, production, history and criticism – in order to be as well versed in all the different areas of the business as possible. You have to be as informed and educated as possible regardless of which area of the business you want to go into.

Musician Coaching:

You and I are peers age wise. We both came out of NYU, which seems like it puts you a year ahead of other folks,  because you’re already ensconced in the industry you want to be in by virtue of being downtown in New York City. In the mid 1990s I found that after a year of interning at record companies some of the music business school graduates ended up reporting to me, even when they had come straight out of a music business program.  Today, it seems that in order to get your foot in the door in any major music company, you need to have a music business degree. Is this true?

JR:

That’s a very good question. There have been music business programs around for a long time. A majority of the music programs are centered around conservatory training, and there is an audition component that is required to get in. We don’t do that, and we never have. We’re the only music business program of any in the country that does not require an audition. I think what that does is attract a different type of kid. You don’t necessarily have to play an instrument to be in the music business. A lot of us in the music industry don’t play instruments; we just happen to love music. When you create an environment where there is an audition, you’re taking a huge part of the population out of the equation.

I don’t think you need to have a music degree or a music business degree to get your foot in the door in the music industry, but it sure helps. There are a lot of different ways to get in. But in today’s industry, you really do have to know how to do a lot of different things in order to be successful. The jobs are still there. But the job descriptions have changed. When an artist manager comes out of a program and knows how to engineer and produce records, that has a lot of value. For me, as a manager, it took me 15 years of knocking around to figure out which buttons did what, and I still don’t really know.

I think there is also a great synergy for an artist to understand the subtleties of business and marketing in order to put together business plans. Those are skills that are very important and without question put you ahead of the game. There’s always going to be room for the hustler – the person who works hard and is out on the street making it happen. That’s what makes the music industry great. It’s not like the world of banking where everybody has an MBA or a finance degree. People come from all different places in the music industry. But a music business degree definitely puts you a little bit ahead.

Musician Coaching:

I find in the consulting and teaching I do that I end up teaching very basic business and marketing skills. Which tools do you feel are essential for people walking out of your program?

JR:

There are a few areas that are important. So much is happening in terms of the way records are made. Therefore, I think everyone should have – and everyone who graduates does have – a good understanding of a lot of recording software, like Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton Live and Reason. Those are skills that everybody needs to and should have if they’re going to be involved in music in any way. That’s really how a lot of records are made.

On the history and criticism side, I think you have to have a really good grasp of popular music, its evolution, sound, the technology and the economy surrounding that as well as what was happening in the world at the time when specific types of music was being produced. For example, how can you talk about the music of the 1960s without understanding the Vietnam War, the “Summer of Love” and other things of that nature? I think making that connection is very important.
A skill that is rapidly diminishing is learning how to articulate and understand what it is you hear. That really falls into every area of music. You have to know how to write. And in the Twitter Age, people don’t write the way they used to. But if you know how to use words, it helps you communicate your lyrics as an artist, communicate with the artist as a producer and as a manager, it helps you communicate with everyone you have to deal with.

On the business side, you have to understand the fundamentals of all the different areas of the music business, from publishing to marketing, to management, to how records are distributed, released, made, marketed, etc. That’s going to be the building block that helps you discover your passion and what you want to do. Without a great understanding, it’s going to be difficult to excel in any area.

Musician Coaching:

When I was in my early 20s and starting to join the work force, everyone wanted to be in A&R. Is there an area that a lot of people in the program wants to be in now or does it vary?

JR:

That’s a really great question, and I’m not sure that there’s one answer. The thing that’s interesting about the kids in our program is that a lot of them are hyper intelligent. Our average kid comes in with a 3.6 GPA and a 1360 SAT score. A lot of these people are very entrepreneurial types and very interested in launching their own ventures. They are also interested in really talking to their audience in a niche sort of way. For example, they are interested in sub-genres of hip hop or in alt rock or in what is happening in the Brooklyn scene. We also have a number of kids that are interested in vinyl-only companies.

A lot of kids are interested in launching their own ventures, because, for them, the consumption level is still very high. They’re not thinking of building an internationally-scalable business; they’re interested in continuing to make a living in the music business doing something they love, which is the exact opposite philosophy that a lot of people getting into the music 25 years ago had. Those people wanted to take over the world.

Musician Coaching:

There has been a lot of criticism of music business programs in general. Critics have said these programs may be preparing people for jobs that might not exist in an industry that might not support them. As far as I’m concerned, just because I point somebody towards the diving board and teach them how to dive doesn’t mean I’m helping them jump; it just means I’m protecting them should they decide to jump. Do you think the business will be able to sustain the many music business students that are out there right now?

JR:

That’s a fair and accurate question. You have to be nuts not to evaluate the value of a music industry degree during this time, not only as a bright-eyed 17-year old applying to schools, but also as a parent. You have to evaluate it, because you’re spending a lot of money on a college education when you don’t know what’s out there; it really is the great unknown. We still don’t know what the music industry’s going to look like in four or five years. It’s a huge leap.

The thing that’s most important about what we do – and I can’t speak for other programs – is that from the moment kids enter our program, we’re preparing them for their exit. We have done an amazing job of blurring the line between academia and the professional world. I hate when people say “the real world.” A lot of our kids are working two jobs and are in bands along with being in school. It’s real. I don’t know how to separate my “real” from their “real.” It’s all real.

We operate our program like a professional space:  Our studio is run like a professional space; our classes are run like a professional space and all our faculty members are working professionals. We don’t have career teachers here. What you get is an experience which has prepared you for your exit. If kids that have graduated from our program are sending out resumes waiting to be discovered, we’ve failed. That doesn’t happen here. It does happen in other programs. I think a lot of our success has to do with the way we’ve been set up and also our location. I don’t care if you’re the greatest hip hop artist of all time; if you don’t know how to write a business plan, make a presentation, sell yourself and if you don’t know the ins and outs of the business, you’re setting yourself up for failure. I think schools that don’t teach you to do that are missing the boat.

Musician Coaching:

You’ve worn a lot of different hats in the music industry. Is there any general advice you have for executives or artists about which areas they should be focusing on if they want to make it?

JR:

I think knowing how to communicate ideas and articulate what it is you hear and express yourself are all critical skills. The business is changing. We’re probably in year five or six of a ten-year storm. It’s going to be different; it’s not going to be the way it used to be. One of the reasons I took this job is because I got tired of people talking about “the good old days.” I’m too young to talk about the “good old days.” My best days are ahead of me. And there’s more music, and more ways to get it and distribute it and more methods of understanding what other people like than there have ever been before. And that creates opportunity.

I think you have to find what you love and give it 110 percent. Those things never change. You just have to go for it. Most people get into music because it’s what they love, and they don’t consider it to be a way of getting rich beyond their wildest dreams. People want to make a living doing what they love. If you approach it in that way, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

You can read more about Jeff Rabhan by visiting his personal website.  He also has a book coming out entitled What You Can Do in the Music Business. To learn more about NYU’s music business program, check out the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music website.

George White is General Manager of Billboard Digital. With nearly two decades of experience in the music and digital media industries,  he has worked for major record labels such as Atlantic Records and the CD-ROM industry pioneer The Voyager Company, where he developed enhanced CDs, CD-ROMS, DVDs and games as well as some of the first artist websites in the 1990s. He has worked with artists including Laurie Anderson, Hootie & the Blowfish, T.I. and Led Zeppelin. Just prior to joining the Billboard Digital team, he worked for Warner Music Group, where he was Senior Vice President, Strategy & Product Development and headed up development of Warner’s digital mobile products to develop new ways of delivering music. He is also the co-founder of the major digital media package standard-setting organization Connected Media Experience (CME).

I had the opportunity to sit down with George and talk to him about how he found his way to music industry, the history and future of internet music, and some new initiatives Billboard is taking to nurture the careers of new and emerging artists.

Musician Coaching:

Thanks for talking to me today, George. How did you get your start in the music business?

GW:

I had eliminated a number of career paths when I was at Davidson College primarily by trying some different things out. I started off thinking I wanted to work on Wall Street and also considered being an attorney, but ultimately decided neither were exactly the direction that I wanted to go. I took a year after college and taught in the western province of Kenya and did some thinking about the direction I wanted to take and what I wanted to focus on. Music had always been something that took up a lot of my leisure time. I had worked at the college union and had done a lot of recording and live sound. I played guitar, but not very well, and had some friends who were trying to make a go of it as a band in Durham, North Carolina. So when I got back from Kenya, I decided I was really going to make music a focus and really try to work with my friends’ fledgling band, the Iotas, with the goal of learning how to be a band manager and learning how to help bands, but also learning the business of touring and recording, which they were doing a lot of, just to see if there was a niche in the music industry that I could explore.

While I was working with them, I met a band called The Veldt, who had been signed by Capitol Records, dropped by Capitol, and then resigned by Mercury Records on the Stardog imprint. In between their being dropped and re-signed, I had read a piece about them in Rolling Stone that said this great band was basically hanging around and having a hard time getting gigs. So I called them up and asked if they would let my band open up for them if I got them some gigs. They said, “Yes,” and I proceeded to book a few shows locally. The band recommended me to Mercury Records for a summer internship in the A&R department there in 1992, which was how I got my first gig in the music industry. I got to understand a little bit about how the A&R process worked and organize their tape collection.

I took some additional classes in North Carolina to get credit for the internship and learned a little bit more about recording from some guys at Reflection Studios down there. I also worked in receiving at Barnes & Noble, so I got to know the ordering process very well. I moved back to New York trying to look for other work in A&R. Through my interest in recording, I got more and more savvy about computers and how they were used and learned of a Santa Monica-based company called Voyager, which had just started publishing CD-ROMs with music-related content. I sent my resume there and eventually got an interview. Funnily enough, Michael Nash who is now the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Development at Warner was actually at Voyager at that time. Michael had been working with the Residents at the time to do a CD-ROM project called Freak Show that Voyager published. It ended up that Michael actually did that first Residents title and then split off to form his own CD-ROM publisher.

In New York, I also worked on the floor and was managing the fiction section at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side. I knew inside and out at this point how Barnes & Noble ordered and merchandised books. Voyager at the time was trying to figure out a way to sell its CD-ROMs in bookstores. Because of my experience, they hired me to run a pilot project with Apple, where they put a computer and CD-ROM titles in eight bookstores across the country, two of which were in New York and the others were some bigger independent bookstores scattered throughout the country. It was a very successful project that got attention for CD-ROMs in bookstores. I ended up being hired full time after the pilot project by Voyager as the Director of Retail Sales and Marketing there, and was specifically focused on the book channel and getting CD-ROMs in as books. Voyager had a number of great music titles. In addition to that Residents title they had The Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night on CD-ROM and went onto do a Spinal Tap CD-ROM. We also worked with Laurie Anderson on a CD-ROM project called Puppet Motel. And we sponsored Laurie’s 1995 tour in conjunction with publishing that CD-ROM, so I got to work very closely with her and went on the entire European leg of the Nerve Bible tour.

I started to work on web projects as the internet began to push CD-ROMs aside in 1995 as a really viable way to experience multi-media. I worked on a companion site to the Nerve Bible tour called The Green Room, which was one of the very first music tour companions on the web. We did some webcam video of Brian Eno backstage in Dublin and uploaded it. Voyager also had an interesting product called CDLink, which allowed you to click on a link on a webpage and play an audio CD that was in your CD-ROM drive. But in 1995, the quality of the audio with the newly-debuted RealAudio was not good, and it was kind of painful to listen to music, so multi-media experiences were few and far between on the web. With CDLink, you basically authored a webpage – it could be an online enhancement of the CD. And anyone with that CD could come on that webpage and get it. We worked with journalists to write pieces about music. We did a number of showcase pieces using the technology, and I tried to call folks at the various New York-based major labels to pitch the product. But they couldn’t figure out why in the world they would actually want to produce web pages for products they’d already sold to their customer base.

I was ultimately rewarded when the people at Atlantic Records – to whom I had pitched the idea – were so impressed with either how crazy I was or the amount of gumption that I had to actually ask for a licensing fee for this nefarious technology that when an opening came there to run the technology for their fledgling new media department, they asked me to come and join there as an Associate Director. I stayed at Atlantic and the Warner Music Group for about 13 years, until the end of 2009.

Musician Coaching:

We’re certainly going to circle around to what your position is at Billboard. But you were really one of a dozen people on the planet – or at least in the States – who had a real say-so and was a real gatekeeper into the way that a major music content company was liaising with technology. You must’ve seen so much. Is there any lesson to be gleaned about the way that’s all headed? Obviously it’s a lot more complicated when you’re in the middle of it, but what is going on with evolving technology and music at this point?

GW:

I guess the lesson I would draw and that I would then apply to the state of the industry today is that you should really not worry as much as perhaps people are and have been worrying about displacing your sacred cows. If something is really going to destroy the business you already have, it will do it with or without your complicity.

During the first four years of my time at Atlantic, the company was very bold and experimental with doing tons of promotional stuff. The label would really invest quite a lot in doing things that would create more awareness, interest and engagement with fans in the interest of getting folks to go out and buy a CD. In the early days, however, there was a great deal of reticence about licensing digitally, particularly the unbundling of CDs and the ability to buy individual tracks. Despite the fact that by the end of the decade Napster was there, and people could download a single track readily, there was still a lot of hand wringing, which would result in three more years before there was a significant licensed service in the iTunes service. If you remember when iTunes was originally licensed and the licensing discussions began, that was a Mac-only service. It made it a good place to experiment because there was little risk:  There weren’t many people with Macs and there were even fewer people that had an iPod and a Mac. Of course, by the time the service launched, they had begun to sell iPods that were compatible with PCs and were shipping iTunes for the PC.

It’s amazing to think how differently things might have come  about had we been really pushed to aggressively license and develop services very early on. The first people approached us for licenses in 1997-1998. And had those services been licensed aggressively, and had there been a lot of experimentation, there might be quite a few players in the digital download marketplace today. I tend to think – although Apple has done an incredible job – that having quite a few solid players that had been out there for a long time would have been a very healthy thing and probably would’ve resulted in a lot more early experimentation. The direct application to today’s marketplace would be looking at ad-supported free streaming services as a way to really sell subscription services, and the embrace by the industry of an online streaming product instead of a promotional vehicle.

Musician Coaching:

As someone who has been closely involved in the process of developing internet music technology, do you think something like Spotify possible? Do you think it’s headed towards non-ownership streaming music in the cloud? Every time I turn around, it seems like there are giant fatal flaws in these cloud services that are coming out.

GW:

I think ultimately, the consumers will decide. And I think there’s a lot that points to the cloud models. But there is going to have to be a lot more innovation and focus by labels and the creative side in general on what it means to release your music into the cloud. There are clearly lots of problems with the cloud, one of which is the question, “Are individual artists going to be able to be successfully compensated?” And the answer may be, “No.” But it doesn’t mean that services will not get created and will not exist. There are problems to be solved. But I don’t think the problems are going to get solved by not offering services that clearly, from the results of Spotify’s research in the markets where it is licensed for free, are in demand. You don’t see  an absolute collapse of physical sales in those markets. I think it’s important to look at those lessons, experiment and really work to develop compelling services and then work on fixing the problems with the services.

Musician Coaching:

What was your role at Warner, and what did you notice about the direction of music on the internet when you were working on projects there?

GW:

I  really focused on developing new products. At the time I left, we were really looking at the locker models and the streaming subscription models. I was working on a project called The Connected Music Experience (CME). It is an interesting idea in that it’s a package format for digital media that allows you to basically have a cloud component that is related to any piece of media you own. Let’s say you want a single from the new Lady Gaga record. After you download it, you get the track and some associated content that looks very much like what an iTunes LP looks like today. There’s a menu, a way to represent lyrics and liner notes. Basically, it’s a way to communicate to the person who has downloaded that track where it came from, who made it, and then for the artist to the have an on-going connection to the person that downloaded it. It is agnostic as to whether that happens in a purchase environment (someone just purchases that track in iTunes) or downloads it through a service like Spotify. The service you use doesn’t particularly matter. Any of those services can take the assets that are associated with that release in the cloud and create a compelling experience for legitimate users. But it is an interesting way to reward people who have acquired the music legitimately. If you got that same track as part of a download of the most popular tracks this month on a bit torrent site somewhere, you would actually have to go out and find all the associated content from some other place, and then you would have to continuously keep track of new content as it is released.

There are some initiatives like CME that are underway that would create much more compelling experiences out of cloud-based initiatives. They could use a lot more investment, both on the creative side and on the business side. Artists, record companies and publishers alike would do well to look at embracing new models and figuring out how to make them more compelling to consumers, because that’s going to be the way to drive that marketplace forward.

Musician Coaching:

The position of General Manager of Billboard Digital sounds extremely fun. I’ve watched the magazine become more and more online based. And in the past few years especially, I’ve watched Billboard’s online presence escalate exponentially. What does your position there entail?

GW:

The big project that I was brought on board for is something called Billboard Pro, which is a subscription service for artists. It combines a couple different things. One is what Billboard is traditionally known for, which is great editorial – great writing and access  to information from the most important people in the industry. But Billboard Pro is geared specifically towards new and emerging artists, artists who may not be subscribing to Billboard Magazine today. There is information specifically for those artists about which new services are out there, what they should be investing in to grow their careers, etc. There is a piece that a lot of artists have liked and that has been a major driver of traffic for us from Amy Klein of Titus Andronicus on how to develop your stage presence. The idea for Billboard Pro is to be a version of the Wall Street Journal for artists. If you’re an artist trying to drive your career forward, we want it to be the first thing you sit down to in the morning to see what’s going on in the industry.

The second part of Billboard Pro is a dashboard that allows you to see where you are with fan engagement as an artist. You can track all your page views, plays and new fans on any of 16 different services across the web, plus you can get SoundScan sales data for an album and a few tracks. You can also get alerts if a song of yours happens to have been played on any U.S. radio station for the first time or the tenth time. And you can see if you’ve been mentioned by anyone on Twitter or by any blog out there. Basically, it’s a very simple one-stop dashboard to see where you are with online engagement, which is a new product for Billboard. Obviously, as the music industry is evolving and artists themselves are becoming key economic decision makers rather than labels, publishers, managers and agents, it’s important for artists to have the best information possible when making career decisions. And that involves having the quality of access to information that the historical business entities in the industry have had. We think it’s a great product, and it’s clearly an important audience for Billboard to address. And it’s an important product in the state of Billboard’s evolution, starting from the magazine’s rich history going back over a century, focused for the past 60 years on the music industry.

Two years ago, Billboard.com was re-launched as a consumer site, which has been incredibly successful. At the time the re-launch was undertaken, Billboard.com reached three million unique users each month. We’re now, two years later closing in on almost nine million monthly uniques. Later this year, we should, if the site continues its current trajectory, cross 10 million monthly uniques (For May, we actually ended up surpassing 10M uniques). The Billboard brand is now not just one that’s meaningful to the music industry and people who work in the music industry, but clearly one that is very meaningful to the consumers. A huge amount of traffic to the site consists of people coming to look at charts. The Monday after the Billboard Music Awards we had 800,000 visits to Billboard.com, which was our largest single traffic day. It’s a hugely meaningful brand to consumers now, and we hope it’s going to be a hugely meaningful brand to artists.

After Billboard Pro, I think the next important project that we’ll be looking at is expanding on that reach to consumers. Now that we have this big reach to consumers, how do we take Billboard.biz and also reinvigorate it in the same way? We’re looking to do a redesign and an update of the Billboard.biz site later this year.

The other interesting opportunity we have is at Billboard.com. Part of the redesign of that site several years ago was a deal with Lala to do streaming as an accompaniment to the site. Since Apple bought Lala and closed down the Lala service once and for all in September, we have integrated streams from Myspace.com onto our charts. I think looking at the services that are out there today, there are a lot of interesting opportunities to do a lot more. We’re looking at things like chart radio – the ability to see a song on the chart and immediately launch a station based on that song and that chart. We want to continue to be very discovery focused. It’s an interesting niche for Billboard. You don’t really think of charts as being a driver for artist discovery. But I think clearly that’s what you see a lot of people doing when you look at the traffic and the way people use Billboard.com:  They are coming there, looking to see what’s most popular, checking it out and clicking on purchase links.

Musician Coaching:
Along those lines, as a guy who is re-branding, re-launching and setting up Billboard Pro for real growth, what have you found that artists most want? What are the most popular topics that are coming up on Billboard Pro?

GW:
The Amy Klein/Titus Andronicus piece was I think our most popular piece of editorial since launching the site last month. It’s still very early on, but I think clearly the “how-to” category/tips from industry pros about how artists can build their careers have been very popular. We did a promotion with Chevrolet in association with the Billboard Music Awards last month. We took new and developing artists – some that came from Pro and some that came from the “uncharted chart” we launched at the beginning of the year. The “uncharted chart” is a chart of artists who have never charted on a major Billboard chart/artists that don’t have retail or radio stories yet but do have online fan engagement. It ranks them by their online fan engagement. And we had a battle of  the bands contest. A lot of people ended up checking out the profiles for these bands that were part of the contest.

Musician Coaching:

I had no idea you guys would be so artist discovery driven. That’s wild to me. I didn’t see that coming.

GW:

A major goal for Billboard Pro is to find out how we can use these great platforms we built:  Billboard.com, which reaches a really broad consumer audience; Billboard.biz, the magazine, and our conferences which reach the entire industry. We want to figure out how to take these platforms and connect new and developing artists with the people that matter in the industry and fans to help them grow to the next phase of their careers. That was the initial impetus for the site. And I think if we’re successful in doing that, we’re going to have a very successful product.

To learn more about George White, visit the Billboard website or follow him on Twitter. Also be sure to check out Billboard Pro.

Thom Russo is a 13-time Grammy® Award-winning engineer, producer and mixer. He first developed an interest in audio production as a conservatory student at Northwestern University studying percussion and theory, when he spent as much time as he could in recording studios around Chicago learning the ins and outs of different technologies and production tools. He started his professional career working on everything from jingles to classical, jazz and R&B projects at River North Studios in Chicago, eventually accepting a staff position at Larrabee Sound, one of L.A.’s largest recording studios. After he had built up a repertoire of experience, he branched out on his own and got picked up by Nettwerk Producer Management. During the past two decades, he has worked with major artists such as Michael Jackson, Babyface, Prince, Audioslave, Eric Clapton, Ke$ha and Johnny Cash, songwriters including Rhett Lawrence (Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey) and producers such as Teddy Riley, Bruce Swedien and Rick Rubin.

Recently, I got to sit down with Thom and talk about his career in the music industry, some advice he has for those that want to get into professional audio production and a few tips for artists trying to choose the right engineers, producers and mixers for their projects.

Musician Coaching:

Thanks for taking some time to talk to me, Thom. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in the music industry?

TR:

I was a musician for a very long time. The short of it is, I decided to take the path of studying music at a higher level. I was conservatory trained at Northwestern University. I realized that I was gravitating towards modern music production. That was something I randomly started to be attracted to, which I guess isn’t any different from any kid who is listening to a lot of music when they’re growing up. It was convenient for me to get a heavy music education while going into something that was more modern technical musical production.

I entered Northwestern in percussion and theory. I was a keyboard player my entire life, but my major was in theory. It happens in the arts a lot of times, where people say their education was wasted. But I can gladly say that was not the case for me. Just as I think actors will go and learn Shakespeare and then never use it when they are out in the working world, there is something of that language in the delivery of that that they use, and it’s the same with me. There’s something of the language I learned while I was an 18-year old kid that I use daily, if not consciously then subconsciously.

Musician Coaching:

I know a lot of people that don’t believe in a formal music education. But I think you need to know the rules before you insist on breaking them.

TR:

It’s exactly that. I think it’s certainly something where you should know them and then should break them. That said, I don’t think it’s for everybody. But a lot of times it can be, specifically for a guy like me. I knew I loved the art form, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. After I started to educate myself more and hang out with different types of people in different genres. Through that I found myself stumbling into a recording studio when I was 20-years old in Chicago. That was the first time I’d had an experience with it, and it was like the Holy Grail seeing everything happen. My head exploded, because at that point I thought, “Wow, this is how things are made.”

This was before I was working. I was just a kid playing in bands and spending a lot of time in headphones listening to everything. My choice of styles was always very diverse. I listened to Pink Floyd, Steely Dan and Prince and sometimes heavier stuff like AC/DC. But I didn’t know how  stuff was made until I started hanging out in the studios and started being a fly on the wall as much as I could. I started completely from the bottom, up, which kids still do today. I recommend it highly. I was getting tea and running errands for folks just so I could hang out and see how things were made by professionals and semi-professionals.

Musician Coaching:

What was the first studio that gave you your shot at being a working engineer?

TR:

It was in Chicago. I started an intern program at a big studio in downtown Chicago called River North Recorders. While I was finishing up my education I was spending three or four days a week for four or five hours a pop down there, not only getting tea for folks but really learning the ropes. My days were easily 15-16-hour days between going to class and riding the subway to get there. But it was great. I was super hungry, and it made all the difference in the world, because immediately I took a job there as a staff engineer when I got out of school at 21-years old. It was great. I didn’t know anything. The studio is no longer in existence. But I was working on as high-profile projects as could be done in Chicago, which consisted of a lot of commercial and advertising work like jingles, etc.. It was buttered up next to whatever was going on in the Chicago scene then, which was a lot of industrial, house and some R&B. It was very interesting, because my education in terms of modern music production was getting a huge bath there, because the work was so variable. One day we’d be doing a full band for a McDonald’s commercial, and then I’d be working with some crazy music project. It was very interesting and diverse, which is great.

I worked there for a good three or four years before I wanted to gravitate towards one specific side of music production, which was really records. I was mostly interested in making records and going into that actual field. So, I started to visit L.A. and poke my nose into different people’s business in recording studios out here. Luckily I had made enough professional connections while I was in Chicago that folks hooked me up with different individuals at different studios here in L.A. My resume was stacked up enough that for  some reason, it was the right place right time. I got job offers from Larrabbee Sound and Ocean Way Recording, which were both big studios that needed help at that time. And my education had been one where I had my chops together. I chose Larrabee, and before I knew it, I was 25 or 26 and had a job at an enormous recording studio in L.A., and I made the move.

Musician Coaching:

And was there a specific record that really jump-started your career?

TR:

Within the first two or three months I was at Larrabee, there was a guy working in the studio next door to me named Michael Jackson. And he was working on a record called Dangerous. It’s laughable how lucky this was, and it would’ve been lucky for anyone. I bumped into him in the hallways along with all the other cats that had been working on it, which was Bruce Swedien and Teddy Riley. Everybody was already on the gig, because he had been working on the record for three years at that point. It was something where we just got to talking, and he just said, “Why don’t you come on board to help us out, because we have more than enough to do right now. I got pulled into that boat and worked on that record for about a year and a half. And that even turned into something that was more bizarre for a young guy that had just come to town. Not only was I part of the engineering team on it, but then Sony Records was getting super frustrated that the record wasn’t getting done, and there was a huge deadline, and it had to be put out in September. And it was June, and everybody was saying, “We have to finish these mixes and these vocals.” And Michael was still writing lyrics on at least three quarters of the record. So Bruce, the executive producer said, “You have to go with Michael to this other studio, which is Record One in Sherman Oaks and sit with him for the next month and a half and record all the vocals.” And that’s what I did. Again, I had been in L.A. for about four or five months at  that point. It was certainly one of the most bizarre things that had ever happened to me, but in a good way.

Musician Coaching:

And after you had a Michael Jackson credit, I assume doors started opening left and right.

TR:

They really did. And I was young, didn’t know anything about the business, but I definitely had my technical chops completely in line. I was nervous. But I was more nervous about how I was going to interact on a personal level. I knew that whichever format we were recording to – and we were on tape at that time – whichever console, etc., I was going to be okay. Truth of it is, and this is certainly something kids should know about:  Getting your technical chops together should be a primary focus; because that’s something you learn, and then you just forget. It doesn’t matter where you are or how you are; as long as your chops are really together in every genre and format, you’re going to be ahead of the game for sure. You should never be thinking about, “How or why or when do I do this?” It should be something that is rote.

Musician Coaching:

When did you make the leap from house engineer to being out on your own?

TR:

It was a very natural thing where so much work started to come my way that I decided to go on my own. This was about 15 years ago, and now it’s a little different. There are now such a small number of people that are staff engineers, doing what I did in house. Now when artists are making big records, they’re usually seeking out individuals who are independent contractors. After realizing that being on staff was holding me back, I went out on my own. I started mentoring under a lot of great people, like Rhett Lawrence. I worked with him for a lot of years and started to co-produce with him and work on his tracks. He was spending a lot more time songwriting and working on melodies and lyrics, and I’d be working on beats for him and mixing. It became a lot more of that than it was spending time working with anybody that would show up at the door.

Once I was an independent contractor for long enough, I started to seek management, and they were seeking me out at the same time. I started working with Netwerk Music Group; I’ve been with that company for about eight or nine years. And the first project they recommended me for was with Macy Gray, who I ended up completely hitting it off with. We worked on a couple of projects together.

Musician Coaching:

You’ve had a phenomenal run and  have bounced through word of  mouth from being a kid in a studio, to a studio engineer, to a guy that has now been running his own business for a lot of years and has serious professional management. You alluded earlier in your story to the fact that you knew nothing about the business. We all start in this business with a lot of other people at the starting line. The numbers end up being significantly thinned out as time goes on. What is the difference between someone like you, who has carved out a career – other than chops, which are a given – and someone who fell by the wayside?

TR:

After you learn all the stuff that is pretty obvious – the technical skills and musical skills – you have to get around something that is less obvious, but needs to be learned:  the people skills. On a day-to-day basis, I have to deal with this entity called “artists.” Beyond just dealing with this entity called “artists,” I have to deal with this entity called “music business people.” A lot of times I’m in the middle, and a lot of times I just have to play good cop/bad cop. It’s a balancing act.

I think the most important thing is always keeping your eye on the finish line. That  means that one day when the artist isn’t feeling something and doesn’t want to sing, you have to find something else to push the project along to get it ready for a strict June 1^st release.

Musician Coaching:

So, to be successful, you need to be able to deliver, regardless of obstacles or excuses.

TR:

And that’s only one side of it. The other thing is, you have to be very patient. And this is a rule in life too, but you have to try not to take things personally. Very frequently I’ll be in a  circumstance where I’ll hand a mix, song, track, etc. over, and it’s great, and I think it’s going to change the face of modern music. But it’s not received for whatever reason. Or I’ll go for a gig that I don’t get. If you take everything personally, it’s a very difficult industry to be in. That’s the truth about the entertainment industry in general. It can be very fickle. The most important thing you have to realize is that it’s not about you; it’s about the music.

Musician Coaching:

What advice do you give to young engineers, since there aren’t as many big studios anymore? It seems like a lot of stuff is happening in home studios now, and the educational opportunities in the last 10-15 years have diminished significantly for a lot of reasons.

TR:

A lot of guys I’m running across now seem to have the same problem/shortcoming. First and foremost, it is good for any young person out there to have a good education of just audio. It sounds boring, but it is integral to understand the way things worked way back when, when there were big consoles and when there was tape – the way things worked in Motown and even before that. You even need to know how things were made when the  Beatles made Abbey Road. To understand that makes our world of computers that much clearer and better. I do meet a lot of guys now that have never really set foot in an actual recording studio. For me, that is such a strange thing. I consider myself lucky, because I was coming up when I got to see all old school stuff. And then the old school stuff went away, and now it’s the new school stuff, which isn’t really going to go anywhere. I really believe that this is how records are going to be made ad infinitum, for the rest of history. I can also say it’s impossible to say that the big studios will all go  away, because technically that is impossible. There will always be a need for super high-end, class A, high-fi environments of that nature; because obviously, audio needs to be captured, be it an orchestra, rock band or solo vocalist. My sweeping comment is that you need to have an education to understand the history of the technology that you’re using.

To get very specific with an example, say you’re in your Digital Audio Workstation and you pull up an equalizer or compressor, and you know how that plug-in works. But do you really know how the original worked? You can learn what the model does in the computer, but you have to understand that it’s just a model. And it’s a great-sounding model. And it’s fascinating and unbelievable, especially for a guy like me, that stuff like this sounds as good as it does. And it’s also extremely convenient, hence the nature of the business right now. It’s great for me, because I can be working on three or four things at a time.

Musician Coaching:

You also have a lot of perspective on the musician side of things. What should artists have already prepared before they even start knocking on doors  of engineers, producers or mixers?

TR:

Preparation is a broad topic, but I tell a lot of young bands the same thing. And a lot of times they don’t believe it. Very frequently folks are shy about playing me their very rough, sonically trashed-out demos. And I can say with a resounding scream that it’s never something I’m looking for. I’m not looking for something that sounds like a record already, because that’s the easiest thing for me to work on.  I can make something like that sound great in a matter of hours. But for musicians, the best thing to do is have your best foot forward in terms of songwriting and be as specific as you can be about your goals. I don’t care if you’re a solo artist or a band. The most important thing is to know what you want to be.  Not that you need to necessarily categorize yourself, but put what you’re going for in your mind. And that can be a million things with a million different influences. I think the artists I gravitate towards the most when it comes to people I want to work for are the ones that really know what they’re about, and have done their homework in terms of being an artist. You should have an established identity and a goal, and you should be able to present a bunch of records you like the sound of.

Musician Coaching:

And you don’t want to have to turn around to a band and tell them what they want, especially in the age of the internet where all this information is readily available.

TR:

Absolutely. If you’re a big, thick rock band, but you want a record that sounds like Gnarls Barkley, then cool. That’s what you should be going for. But you need to have that in your mind and your language when you talk about what you’re looking for.

Musician Coaching:

What advice would you give to artists that are trying to select an engineer, producer or mixer? How do they find people of quality like you?

TR:

They really just inquire. I like that in the past couple years, bands are just starting to inquire to me. What I can tell anyone is, don’t be afraid to approach veterans. We’re just out there looking for great music, just like everyone else. Sure it happens sometimes that the labels call me and say, “Hey, I’d like you to work with this person.” But 50% of my work now is bands and artists that contact me and say, “Hi, I heard your stuff. I really want to work with you.” And that’s great. I can also tell you that all my compatriots that have been in the industry a long time feel the same. They’ll tell me, “This artist approached me and is great, and I’m going to start working with them.”

If you want to learn more about Thom Russo and his many projects, check out his website. You can also go find him at Nettwerk Producer Management.

JJ Appleton is a successful singer / songwriter, producer and session player and has had a great deal of success getting his music placed and licensed.  JJ was signed to Universal records out of the UK several years ago and has toured extensively in the US and abroad.  For the majority of his career, he’s done these things completely on his own.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

Bring me back to the very beginning and tell me the things you did in your first band to build a following that worked and the things you saw them try that didn’t.

JJA:

I’m definitely dating myself a little bit, because in my first band I was really young – I was 16.  But there wasn’t really any Internet.  E-mail was just sort of rearing its head. It was a lot of more in-person sort of promotion, which still works, and I’ve done a lot of this in bands over the years even when the Internet was really prevalent.  I just think if you’re going to other bands’ shows and you’re meeting people and letting people what you’re doing and when you’re playing, people will be curious when they’ve met you, and they’re going to want to know what your music is about.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

So even today, you’re saying nothing really replaces that human connection?

JJA:

I’ll give you an example.  Let’s say I go to my Myspace page, and I have 50 bands that have added me that day.  I decide what bands I’m going to band based on whether I like their name.  I don’t listen to them.  It doesn’t work.  There’s a glut.  So, in person definitely makes a difference.  It helps to have an outgoing personality, and there’s the fine line between saying, “Hey, come check out my band” and being a used car salesman about it.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

How do you walk that line gracefully?

JJA:

How do you walk that line?  I think especially with rock and roll and anything that has a little more of an organic feel, people can kind of smell it if you’re putting it on.  There’s a way of just turning people onto your music that’s about you being confident, positive and upbeat, but at the same time maybe being cocky is too far in the other direction, saying, “We’re the greatest band in the world.” I don’t know who’s going to buy that, especially these days.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

Have you found that there are just endless amounts of bands, more so now than in years past?

JJA:

Maybe there are or there aren’t, but we certainly see a lot more because of the Internet.  Unfortunately their shelf life in our minds is nanoseconds, unless you happen to listen and you really like them.  In my experiences, the combination of in-person promotion, touring, Internet, they all work very well together.  If you’re missing a piece of those – not touring, etc., not going to other people’s shows – it’s going to be a little harder.  But if you’re doing all three, you can generate a little buzz.  There’s no question about it, with some elbow grease.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

You’ve done a fair amount of regional if not national touring.  How did you first go about making those connections to even leave your home city?

JJA:

For me it was colleges.  I had friends who were going to school somewhere – maybe upstate New York, maybe New England – and they would tell me about being in a frat or they knew about the coffee house that had bands or the little pub on campus that had bands and they’d tell me about it and help me get gigs.  And some of those gigs actually would pay a little money so some expenses would be covered. So that would help get the touring going. If I got a decent college gig I could build other shows around that.  Obviously it’s great to break even and not lose money.  But I’ve had my fair share of all three scenarios where I’ve lost money, broken even or made a little money.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

How have you been sustaining yourself as an artist?  You run a studio and do a lot of session work.  At what point did you realize you had to diversify your skill set in order to exist?

JJA:

I was in bands and I had day jobs.  I was always getting fired because if I had a gig I would blow off work or try to get out of it. So I would actually lose my jobs a lot.  Really, it was just sort of luck that I bumped into a high school friend who worked at a company that did music for commercials – jingles, etc. – and she asked me to bring my band in to do a Diet Coke commercial.  It got picked up and, and it was before it was sort of hip to have your songs in commercials.  And we didn’t do one of our songs, we did their Diet Coke jingle.  And all of a sudden, I saw there was a potential to make money with that.  And then also just by having a studio – it doesn’t have to be Avatar – it can be a project studio with decent equipment.  I was trained by a record producer – a guy named Mike Thorne – he produced Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.”  I worked for him for three years (that was actually one job I didn’t get fired from).  But I was actually working in the recording studio every day.  So learning from that I was able to start a little studio of my own. People would come in and bring in song demos and I would do a whole arrangement for them – soups to nuts.  I still do a lot of that, actually.  And then that led to other production work with artists and then a lot of co-writing that led to a lot of music licensing.  It’s a very good avenue to start generating revenue.  But then there’s always that fine line of if you’re an artist, there’s also that line you cross where you become a “jobber.”  All you’re doing is work for hire.  It’s not a bad thing, but it’s just that if you also want to be an artist, you have to find that balance between the two.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

I’ve known a lot of people who have really done the cover circuit or the work for hire and then just never got around to doing the stuff that drew them to it in the first place.

JJA:

The key is the writing.   You have to write every day.  Of course, I’m not perfect, I don’t write every day.  But I write something almost every day.  The book to get is the book by Stephen Pressfield called “The War of Art.”  If you are a songwriter – if that’s what you do, or a composer – that book could be really helpful for you in becoming disciplined to write every day.  And that can include all sorts of avenues – songs for yourself, for your band, could be for stuff for television, commercials, could be stuff for other artists.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

What kind of impact have all these co-writes, work for hire and session gigs had on your personal art?

JJA:

Mostly positive in that I’ve met amazing creative people through doing that.  Touring is also a doubled-edged sword as well.  It can be great to get paid and tour and make a little money, and then meet other musicians and play great songs.  The downside is if you’re an artist you’re taking time away from your own goals as an artist.  Balance is something I’m always trying to maintain.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

You’ve had a string of successes getting your individual music as an artist placed in commercials and films, etc.  Tell me about that hustle.  What do you do right that you see other people NOT doing?

JJA:

I think the key is you don’t wait around for other people to make connections for you. You go out and try to make them yourself.  For example, I’ve had music placed on Fox television shows, indie films – these are from connections actually I went and met in person with the people at Fox TV in Los Angeles.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

How did you get in the door?

JJA:

Well, it was interesting.  That came from a place I didn’t expect.  I worked with a guy who produced a couple of my albums named Stephen Lironi who’s possibly best known in the States for producing Hanson, their first album.  But he’s also produced a ton of other stuff.  I had a list of music executives at television companies. I sent cold e-mails and sent packages and just by following up via e-mail the woman at Fox recognized his name and said, “I used to work with him when I worked at Polydor.”  Also, I was going to be in L.A. because I was playing at a Triple A radio showcase in Palm Springs, and I flew my band out.  I was going to be out there anyway and I killed two birds with one stone.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

I guess a lot of that had to do with the marketing materials and how you associated your name with your friend’s.

JJA:

Yes.  You have to spell it out for people.  You can’t wait until you get them on the phone to tell them all the great stuff you’re doing.  You basically get one shot in front of most people.  These days that’s usually an e-mail or some sort of Web site.  It’s all got to be right in one place, telling people everything you’ve done.  And these things compound each other as your career goes on.  For me, I had a friend that was crazy about this one song that ended up being my single in England that came out on Universal. She hounded this friend of hers that was a manager to come see me  play, and he reluctantly took me on, and then over time, we actually developed a very good relationship.  He was able to use a lot of his strategic partnerships to garner me quite a few valuable thing for my career.  For example, I got sponsored by Budweiser for a year for touring, and they gave me $10,000 a year for two years towards the road. One request they had was that they had this Budweiser guitar, and they requested that we play it one song per show.  I thought this thing was hideous.  It was one of the ugliest guitars I’ve ever seen. So I made my guitar player play it for one song every show.  The point being, again, my friend who hustled to get me this manager believed in me because what I was doing was real and she could get behind it.  It comes down to the quality of music, which comes down to your work ethic.  Are you writing every day?  Are you listening to songwriters, etc. who have more experience than you?  You don’t have to agree with everything they say, but are you getting them to help you, either through a co-write or just feedback?

This manager was also able to use relationships he had from working at record labels.  As an indie artist, he really pushed for me very hard. He got me on “Last Call” with Carson Daley.  Once I got that and had that to show people, there’s nothing more valuable than television. People in my experience view you with a different sort of legitimacy if you are on television.  There may be bands that were way better and more deserving than my band at the time, but we got there.  And then it’s over very quick.  You can’t rest on your laurels forever. It has to be the next thing too.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

Tell me about how you got signed to Universal?

JJA:

Again, I had a chance meeting with an English guy who was a record executive and manager.  I met him on a beach.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

You’re really not afraid to talk to anyone, are you?

JJA:

Well, there you go.  I always think about if I hadn’t because I actually didn’t really want to talk to this guy.  I think we were actually put together on this boat, and it was sort of awkward and no one knew each other and no one really wanted to talk.  But once the ice was a little broken, it turned out to be one of the most fortunate meetings I probably had.  We got to know each other a little bit, and then I followed up with him (another key thing), but I didn’t hound him either.  But eventually it was the music that drew him in.  I’ll tell you one key thing I did – I never offered to play my music for him; I waited for him to ask.  And in certain cases – in this case – that was the right thing to do.  Because if you put yourself in the place of someone who is a record executive, how many people are coming at them daily?  I just knew that I had this guy – he’s on a beach – I can get to know him a little bit.  It ended up being a very fortunate thing.  He took me on as a manager, he got me sort of a small publishing situation with Universal and then that led to him taking me to a label that was distributed by Universal called All Around the World.  The idea was we took most of my second solo album and a little bit of the first and we made a new album.  And he got it released in the UK through All Around the World and then hired the best radio promotion team in the UK and brought the single to BBC Radio 2, which is probably the biggest listenership.  It took a while for it to get off the ground – maybe 6-8 months – and at the time I was living there.  Just as the single got played, the label All Around the World had some political shuffling. The people who had brought my album on left and just when it needed the push, unfortunately it didn’t get it.  The good news is, I kept the rights to my album in the United States territory, so I never gave that up . And I’ll get the album back in four years.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

It seems to me that you spent a lot of time waiting.

JJA:

They brought me over to do a couple showcases, some for BBC Radio and also some live stuff – I played at Ronnie Scott’s in London and the Borderline in London – and I was sort of traveling back and forth quite a bit, and then just through a certain set of circumstances basically I realized that actually relocating to London for a while would be a good idea.  To be there and with my management team, with the radio promotion team, with the label would get them fired up even more.  It was a career move and also just an adventure.  The thing is, it took a while for this to even get off the ground, or to even get started to get off the ground.  There’s so much.  I would wait around for a long time for the radio promotion team to call me up and say, “We have another showcase.”  A month would go by and I’d hear nothing.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

What were you doing in the meantime?

JJA:

I booked my own tours in England.  I put together my own backing band there.  I got busy.  All the while I was still writing music for television and commercials for here in the U.S., just from there.  These days you just e-mail the track in.  So I was keeping busy, but on the artist side, it was this great thing, because here was this label, and there was a promotion team and a management team and they were definitely excited about it, but it was also like starting over.  No one really knew me over there.  Fortunately I did fall in with a lot of good people, especially the musicians I met over there.  I was able to put together an amazing band.  I did the same thing over there that I did over here. I played at universities, I played at clubs, and I had a little bit of tour support, not a lot.  I tried to make it so it was at least a breaking even venture looking towards building towards a money-making venture.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

This was done on your own with the occasional backing from your new team?

JJA:

My management team wanted nothing to do with booking of clubs and universities and anything like that.  To be fair, my manager was always bringing booking agents down, and had the single taken off, we would’ve easily gotten a booking agent.  But because there was no booking agent, who’s going to do it?  Me.  I know that it’s a mistake not to be playing.  If I’m just waiting for my single to show up on the radio, I want to be playing and I want to be getting the word out.  And I was able to do that.  Of course I would’ve loved for my record to take off and the single to be a big success, but just because it didn’t doesn’t mean I didn’t get to do some amazing things. 

MUSICIAN COACHING:

You made the best of the situation.

JJA:

It wasn’t the intended outcome. But you can’t control the outcome.  What did I do?  Once I knew this record was dead, I immediately went into the studio with Steven Lironi and recorded the “Black and White Matinee” LP.  I didn’t wait.  What am I going to do, sit there and lick my wounds?  Once I got off my ass and quit feeling sorry for myself, it ended up being great.  I made one of my favorite recordings I’ve made.  It wasn’t a losing situation. It was actually a great situation in the end.

MUSICIAN COACHING:

What would you do differently if you knew then what you know now?

JJA:

There are a lot of things. I would worry a lot less about ego-related things:  how many people are in the audience on any given night; what bad review said what about my album; etc.  I definitely have a thick skin, but if I could’ve I would’ve developed it much sooner.  Hopefully someone will read this and realize that’s not the stuff that matters.  The stuff that matters is the creativity, the art, the songs, the recordings, the shows – that’s what’s important.  The rest is just all the stuff that happens to go along with it.

———-

If you want to check out JJ’s music or are in need of a gifted producer please check him out at JJ Appleton.

***Editor’s note – since this interview was conducted JJ has partnered with a huge music firm in NYC Called JSM Music and begun writing songs with many different pop acts including Kesha.***

Dave Galea is a booking agent at large booking agency called The Agency Group.  I first met Dave in my Sophomore year at NYU when playing in bands.  Dave was the trumpet player and manager of a group called Edna’s Goldfish that would later sign to the Moon Ska label and tour the U.S. an Europe.  After touring several years of touring Dave worked his way up from intern to booking agent at the Agency Group.  His current clients include Paramore, White Tie Affair, Paper Route and many others.

Dave was nice enough to speak to me about his career trajectory as well as his thoughts on touring from both the artist and agent perspectives.

Musician Coaching: So you work at the Agency Group as an agent- tell me about how you got a huge act like Paramore.

DG: Paramore is by far my biggest band.  When I got promoted I was booking some kind of emotive, pop punk, emo and had just the tiniest bit of success.  But if you have even a little bit of success, people start to notice the level of your work.  I’m pretty methodical.  When you’re going in, you have to pay attention to detail, not just throw these dates in the book.  I think there needs to be a rhyme or reason why you’re going to places.  I mean, if your shows are doing pretty well in Altoona, Pennsylvania, you go to Altoona.  There are a lot of off the beaten path places.

Musician Coaching: You were an artist, then you were an assistant, then you were an agent. Tell me about how your experience as an artist helps and how you came to be an agent.

DG: I think it helps me to say, “I’ve been there, I’ve been in a band.”  I was in a band and started to do okay at the tail-end of my career at NYU and then I realized when I graduated I had a science education degree, but at that point I’d been going to school since I was four years old, and I decided, “Maybe I don’t want to work, maybe I don’t want to go do the rest of my life right now.”  And then we realized as a band we can tour.  We were putting our records out on Moon.

Musician Coaching:

You had a deal with Moon, a local ska label, and you were doing all the normal things – you were flyering, you had a mailing list, you did all that word-of mouth, you were in college, which obviously has its certain pockets and niches, which really helps.  How did you break out of your home market?  How did you get other people to care in other markets?

DG: I think we happened to be around at the time of the ska revival.  We were very much in that community.

Musician Coaching:

How did you break into the ska movement?  Was it as simple as showing up and being on the up-beat, or did you have to play politics to get into that community?

DG: I think it was a function of Moon doing really well at the time, and that scene was so insular.  A lot of kids would just buy a record because it was on Moon.  And because we were considered a band that was a little bit better at our trade and had infectious live shows, people gravitated towards that.  At that point, the Internet existed but it wasn’t as much of a tool as it is today.

Musician Coaching:

Getting a live show in another city as any kind of niche market band is probably easier than if you’re just a rock band, right?

DG: There was a finite amount of bands we could play with.  If I wasn’t in school, I would be in the apartment calling the Trocadero or the 9:30 Club.  That was I think what got me into the booking of the bands.  I was the guy that would make the calls.  And then of course you network with bands, you trade off shows.  We’ve all been there and done that.  We built up a little pocket of a market and had a huge following on Long Island and did well in New York City and then it expanded.  We did well in Boston, we did well in Philly.  It’s still how I book bands.  I book them concentrically.  You build up here before you go out there.  When you tour nationally, no one’s going to remember you if you go out to San Francisco and then don’t come back until a year later.  And it’s different now with obviously Myspace being such an effective promotional tool. 

Musician Coaching:

Clearly you’ve been in the band and done that whole thing, but what are things that bands are doing other than selling tickets?  Are there things they should do to get your attention?

DG: The tickets are the most important thing.  I might get tips from promoters in other cities, I might get tips from labels or managers, but when a band starts to make enough noise – it sounds very elementary – I take notice.  Complacency is not going to get you far at all.  You need to work when you’re worth five people, ten people, 50 people 100 people, 500 people. People are impressed by work.  It’s the American dream.  I’m not going to want to book a band based on just an e-mail, but I will respond to some.  I find the ones that seem more intelligent and have more to say, I’m more apt to check out.

Musician Coaching:

It has to come down to statistics at a certain point.  If a band comes across and says, “We’re selling X many tickets and X many things,” and you happen to be talking to the promoter that day and can verify it, that’s either impressive or not, depending on your criteria.

DG: Of course.  Myspace is awesome because you can truly quantify how many people listen to these songs every day.  Number of plays is important.  I won’t sign a band just because they have a lot of plays, but if they appeared on my radar later I’ll really look at it.  You need it from different signs.  It’s just one of the key indicators.

Musician Coaching:

So, key indicators are obvious ticket sales, a word from a promoter, Myspace plays …

DG: If there’s a label that you work with that you really enjoy and a band is on it, you roll the dice sometimes.  You say, “I enjoy this relationship and I want it to continue.”  Sometimes it’s political.  There are political elements to everything I do.

Musician Coaching:

So you’ve worked at an agency for ten years?

DG: What happened was I was touring for two straight years, Europe twice, toured the country that many times.  When I wasn’t on tour, because I did have an education degree, I was lucky enough where having an education degree and living in New York City, I would just substitute teach.  It’s the perfect job for a touring musician.  You work when you want and you make good money.  And you absolutely have no responsibility.  You just need to get out of the classroom alive at the end of the day.  But there did reach a point where I just didn’t want to do it anymore.  I was 24 years old, and I just didn’t want to do it.  I felt like I wanted to live my life, but I was scared to death after college.

Musician Coaching:

Knowing what you know now as an agent, is there anything you would have done different as a band member?

DG: I got into the agency because I had an agent.  I tour managed bands for a couple months after I toured.  Then I got a job teaching in Brooklyn.  As much as I said I wanted to be an adult, I wasn’t ready to be an adult working a 9-5.  I just called my agent who coincidentally worked for the Agency Group.  I asked if I could intern.

Musician Coaching:

You clearly did something right to establish that relationship with your agent.  Having clients now, is there a way you should interact with your agent?

DG: I have had promoters call me and recommend me to other bands that are thinking about maybe leaving their agents and say, “David has a very personal relationship with his bands.”  I think you just develop a personal relationship. I can’t put my finger on something in particular, but it could be something as simple as liking a lot of the same books or the same bands.  In my case my bands are often a lot younger and are playing to 15 year old girls.  I think agents need to make themselves – especially with the consolidation of the music industry – invaluable in as many aspects of the industry as you can, whether it be personal or professional.  There might be things outside the box that truly aren’t in your job description. You’re a partner, not just a spoke on the wheel.

Musician Coaching:

What would you do differently knowing what you know now as an agent as far as your touring strategy?

DG: I don’t know if I would do anything differently.  I feel like what I’ve built I’ve built step by step.  And I think that’s one of the most important things a band needs to know.  Also, less was better for me.  Honestly, what I know now really wouldn’t apply to then.  It was a learning curve.  I was probably the worst tour manager, but that was the way we did it, and the knowledge base I built made everything possible.

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Learn more about Dave Galea and the Agency Group.

Tom DeSavia is the VP of Creative at Notable Music.  Prior to being at Notable Tom was the Senior Vice President of Membership at ASCAP, a VP of A&R at Elektra and started his career many years prior to that as a journalist for the now defunct music Magazine – Cashbox.  Notable music is a small publisher that was founded around the music of Cy Coleman who wrote for everyone from Sinatra to Tony Bennett and scored dozens of award winning Broadway musicals.  They have a small but strong roster that includes Rosanne Cash and Sam Phillips among others.

Music Consultant:

Tom thanks for taking the time to speak today.  You are VP of Creative – what is your gig and how has your adjustment been coming from large corporations to a small one like Notable?

TD:

My partner Damon Booth (VP / GM Notable) and I are building a company we love and signing things that we know we can work with and grow.  Damon said to me when I was coming over, “The hardest part for you is realizing you’re going to be able to do whatever you want.” And as funny as that sounds, it was. After years and years of corporate conditioning, it took me months to say, “I want to do this” and realize I didn’t have to get it signed in triplicate. I could do whatever I wanted. The small business thing is interesting, because I’ve never worked so hard, but I’ve never had so much fun. If we don’t do well, we don’t survive. It’s that simple. It’s something just different than if you’re one of hundreds at a big company.

We’ve been very lucky. When we first started working this together, I’d known Sam Phillips (Scored eight seasons of the Gilmore Girls among other achievements) from my time at ASCAP, and she was really intrigued by the idea of a mom and pop sort of business to align with.  She had just had a cut on the Allison Krauss / Robert Plant record, and a song in the movie “Crazy Heart” and was looking to make a change in her publishing.  She had met with a lot of companies and just really liked this idea. Similarly, with Rosanne Cash, we had heard she was available as a free agent, and we’d both been huge fans of her music and out of the blue wrote her an impassioned letter about this company. We said what we loved about her and about her music and that we wanted to work with her, and she bought it. We’re looking to segue out of the industry we all grew up with. Everyone has friends and people they love in the business, myself included, but the corporate structure and the way things are going made people look at a lot of it differently. I see a lot of people looking at the business on the indie level again.  There’s a breadth of indie publishers and labels popping up, and it’s definitely an exciting time to be small again. The business is being reinvented, and it’s a time to try to do things the way you always wanted but were never allowed to.

Music Consultant:

Are you currently doing new artist deals?

TD:

Yes, but we have to be head over heels in love with it and feel we can do something with it. Right now we have three new acts.  We did a joint venture with a Brooklyn-based magazine called Wax Poetics.  They were playing us some of the best new music we’ve heard in years, and it was all off the beaten path. We signed a guy named Adrian Young who had scored a movie called Black Dynamite and does 1973 “blacksploitation” type music using old gear. We fell in love with what he was doing and his beautiful retro thing. We worked with a guy named Marcos Garcia who has an act called Chico Mann.  Marcos is also the guitar player in Antibalas.  His music is sort of a modern / classic electro Latin funk project.  He is the James Brown of the Casio!  The third is a guy named Aja West, also known as the Mackrosoft, who has put out about 13-14 records on his own. He does anywhere from classic hip hop to classic jazz to modern jazz and modern funk and has played with the Dust Brothers, Money Mark, etc.  He is a mad scientist / super genius – I love him!  Our developing music signings are not bands in the standard way, and they are not someone writing contemporary pop tunes.

Music Consultant:

I’m curious about the mindset, because in the business we came out of, the publisher’s stance would usually be something like “I think you’re great, and you’ve got a major record coming out, and my A&R contact said I should take a swing on something.”  Sadly that was how it happened more often than not in my experience.  What is it like for you now? Do you find something you want to sign with the thought- “Not only do I love this, but I can get this placed to death?”

TD:

Exactly. The focus isn’t on finding something necessarily with record sales or radio singles. There’s plenty of that out there, but we said, “What could differentiate us from the others and what do we think we can do?” Obviously from our careers we knew a lot of music supervisors and ad agency people.  We found there was a warm reception to a bit of a left of center catalog. If someone is looking for a Katy Perry song, they can go to a number of places and get a great commercial pop tune but that’s not what we do.

Music Consultant:

So instead you went after pieces of music that would fulfill the request of a music supervisor who would say to you “I want something that is 1967 Curtis Mayfield, but I don’t want to pay Curtis Mayfield prices.”

TD:

Yeah. And we found stuff we liked. As corny as it sounds, we made a pact that we’d only sign stuff that would fit into our record collection, because we’d know what to do with it. We’d pound the pavement and know how to sell it and how to speak it.

Music Consultant:

You’re also doing the placement?

TD:

Yeah. We do everything. When you asked my title, it’s funny, because on any given day it’s head of technology to the janitor but I love it. We all do everything and have been very blessed by having good friends that have helped us by getting us great syncs or making introductions to people we don’t know. In some cases we’ve been working with independent placement people who love the music.  Most of it has been studying what happens on TV and trying to get in touch with as many ad agencies as possible and getting on their pitch lists, and then trying to be proactive and place songs with products and in TV shows. In addition, there’s traditional publisher stuff. We try to get cuts when it makes sense, but the majority of the cuts we try to get are for something going into film that will also turn into a sync. That’s pretty much what we’re doing. We are not trying to be one of the biggest companies but rather one of the best. We’re trying to gain a reputation where people look at our roster and it might not make sense on paper, but it does make sense side-by-side in a record collection.

Music Consultant:

How do people get in front of creatives like you in the modern music publishing market? It sounds like the “do what you love” mantra is now a reality, because you don’t have to be making big pop hits to make a living. What then is moving the needle for you? What advice would you give to someone just starting out as a musician?

TD:

For us it’s falling in love. We didn’t plan our current roster. We didn’t have a blueprint that brought all these artists in. As a former A&R guy, I love the ways music can reach me now.

Music Consultant:

It used to be we had to take calls from certain lawyers shopping new artists. Otherwise, when the contract renegotiation came around we were in trouble.  What about now? How do most things filter into you? Are you getting things from music supervisors, ad agencies or artists? How is it best to approach someone like yourself?

TD:

We get things from everyone, so the answer is “all of the above.” It comes from friends like you, saying, “I heard a great band.” Everything we’ve been sent by friends makes sense. We have an army of musicians out there that we’ve worked with over the years that might say, “Oh my God, I just played with this amazing band in Omaha,” or “Oh my God, I just heard this amazing songwriter in a coffee house.” A lot of it comes like that.  We listen to everything now.

The thing I love about this new-formed business is, we may hear something we love, but we’re not equipped to do sign it.  It could be for any number of reasons for example we’re not as plugged into that particular scene to promote it or are too busy with other projects at that particular time. There’s a building networking going on with small publishers, and we talk to each other. So, there’s a passing back and forth that happens a lot.  We get a lot of calls saying, “I just heard something phenomenal. We’re a small company and can’t take it on right now, but what do you think?”  That happens more than it ever did in the past.

Music Consultant:

When we were at Elektra together it was more like –  “I can’t sign this. I’m going to call up my friend or two at rival companies.  Eventually someone is going to call Hits Magazine and we’re going to get everyone else interested so there’s a huge Bay of Pigs clusterfuck, and then maybe my boss will respond to it now that everyone else is talking about it.

TD:

Exactly. And you know that world still exists to a degree, we just choose not to live in it. The Bay of Pigs is a perfect analogy.

These days, I love working with ad agency people, because they remind me of old record company people. They are actually putting some thought into the music they are going to put into a commercial. We’ve seen the growth of real creativity with the way music is being used now in ads and in film and television. We’re talking to a lot of record geeks, and it’s great.

I’m also having fun going around and seeing what artists I love are doing on Twitter and who they are talking about and reading artists’ blogs and going to people’s Facebook pages. The amount of music that hits me is staggering now. You just nailed something completely that I never thought about but the way music is shared now is so different from when you and I were doing A&R. You used to have to stand outside your door with an AK 47 making sure no one outside the building or even inside the building heard what you had in your office. Now with a button, your 900 friends on Facebook are going to see it, and it’s going to be re-posted and re-posted and re-posted. So much new music hits me that way. It’s like having a favorite record store that stocks the music you like. I have favorite friends that I pay attention to online. For example, I really liked going to Moby Disc, because they tended to stock records I was interested in buying.  It’s like that online now- I will follow people that I see really tend to find great music. What I love and is so different from the culture of our youth is that now everything is being broadcast.  I also find that approaching people as an indie is a good place to be. People are interested in talking to small companies today.  Classically, it was the bigger, the better. Now it’s the idea of being a huge fish in our small pond.

Music Consultant:

So the Sixty four thousand dollar question… How does one get an indie publishing deal? And can you speak about the pros and cons of an indie vs. a major?

TD:

It’s by us either scouting out their music or them getting to us. We’re small enough so we accept everything. Personally I’m a fan of getting music digitally first. I love the ease of it. I prefer links rather than files attached to emails.

Music Consultant:

Before they would get to the initial approach. The people that get to you – are these well-networked people? What do these people have in common that they’ve done right to show up on you radar?

TD:

Lately a great deal comes from Social Networks.  We’re on Facebook, we’re @NotableMusicCo on Twitter.  A lot of stuff comes in because someone will say something to the effect of, “I noticed you published Sam Phillips. I adore Sam Phillips, and she’s one of my favorite writers, so I’d like you to see my stuff.” We get a lot of stuff like that.

Music Consultant:

So that is a viable way of connecting with you then?  If someone says something intelligent enough about an artist or several artists on your roster and relates it back to what they do, there’s a reason to listen to it in your mind?

TD:

Yes. Sometimes we’ll get stuff like, “Wow. Your roster goes from Broadway’s standards to old school funk. I do something completely different.” Almost anything that comes in gets an A&R listen. Put your best foot forward. I love getting one or two songs and then being able to ask for more. I hate being besieged by music, because it’s too overwhelming. A lot of it comes in that way. The Wax Poetics guys, who are an amazing resource in their world, come forward with a lot of stuff. My friends at ASCAP and BMI have been great sources. It’s someone coming forward and buying into the company as much as anything else. What we tell people is, “If you’re looking for an old school advance, we’re not the place to do it. We’re not there to compete with one of the big companies.” In the case of Rosanne Cash and Sam Phillips, those are admin deals. We’re working on them every day.

Music Consultant:

Have publishing advances changed drastically?  What are those like these days?

TD:

Modern publishing deals are everything from really small deals that wouldn’t have happened in the 90s to bands doing small, fair deals to the occasional astronomical deal. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t.  Every once in a while you hear about the five to seven million dollar deal. In most cases, those are for heritage acts or someone established. But there’s still an occasional bidding war. That world still exists, but I’m not sure for how long or how many of them are tied into 360 deals.

Music Consultant:

You’ve been an A&R guy, a music journalist, and a creative executive at ASCAP and have seen a lot. Do you have any last pieces of general advice for artists?

TD:

Understand what you’re signing. Don’t do business with anyone you wouldn’t have a beer with. Ask questions. The business has always relied on musicians being seen and not heard and just making music. Now a lot of musicians and songwriters have become small business people and actually understand how it’s going and that they can actually survive and make a living off being a musician. It’s not about, “Wow, I can have a mansion and a yacht and a string of polo ponies.” It’s about “I can actually be a working musician and provide for my family.” So much of it is understanding the business and really investing in your own career. I see a lot of people really doing that today, and it’s encouraging.

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Learn more about Notable Music and Follow Notable on Twitter

Pat Downes is the singer and guitar player for the Sublime Tribute band Badfish and the original rock group Scotty Don’t.  Badfish / SD represent a very interesting example of how playing covers can help develop your original music’s following.  More often than not S.D. will open up for Badfish at their live shows.  I find their situation particularly brilliant because I am told many people in the audience don’t realize that Badfish and SD are in fact one band playing two different sets.

Music Consultant:

Tell me about how you got the band together.

PD:

The drummer and bassist went to college together at the University of Rhode Island. They formed the band Badfish and had another front man for a few years. They started around 2001 and had that lead man until 2006. I joined in 2005 as a saxophone/keyboard/miscellaneous fourth guy covering a bunch of parts. I was that guy for a couple years. I grew up playing saxophone, and that was my main thing for a long time, so I got a different perspective of what it was like to be in a band. I’d played in a bunch of bands before doing horn parts, so I kind of got both sides of the coin as far as being in a live, performing band. When the first singer decided to part ways, I took the reins. I sang to, so I figured, “Why not challenge myself and brush up on my guitar skills?” I closed myself up in a closet for a few months and worked seriously trying to put those skills together. You can’t fully develop those until you get on stage, but luckily we had a lot of opportunities to do that because we play 130-150 shows per year. It didn’t take long to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

Music Consultant:

Why a Sublime cover band?  Was this a calculated decision on their part that this was an underserved market?

PD:

Yes, pretty much.  I actually met the guys at a show. I was in a different band opening up for them. This was way before the Scotty Don’t thing took off. I ended up being in a different band out of Boston and was the opening band. They heard me playing saxophone, and I jumped up and did a couple tunes with them. One thing led to another, and I was quitting my job and hopping in a van going around playing a bunch of Sublime tunes around the country, and that snowballed into what it is now. When our other singer said he wanted to settle down and stick close to home, I had been writing songs on the side as personal stuff and didn’t have a band to pay them with. I brought them to the table and said, “Do you want to bring these in?” I saw opening bands playing before us and getting on some shows and gaining popularity through the popularity of our concert. I’d see people come in to hear Sublime tunes and end up coming in and seeing a band they’d never heard of but would fall for. The chops and the songwriting are still getting better, but we felt it was worth it to pursue an original project. Now we wear two hats every night. We’ll start as an opening band and go up there and try to win over a crowd that has never heard us. It’s definitely a different thing than going up there and playing songs that everyone knows every word to every night. It’s challenging, but it’s kind of cool.

Music Consultant:

Do you ever play shows separately or is it always Scotty Don’t opening up for Badfish every time?

PD:

We typically open for ourselves as described.  We’ve done a couple shows here and there as just Scotty Don’t, but it’s tough, because by the time we get home from the road we need to take a break and catch up with the rest of our lives.  There are only so many days in a year.

Music Consultant:

Doing 130-150 dates per year- you must be nationwide at this point?

PD:

Pretty much. We’re ramping up to do a Midwest tour right now. We leave September 10^th, and that will be 2 ½ or three weeks. Then we’ll come home for a week or so, and then we do the whole East Coast, down to Florida. As soon as that’s over, holidays, and then once the New Year comes around once a year we do a tour all through the south and up through California. That’s usually every January or February.

Music Consultant:

So it was through the guys at Creative Entertainment Group that you were able to build up as a regional band?  It must have helped that those guys are managers and club promoters.  I always thought you guys were based in New York because you play here so often.

PD:

No, we’re based in Rhode Island. It was a regional thing that spiraled out. That’s always what works. If you can get successful in your area you can branch out from there slowly. It’s really tough, because a lot of bands will think going out on the road is key but they wind up playing in front of three people or the sound guy when they are in a far away market.

Music Consultant:

You’ve been at this for quite a while. Not even necessarily specific to Badfish, but are there things you learned being a guy that’s on the road a lot that you would’ve wanted to know before you started out with all this? Can you give some practical advice about jumping into a van and living this life?

PD:

It’s very key to pace yourself, especially with that many shows. You don’t want to burn yourself out. It’s too fun and easy to party all the time. It’s good to keep a level head with that and keep yourself in check. Don’t think you’re God’s gift to music, because that doesn’t work. I see so many people who think they’re the best. They try to tell you that and put that attitude forward.  If you’re the best then show me. Put on your best performance, and if you’re relatable and people see some value in what you do, you’ll get what you’re working for.

Music Consultant:

What about from a business perspective? Was there anything you learned from the School of Hard Knocks?

PD:

People want your money. That’s for sure. It’s tough with a band. You have your heart in it and are passionate about what you do.  When someone tells you, “I can get you what you need. It’s just going to cost you this much,” you can be blind to the fact that they could be ripping you off.  In the digital age there are so many avenues that are just not solid. It’s not like, “I go to this record company, I make a deal, and I get this cut.” People are growing bands in so many different ways that it’s easy to do it wrong.

Music Consultant:

Anything in particular you would admonish people to avoid?

PD:

I see promoting via Internet as something best done on your own. Everybody has a computer, and you can figure out how to do it. We’ve paid a couple people to help us out on that front, and the results aren’t as tangible as offline promotions. If you pay somebody to go flier up a neighborhood, you’re going to see the fliers when you drive by. That’s concrete proof. It’s tough to gauge Internet stuff and how much it’s worth. If you find someone that’s working that you have a good rapport with, stick with it.

Music Consultant:

You obviously have a good built in crowd because you market to Sublime fans. But how did you target them online or how do you target them online?

PD:

Obviously the simple stuff like Facebook. When we have people at the shows, we’re trying to bridge that gap between having them at the show and having them remember us at home, so once they hit their computer we can create that link. We’ll do a “Come check us out at our website” spiel when we’re on the stage and try to connect those things together.

Music Consultant:

What about e-mail collection? Has that been big for you guys?

PD: We did that for a few years, and it was big. You’re probably talking to the wrong guy when it comes to that stuff. My strong suit is being on stage. But we try to split it up as much as possible. But being in a band, as with any stuff, you’re most valuable where your time is most effective.

Music Consultant:

When I was in bands I was the bass player who was the business dictator because everybody else couldn’t be bothered. I was the one writing set lists and settling shows etc…

PD:

That is our bass player, actually. He grew up as a national chess champion. He’s a numbers guy and is very strategic. He’s a big reason why the band is successful. He puts his head down and goes towards the project and doesn’t stop until it’s done. You need that. I’m the guy that is trying to get this original band up there at least the level that Badfish is at, and I have no problem sitting 12-13 hours a day in front of a computer putting songs together. Everybody has their thing that they fester over to make sure it’s perfect.

Learn more about Scotty Don’t & Badfish