This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Mathieu Santos is one of the founding members of and the bassist for the New York City-based orchestral-pop indie band Ra Ra Riot, signed to Barsuk Records. He and his fellow band members met in January 2006 during their last semester of college at Syracuse University. The band has since released several albums and EPs, toured throughout the country and has had their songs placed in film and television. Ra Ra Riot’s album The Orchard was nominated for an Independent Music Award in January, 2011. In August, Mat released his first solo album, Massachusetts 2010.
I recently spoke with Mat about how Ra Ra Riot came to be, what he has learned about touring and building a band and some advice he has for artists that want to make music their career.
Thanks so much for taking some time to talk to me, Mat. How did you get started with Ra Ra Riot?
MS:
We all met at Syracuse University and officially formed in January, 2006. None of us knew each other before the band started. Milo, our guitarist, was the link between everyone; he brought us all together. We all met for the first time at our first practice.
And it just clicked.
MS:
Yeah. Originally, it was just supposed to be something to do during our last semester at school – a fun thing to do for a few months. It did end up being so much fun, and we were able to build up a little bit of a following within the campus community. So, we decided to keep it going in the summer and book our first tour.
It’s interesting: As a kid, I played in a band at NYU, and after college, I was met with the very harsh reality of how much harder it is once you can’t knock on everyone’s door in your dorm room, and when you no longer have that centralized mechanism of a campus. How did you go about booking a tour when you hadn’t toured previously?
MS:
We were pretty lucky, because right from the very beginning we had a really great manager, Josh, who was a really good friend of ours at Syracuse. He was actually living in the house that we were living in, so he just became our manager by default. He was a management major at Syracuse and was also interning for Sony Records at the time. He was already pretty savvy about the music industry, as was Rebecca, our violin player, because she was a music industry major. We were fortunate enough to have friends in our circle who knew a little bit about what they were doing.
The first tour we booked was pretty bare bones – a lot of small clubs in the Northeast. There were eight shows over a two-week span. It wasn’t anything too grand, but it was enough to get a taste for it and get a little something going. It was nice because having left school, everyone knew someone in every city we played in. We had at least a small crowd come out.
So it was really that simple: “Who do we know in this town? Whose couch can we crash on here, and how can we get people out?”
MS:
Exactly. It was a lot of fun. We rented an old police van and just did it. We didn’t really know what we were doing. But it went okay. And it was fun enough for us to want to try to do it again on a little bit bigger scale.
Obviously, a lot of bands aren’t lucky enough to have a guy like Josh, who I’ve talked to on and off since I saw you guys play at a Ben Sherman – of all places – in 2006. A lot of people don’t get that lucky to have somebody with a lot of practical experience who is really dedicated and just says, “Come hell or high water, money be damned, I’m going to manage that band.” From your perspective, what did you do to grow your band? Which elements and techniques wound up being the most effective for growing a fan base?
MS:
The time we were starting out was when Myspace had reached its pinnacle as an influential tool for bands. So, that helped a lot. Working with Josh was great for everyone, because we couldn’t have gone as far as we did without him. And he probably couldn’t have done as much without a client like us. It worked out perfectly that it was the first band he managed and the first real band we had played in. It was a great symbiotic environment. And it still is today.
In general, the internet was a major help. And Josh is good at making connections. The first thing that really helped us get to the next level was CMJ, which we played the first year we were together, in the Fall of 2006. By then, we had done a bunch of really small tours. And then CMJ worked really well for us. We got a lot of positive coverage on a lot of blogs and a few other publications too as a result.
Did you have a publicist at that time, or was that all Josh just making cold calls?
MS:
At that time, I honestly don’t remember. But it was probably mostly just Josh. I think it was at that CMJ that we met our lawyer, our booking agent and our first publicist. Up until then, we were still doing everything ourselves.
I realize everyone has their own perspective based on their unique life experiences and path in the music business. But you weren’t a band for very long before you had your first booking agent come on board.
MS:
It happened within about the first eight months.
There are so many bands that do well in a lot of different markets and can’t get anyone to take a risk on them. Talent aside, what do you think you guys were doing right that made an agent jump on board?
MS:
When we first formed at Syracuse we formed primarily to be a house party band, which was all that was going on at school. There were a couple clubs on campus, but mostly we played house parties. Our whole performance was tailored to that environment, so there was a lot of uninhibited energy and a lot of interaction with the crowd. We were just having a lot of fun, and our whole idea was just to keep doing it as long as that was still the case. I think a lot of people related to that when they saw us play. It was a fun, un-self-conscious, energetic thing that was different from what a lot of people were doing at the time.
We were really nervous coming into CMJ, because it was our first big thing, and we knew it was also a very industry-focused event. But we tried not to think about it too much and just did what we did. We got so much positive feedback from it, that we knew we were going in a good direction.
And it was right around that time that you started to have labels, publishers and people sniffing around. How would you recommend that people starting out get that attention and then how should they deal with it?
MS:
It was a little confusing, a little scary. It takes a while to gauge where people are coming from. But it was also very exciting, especially since we didn’t expect to be playing together beyond just one semester. Then, we did a couple tours, and CMJ came. And it was the first time we started considering the possibility of doing the band as a full-time gig. We thought, “Wow, there’s really interest. We can actually make the leap from the college environment to touring the country.” It was just a matter of listening the feedback of everyone that was interested in working with us. A lot of it was just feeling everyone out and trying to pick the people who we thought wanted to work with us for the right reasons. That idea has always been really important to us.
It was a little daunting, but we were all in it together. It was the first time any of us had ever experienced anything like it, so it was a galvanizing thing, and we were just really excited to take the next step.
It seems almost like it’s similar to all of a sudden waking up one morning and looking like a Playboy model. Suddenly, everyone wants something from you. It’s very strange. I’ve seen people weather that not so gracefully. But it seems like things have worked out for you.
You mentioned on the Uncensored Interview website that surviving in the music business and doing the DIY thing was very different than what you’d imagined. What are the big, key things you’d want to tell yourself if you were starting over?
MS:
That’s an interesting question. For us, because every step of the way has been a pleasant surprise, I think we’ve always just been excited that whatever is happening is happening. In retrospect, when we look back at our first tour and how bad the conditions were – sleeping in rest stops every other night, etc. – it’s surprising, because at the time it was really exciting. I think we’ve been really cautious the whole time to always trust our gut with the people we work with. That’s definitely served us well.
At the beginning we were definitely a bit naïve in terms of trusting people. On one of our first tours, we had a horrible incident in Montreal. Our van was broken into, and everyone’s laptops, phones and cameras were stolen. It was a situation where we left the van alone for maybe ten minutes. But we weren’t that careful. Now we’re a bit too paranoid for our own good. But it’s better to be prepared than to get ripped off like that. There’s no worse feeling than being really far away from home, having everything taken and just feeling lost. A van with a trailer is a pretty easy target.
I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that I would do differently. Every step has been such a big learning process for us. We knew nothing about touring the first tour we went on and we knew nothing about recording the first time we went into the studio. But we’ve learned all these things over the years.
I know that questions about your experiences become difficult questions to answer after a while, not because the answers are difficult but because it becomes harder and harder to divorce yourself from the experiences as time progresses. What are some small, practical things you’ve learned about touring?
MS:
Touring is always tough, because a complete lifestyle change can happen in as little as a day. One day, you’re at home and comfortable; the next day, you’re in a van for the next four-and-a-half weeks. It usually takes a while to adjust. The two-week mark is always the hump that’s the hardest to get over. I think we’ve all learned to take touring day by day and not get overwhelmed by the scale of it. If you focus just on what you have to do that day, it makes everything pretty easy to get through. It’s all about finding a system that works for you.
You guys are all still pretty young. But are there things you’ve found you have to be careful of in regards to your health while on tour?
MS:
Lately, a lot of us have been finding more time to go for a run or do other things like that while we’re on tour. Taking out time to do that is really important. You also need alone time and time to reset and take care of your body after you’ve been sitting in a van all day.
We also do try to eat well. It’s a little difficult to do, but if you can find a Whole Foods every day, it makes a big difference. Actually, that’s one of the most important things: Nothing can boost morale more than a good meal. Sometimes it gets hard to find places in the middle of nowhere, but it’s totally worth it if you can make the effort to find good food.
Do you have any additional advice for artists just starting out that want to make music a career?
MS:
Our main guiding motto has always been, “Let’s have fun, and let’s keep doing it as long as we’re still having fun.” We’ve had times in the past where we’ve stopped to reconsider and have asked ourselves, “Do we still want to do this? Are we still having fun?” And we have always decided that yes, we are. We don’t want to be doing anything else. I would tell other musicians, “Just do what feels right. Trust your gut and your instincts.”
Building a good team is also really important. People will tell you a lot of things and make a lot of promises. But you really have to get a feel for the people you work with. And you have to know they’re in it for the right reasons and that they care about your music and your career. It’s very important to be close to the people you work with.
But really, as long as you’re having fun, everything else will fall into place.
To learn more about Mathieu Santos, visit the Ra Ra Riot website and check out his solo album Massachusetts 2010. You can watch the interview the band did for Uncensored Interview below.
Jeff Yapp is the Founder and CEO of NXTM and WHOOZNXT, a platform that helps artists find opportunities to connect meaningfully with their fans, build their following and get real-world exposure. A self-proclaimed “classically-trained” products marketer and known as an innovative marketing expert, Jeff got his start in the music and entertainment industry when he went to work with Pizza Hut on entertainment-based marketing and properties. This eventually led him to Hollywood and a job as Executive Vice President, Program Enterprises for MTV, where he worked with the MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo networks to build the scope of their brands in the emerging digital market. While at MTV, he was able to grow the division significantly and worked with content for movie studios, gaming, sports, home entertainment, consumer products, radio networks, publishing and business development. Jeff also led the team at Viacom that successfully acquired Harmonix in 2007 and launched Rock Band 1 and 2, which earned 50% of the revenue in the video game market the year it was launched. In 2007, his team also won an Emmy for its work in the 3D avatar-based virtual world with the games Virtual Laguna Beach and Virtual Hills. In the 1990s, Jeff also worked as an executive at 20th Century Fox, where he was responsible for launching the campaign that reintroduced the Star Wars franchise. He launched WHOOZNXT in 2010 and immediately signed mega-artist Taylor Swift on as an investor and his first client.
I got to sit down with Jeff and talk about his experience in the entertainment and music industry, how WHOOZNXT works for artists and why developing a meaningful relationship with fans is so critical for artists that want to make it in the music business.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Jeff. How did you get started in the music industry?
JY:
I started in packaged goods marketing, and that morphed into a move into the entertainment business. I started at General Foods. I was a basically a “classically-trained” packaged goods marketer. Then I went to work for Pizza Hut, where I started to get involved in entertainment-based marketing and properties. That got me exposed to Hollywood, and I went to work for 20th Century Fox in the video department. I headed global distribution for Fox, and it was really my big step from packaged goods into entertainment. Then I had a stint in retail, and a big set internationally, which gave me some perspective there.
Most recently, and something that is probably most relevant to this conversation is that I spent time at MTV. I took that background of classic marketing, content and video development, all the way through to retail distribution. My job at MTV was what I jokingly called in the “rats and mice” division. It was all the things that were not related to television. So, I had the movie studios, the gaming studios, consumer products, publishing, business development and technology across all the music groups: MTV; Vh1; CMT and Logo. It gave me a front-row seat in the music business.
I was at MTV for about six years during the implosion. I was there when the business was really changing and everyone was looking for the next savior. When I first got there, the savior was supposed to be AOL Music. And then it became Yahoo Music. And then there was Myspace. What was interesting was that there were a lot of pluses and minuses. On the plus side, these social platforms and digital platforms were getting bands unbelievable exposure for the first time ever. All bands potentially had access to these huge audiences, and they weren’t having to go through a gatekeeper like a label. But that was good news and bad news, because now 10 million bands had unlimited access to fans. It became this amazing morass for fans to sort through it all and really start to provide some meaningful exposure that could help a band go from local hero to superstar.
That’s the thing I got interested in. I said, “How do you take all this online activity and translate it into the kind of exposure that a good band needs to break out?” The A&R budgets continued to decline along with the ability for anyone to make investments in artists, because there was pretty much a one-in-ten chance an artist would have a successful hit. I started to think about how I could make that potentially more interesting in terms of which bands to focus on and which to give exposure to. And that’s where WHOOZNXT came from. I was really looking at Myspace, and looking at this amazing platform with ten million bands plus. But then you go to it and have no idea, if you’re a fan, where you want to go and what you want to listen to. It’s really not a great discovery platform. So, I said, “How do I translate digital success into real-world exposure?” That was the first kernel for WHOOZNXT.
And, really it was something that was not being done. What was interesting to me was that there were hundreds of companies that were toolkits and playlists and things that were digital ends. Myspace was a digital end. At MTV, you could really see our exposure impact on bands. You could take our video rotation at 2 a.m. and generate more online activity for a band than the front page on Myspace, which was kind of telling to me. It was obvious why some labels had done well. If you take the live performance, the radio campaigns, television campaigns and the digital campaigns and roll them all together, that package, with talent, gave you a shot at helping a band break. I felt I could bridge that in some way.
I started WHOOZNXT about a year and a half ago. And as a startup, you have to get some credibility. So, I approached the one artist that had used the digital platform to build a fan base pretty amazingly: Taylor Swift. At a time when everyone told her they were not interested, she lived on Myspace. She talked and sang to her fans and had an amazing connection with them on Myspace. I showed her what I wanted to do, and she became my first investor and client.
It was a pretty amazing story. It seemed like Taylor’s success was pretty random, but in the back of my mind I always believed that there were probably 25 other Taylors that will never have the same shot.
And she’s on an indie in Nashville signed to a major.
JY:
Yes. She is signed by Big Machine through Universal.
It’s one of the few situations where someone would have the flexibility to do such a partnership without being hand strung through infinite layers of red tape.
JY:
Absolutely. And I got to Taylor right after the release of her first record, so she was just starting to explode. Having spent time with her and her family, I realized how many random things had to happen for someone as gifted and as talented as she was to have the shot she has today. That’s what became interesting to me. So many things had to happen that were completely unrelated and random for her to get into the situation that’s allowed her to become the global superstar she is. I wanted to see how we could take some randomness out of that type of story. And that’s when I came up with the idea for WHOOZNXT.
We’ve created a platform that’s free for artists to register on. The thing that’s confusing to artists when they first come to my platform is that I don’t ask them to do anything except register their entire social grid. I don’t want them to have to fill out another profile or upload their music or videos for the 50th time. When we first started this, the bands asked, “What are we supposed to do?” And I said, “Focus on growing your fan base by writing great music and performing it live. This is a report card. This is you chart and will tell you how well you’re doing and what you need to do to grow your fan base. Because, at the end of the day, success as an artist is going to be tied to your fans and their depth of commitment to you. They need to be willing to part with a dollar for something you do.”
One of the many reasons I was excited to talk to you is that you’re clearly a guy with a formal business acumen. A lot of music business startups are built on a dollar and a dream. And people get through on pure, unbridled passion and somehow get through to an investor. Sometimes it works. But more often than not, people don’t really take a look at the marketplace before they go in and spend a lot of money and time developing things.
I think it’s interesting that you took a look and didn’t find any filtration systems or referral programs that were good. I think there have been some, but they have come and gone so quickly because they require people to sign up for yet another platform and fill out another profile. As far as I can tell – and I just signed up my first artist with WHOOZNXT a half an hour ago – you guys are really just establishing clout and then building additional opportunities based on what people have built through their own momentum and relevant to the career level that matches theirs.
JY:
Exactly. Say my top opportunity is a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live or a chance to open up for the Virgin Mobile Free Fest. How do the people in charge decide which band they go with when there are thousands of bands being pitched to them?
One of the things that started to ring true was one of the ideas we thought a lot about: the concept of fan validation. There are a lot of “heat indices” out there and algorithms to predict who is going to be the next big band. But at the end of the day, the only thing that has truly determined how big an artist becomes is the size of their fan base, defined by those who will go see their shows and buy their music. Today’s world is very different from even three years ago; now, an artist’s fan base really lives in the online social communities. They don’t spend a lot of time on their website or on another dedicated site. So, it’s on Facebook, YouTube and wherever their fans are that artists need to be.
So, we thought, “Why don’t we just aggregate how fast they’re growing fans across a particular platform?” Every month, the band that has grown the most fans will be “the hottest.” And every month, we’ll restart back at zero and track it all over again. Because the truth is, in the music business, if you write a new song, your life can change if it connects. It’s not the fact that you have 22 million fans. It’s the rate at which you’re growing your fan base. For example, Justin Bieber is hugely popular today. But his rate of growth has definitely slowed. We think we’ve discovered something pretty interesting.
We started WHOOZNXT at South by Southwest. We turned on our system at 4 a.m. the day before the launch, and immediately a band jumped out called Asking Alexandria. We were scratching our heads, because we hadn’t heard of it, and it wasn’t a band people were talking about when we got to the festival. We talked to journalists, and they hadn’t heard of the band. And we talked to someone at Jimmy Kimmel Live, and he hadn’t heard of them either. We thought at first we might have done it wrong. But, it was clear that they were 2-1 in terms of fan growth over anybody.
What’s funny is, I started in the research department at a subsidiary of Atlantic called Lava. And what they had drilled into me was that the only thing that predicts future sales is existing sales. So, quite literally, we would look for things that were unaffiliated with major distribution that were selling or things that were unattached to major labels but on radio stations and getting requests and requests in record stores. For a company that was a Fortune 500 company, it was a little amazing that this was the only research we really did. A company in another industry would be willing to spend a million dollars determining whether someone wanted white or off-white tube socks. The music business would spend that much money on videos without knowing if there was any market for the product whatsoever.
JY:
Yes. It’s all pretty interesting. When we started at South by Southwest, we knew we were going to see 90,000 music fans throughout the week. And we picked this band Asking Alexandria to feature. We then found out after we picked them that they were voted “longest lines.” People had to spend the night. And they filled 4,500 seats at a show the day after South by Southwest in Dallas. The coolest thing that happened to me was, a week before this band was going to play on Jimmy Kimmel, I was sitting at Taylor Swift’s label waiting for a meeting. And the head of marketing said to me, “Who the hell is Asking Alexandria?” He had no idea I was working with them. I asked why he was asking, and he said, “Universal Distribution has just named them the ‘Band to Watch’ because their first-week sales were so strong.”
So, fan base growth rate as a predictor of a band’s success feels like a pretty good model. They have continued to have an amazing summer. They opened up the Warped tour and are going to take their own tour this fall with venues with 4,000-5,000 seats and 30 dates.
We’ve evolved the site too. If you go on the site and look at “WHOOZ HOT,” you’ll see something pretty cool. It’s an idea I had when I was at MTV. I was wondering why we were picking who we thought was hot. I wondered why we didn’t let the fans pick who they like. So, for “WHOOZ HOT,” we use the ranking system from WHOOZNXT and rank our bands. You can categorize them by genre, by geography or by level. You can say, “What’s the hottest double-platinum rock band in Detroit.” Then the system automatically reaches into a particular band’s YouTube and pulls out the hottest video in the last 48 hours. Basically we’re creating a next-generation music channel on the fly, where the channel is completely programmed by the fans.
That’s a daunting task, but one that is certainly a worthy one.
JY:
We have it going, and it really feels good. At MTV I was always wondering why we weren’t programming videos this way. Now I have it. I feel like we’re doing things for artists that other people aren’t doing for them. And we’ve put together an exposure network. It will continue to fill out, but it includes television partners like ABC, Comcast and Time Warner, and radio partners like Clear Channel and Westwood One, live performance partners like AEG Live and Live Nation. We now have about 80 gigs. We’ll go to 140 in September. And when we add Guitar Center as a partner, we’ll hopefully get another 280. We’re filling it out to where we’ll ideally be able to offer opportunities for bands they wouldn’t have without us.
You have such a unique vantage point as someone that has built a business around a science you created for determining which bands are going to be successful. Ultimately, I want to ask you how you turned this into a profitable business for you. But, first, I would really like to know if, as you’ve studied the different ways people engage their fans, you’ve noticed that certain social networks or methods work better than others?
JY:
Having now spent probably the better part of four years looking at social media, there is no way a band will ever tweet, blog, post, interact, profile their way to success. The conclusion I’ve come to is that the music business at its core has not changed: It’s all about the artist and their connection to their fan base. Without that connection, nothing you do on social media will lead you to success.
It’s really funny, because it’s still about the song and how the song connects with a fan. What has changed fundamentally is that with that song, the acceleration of awareness has changed overnight. The way I think about it today in terms of how I determine which are the best accelerants for that song, is that Twitter is the real-time measure of your impact in a situation. So, when you perform live, Twitter will be a huge indicator of how well a song connects with fans. Twitter is easy, fast and it provides a ton of feedback.
The second most impactful medium is Facebook. People will take time to post, share blogs or “like” on Facebook. Facebook is the digital equivalent of buying a single. Back in the 1950s or ‘60s, once you connected to a song, you would buy the single. At the point when people were really buying records, SoundScan was that universally-accepted measurement of engagement. That’s really all it was: “Were you engaged enough to buy a record?” We didn’t have objective ticket information, so SoundScan was that chart that basically identified how hot somebody was.
I would argue that when you decide to “fan,” “follow,” “like” or “subscribe to,” those are statements of engagement. They are digital engagements, but they’re the next level. And I think that’s what gets really interesting, and that’s what we’re using as the next “chart.”
I have people coming to me all the time and saying, “I want to do a viral video like Kreayshawn.” And I think, “OK. Go write a hit song and call me back.” There’s a fantastic story about Kiss interviewing managers. Gene Simmons swaggered into every potential manager’s office and said, “We want to be on the cover of every major magazine. What are you going to do about it?” And they ultimately signed with Doc McGhee. His response to that question was, “The plan is simple. You put your make-up back on, and you kill the president. Now let’s get to work.”
JY:
Gene called me once when I was working at MTV. And a conversation I had with him has really affected the way I think about fans. He said, “I have 1,000 fans that will pay $10,000 for whatever I do. And I have 10,000 fans that will pay me $1,000. I get $10 million bucks to get out of bed. What are you going to do for me today?” What he taught me – and he’s smart – was that all fans are not created equal. What it is incredibly important for artists to understand today is that they need to understand who their core fan is and stay honest and true to those folks.
When most artists start to fall apart, it’s because they lose sight of that core fan base, the ones that got them there. Our whole communication with artists is focused on their fans. What we’ve done with Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift is to analyze their business through their core fan base: how much they are engaged; the revenue they get from them. We spend a lot of time trying to take care of the core fan.
Do you have any exciting things coming up at WHOOZNXT you’d like to share?
JY:
We’re really focused on band registration. My job is really getting cool, and it’s really about getting people involved. I know you wanted to know how we make money. The thing that’s interesting about music is that it’s a global platform. But the folks that follow the “emerging artist” category – people who are into music enough to really want to discover unknown bands – are who you think of as the taste makers that really have some influence. They’re the kids in high school you went to in order to find out which bands were the hottest. They are also the toughest people for brands to target. That’s why I think WHOOZNXT this is such a huge business opportunity. Just based on the 25,000 bands we have on the platform, I think we’re at 154 million fans. That’s a crazy number. That’s why I think we’re representing the future of the music business for bands.
It still takes money to be a developing act. There are no two ways about it. And I think that money is going to come from brands. And my job is to help connect those bands and marketers in a way that is organically true to the band and organically true to the fan, but also creates opportunities for artists and provides them with the capital they need to build their business.
Along those lines, have you started the process of building in potential brand partners for underwriting?
JY:
Yes. The first one we started with was Samsung and the Summer Krush events. The second one is Virgin Mobile. I can’t announce our biggest project yet, but it’s going to be a huge and exciting program for kids in the college market.
The thing we’re finding is that every brand – whether it’s a car or a soft drink, anything that has to do with the youth market – becomes really interested in this space very quickly. What I set out to do when I was at MTV is figure out what the future of MTV was going to look like. And this is the analogy I think is interesting: Cable was a piece of technology that enabled the rise of channels like MTV and ESPN – channels that anybody in the broadcast world said would never happen. A new technology showed up that gave you a whole new paradigm under which to build new businesses. And that’s where we are today too. YouTube is a global platform, completely interactive and on demand, and serves micro audiences rather than macro audiences. And there needs to be a completely new business model to support that next-generation video model. And we’re hoping our site can represent that business model.
To learn more about Jeff Yapp and his platform for artists, please visit the WHOOZNXT website.
eMusic Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes has been writing about music since 1997 for publications including RollingStone.com, Newsday, the Village Voice and Entertainment Weekly. His piece “Where’s The Party? 13 Hours with the Next Franz Ferdinand” was selected for inclusion in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2006.
Recently Joe took some time to talk to me about how he got his start writing about music, how eMusic is helping new and emerging artists and what bands can do to get noticed by journalists, editors and other music industry decision makers.
How did you get your start in the music industry?
JEK:
I started writing about music on the print side of things about 15 years ago. I wrote for some publications in Philadelphia, including Philadelphia Weekly and the Philadelphia Inquirer and steadily pushed my way along. Then I moved to New York and started working for places like Entertainment Weekly, the Village Voice and then Rolling Stone after that. I was fortunate enough to end up here at eMusic. I started as a production manager, and then slowly over the course of six years I worked my way up to Editor in Chief.
It’s been really exciting to be with a publication for that amount of time, and to see it really carve out its identity and figure out who we’re supposed to be and who we are supposed to be serving. Getting to be a part of that editorially and being able to lead that charge has really been one of the more exciting moments of my career as a writer and an editor. I feel like working at eMusic dovetails really well with my personal taste and the kinds of bands I’ve covered over the last 15 years. We’re coming up with really exciting consumer research to help us figure out who our ideal member is. As we’ve long suspected, it’s the customers who are really independent minded and have independent tastes and want to set themselves apart from the Top 40. They really want to dig deep and learn more about independent artists and artists with a singular voice and idiosyncratic point of view. For me as a writer, that’s perfect. Those are the bands that have always excited me over the past 15 years. To be able to focus on them and have a platform to expose independent and just starting artists out to an audience that is eager to learn about just those kinds of artists is a really exciting place to be.
I would imagine running a digital service provider like eMusic really does come down to magazine real estate in terms of people getting written about and placed. I’m guessing you have a lot of people vying for your time trying to get a featured spot. You’ve all of a sudden combined journalism with what was once a record company sales role, where people would be trying to get your attention to get prime positioning at retail. Is that a somewhat accurate description of what your position as an Editor in Chief entails?
JEK:
In a way. But one of the things I’ve been proudest of is that we’ve been able to keep a wall around the editorial department and stay true to our indie music roots. I can honestly say that in the time I’ve been here, while we’ve been constantly getting pitches from labels about their priorities and what they think we should be covering, if it doesn’t feel right to us and we don’t believe in it, we don’t cover it. We really do have the latitude to do that and continue to cater to the independent-minded consumer. One of the things for me is that it’s not just about dictating the written editorial on the site, but also guiding the whole direction of the voice of the site in general: What kind of partnerships should be doing, and which artists should we be featuring across the site?
A good example of something we did recently that I was pretty proud of is what happened was surrounding the latest Lady Gaga record. It came out, and it was going to be a huge record and obviously something that people were going to be talking about. As an editor, I thought there was a value in talking about it, but we didn’t want to talk about it the way everyone else talked about it. So we had had Michaelangelo Matos – a long-time music critic for places like Rolling Stone and someone that wrote a book on Prince – write a feature on the site called “Six Degrees,” which basically connected Lady Gaga to people like Grace Jones and Lower East Side New Wave artist Christina. It’s really about thinking differently about even the really poppy stuff and trying to present it in a way that will be interesting to even the consumer that is interested in off-the-beaten-path music.
I’m glad you circled back that way. I definitely want to know more about the process of searching for your ideal customer, the person who is independent minded. In your research, have you discovered that there still a thriving, vibrant community of people who are shunning the Top 40?
JEK:
Absolutely. We believe it’s a really strong market. I think in general you can see it anecdotally if you look at the kinds of bands that are in the news. Look at this week’s pop charts in general and who is at the top. It’s bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Adele and My Morning Jacket. Those are artists that you could broadly call “indie bands.” We’re coming off the back of some really interesting research in general that shows that the independently-minded consumer does exist in the market, and that it’s hungry for something different from the “big box digital stores.”
Is there anything about those demographics you can share?
JEK:
Nothing beyond the fact that we know some of the characteristics of their personalities. They tend to be the types of people that like to turn their friends onto bands. They take a certain level of pride in their individuality and in stepping outside the mainstream. They have a really close, personal relationship with their music; what they listen to defines them. So, there is an even greater incentive for them to step outside the mainstream. It’s really more about personality than hard demographic. It can span a bunch of things, but it’s really more about their personalities and their tastes.
Malcolm Gladwell would probably refer to them as “mavens.”
JEK:
Yes indeed.
It’s interesting to know that scene is still vibrant. Personally, I know when I saw Zeppelin end up in a Cadillac commercial, I don’t know what happened to me, but something shifted.
One of the reasons I wanted to interview you is because I want to know how artists can use your site to their benefit. Clearly there’s a benefit to being on a site that’s catered towards the long tail. Are there ways artists can get in and customize the profiles when their music gets picked up by your site through TuneCore or some similar service? Are there things artists should be doing to make the most of their music being on eMusic?
JEK:
We have a couple things that are designed to work with artists just like the ones you described. First and foremost – and something I’m really proud of on the site – is a program called eMusic Selects. We’ve been doing this since 2008. The simplest way to describe it is that we scour the internet and go to tons of shows to find unsigned bands we like. And then we exclusively put out their records digitally for two months to our members. We give them the full eMusic platform. So they get full homepage coverage, a newsletter that goes out to all our members telling them about the record and some other tools. We have really designed it to be a stepping stone for artists who are just starting out and really need a leg up, but don’t have a label and just need broader exposure. I’m proud to say that there are artists who have been Select artists in the past who have then gone onto sign with proper labels: Best Coast; The Rural Alberta Advantage; Crystal Stilts. Next week we have a band coming out we’re really excited about called Army Navy, which is the next artist in the eMusic Selects program. Once every two months we try to find a band that we love and a band we think more people should be hearing and use all our resources to break them in the consciousness of our members.
I would say that one thing independent artists can do is let us know about their music and come up with a compelling pitch to get us to notice them or listen to them. It could be a viral video they make or a press release they send out – something that gets us excited about them. As I said, in addition, we’re constantly going out to shows and constantly scouring Myspace pages to find new bands that are good fits for our Select program. That’s one of the big ways we have to really boost independent artists and artists that are looking to get broader exposure on eMusic.
Another thing in general that goes hand in hand with that is, there are literally millions of artists – and especially unsigned artists – who are competing for a finite amount of space. I’m happy to say that eMusic has a more unique editorial department than a lot of the other editorial departments I’ve ever worked in. Everyone in the department really does listen to most of the things that are sent; they all go out of their way to find new bands. But the more compelling the pitch, the more interesting the thing surrounding the pitch – whether it’s a viral video or some kind of clever campaign – the more we’re going to pay attention to it. Sometimes it’s really helpful to put your music in a framework that will catch an editor’s eye and make them want to listen to it.
I know a lot of young bands shy away from comparing their music to other things that are out there. But it’s helpful for me when I get a press release if one of the first things I see in the first couple sentences is giving me an idea of what this is going to sound like and making it compelling to me and like something I want to click through. That’s something I respond to very well. And I do read those press releases and listen to them. A lot of it is about the presentation and how you present yourself, so any interesting things you can come up with to accompany that are helpful. You can make a video, a Twitter campaign or a creative Tumblr that is a spin on something you’re doing on your site. Interesting approaches tend to get the greatest amount of attention and make me want to listen even more.
Wonderful. And you’ve sat behind the desk where dreams go to die – and I mean that in the best way possible – for a number of years.
JEK:
The one message I do want to get out is probably hard to believe for most artists: We do listen to the greater percentage of the stuff hat cross our desk, because so much of what we do is focused on indie bands and young bands. We know what the big bands sound like. We’re looking for the next big band.
You just mentioned a “to-do” for artists. Based on your experience as an editor, a journalist and someone that has been a bottleneck, can you tell me anything that artists should not do?
JEK:
I have a lot of funny, anecdotal stories. For example, I remember a couple years ago I got an unsolicited package from a band, which was great; I always open those packages. But I think the band thought to catch our attention they should load it with hundreds of tiny pieces of foil confetti, which proceeded to spill all over my desk and all over the carpet. That was a bad decision. Lately bands also have been filling up their promo envelopes with candy, which is also a bad decision. If I open that, and in addition to your CD, I’m getting candy or something like that, it doesn’t really tell me about your music. And if anything, it feels like some sort of weird kind of confectionary payola. I would rather have an interesting spin on your record than goodies.
Also, bands should be really careful about how they select their band name. You would be really surprised at how many bands get dismissed from just having a corny or too obviously-jokey band name.
So band name is important . Along similar lines, is there a value in a good elevator pitch or mission statement? My favorite story related to that is about a band out of Boston that I asked, “What do you sound like?” And the kid confidently replied, “We’re the music you would want to listen to if you were robbing a bank.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I knew I wanted to listen to it.
JEK:
That’s a perfect example; I would definitely listen to that. Here’s another example of that. We recently had a writer write about the band Tunes. And he described their music as “the sound of stopping a subway train with your face.” It was funny, witty and made me want to listen to the music. Anything like that is effective – something quick, and pithy and snappy. And it’s going to get my attention. If you come up with something funny or striking that makes me laugh, you will have earned my respect at that point. Its’ good to put a creative spin on it.
Here’s the question I’m scratching my head about: Has the advent of digital distribution, which has made the digital distribution model so accessible to everyone now made the eMusic offering any less unique? Do you feel like your catalogue is still deeper than other catalogues?
JEK:
I think with us, the key is the curation. If you go to some of the other major retailers and hit the main page of their music store, you’re going to see the same 10-15 records. With us – and largely because we have such a vast army of writers who are digging through the stacks – when you hit the main page, you’re going to be see things you’re not seeing in these other stores. We’re surfacing more of the deep stuff. So, sure, maybe in the age of digital distribution, TuneCore, iTunes and services like that will have a lot of the same records we have. But you’re going to see them in a more prominent place in our store. It doesn’t do much good for both of us to have the same records if on the larger retailer you don’t know they’re there. What we try to do is make you more aware of them and bring them out a little bit more. And we’ve seen sales that correspond to that: albums that we’ve surfaced get bought.
I was going to ask about that. By the sounds of it, you guys may very well have more impulse buys because you are a destination that is based on editorial.
JEK:
We do definitely see a correspondence between the things we put on the home page and the things that end up being on our charts. When we used to take an older record we liked or an older record from the catalogue and make it “Review of the Day” and check the charts the following day. Without fail, you would end up selling more.
I think people trust us. We’ve been around for a while now, and I’ve been here for 98% of that time. We’ve worked really hard to cultivate that trust and to curate a very idiosyncratic voice. I think especially with the eMusic Selects bands, people know that if we put our seal of approval on it, we’re not going to take that lightly. We relationships we value, and we’re not going to throw something out there that we don’t feel comfortable recommending.
For more information about J. Edward Keys and his company, you can visit the eMusic website.
An older interview with Derek Sivers but it has rather timeless advice.
Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD baby but he is also an experienced musician and Berklee college of music graduate something he accomplished in only two and a half years. Derek recently sold CD Baby to Discmakers and is now building up some new businesses. I had the pleasure of meeting Derek recently through a mutual friend and I continue to be more and more impressed by his drive and ability to focus.
First of Derek, thanks for your time. Just a bit of background for the few people who might not know can you describe how you became a successful touring musician?
DS:
I just said yes to everything, and pursued everything. Soon that got me a well-paid gig in a circus, and as a guitarist for Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto. In 1995 I learned about the college market and got some tips on how to crack that nut, so I threw myself into that completely, and ended up getting hired by over 300 colleges in the Northeast. That’s about it.
What do you think you did differently or better than your peers that got your music career off of the ground (and the same question for your business career)
DS:
I read a lot of books about marketing. I learned how to take books that were written for straight-up MBA business types and adapt their lessons to a music career. This single thing probably set me apart from my peers.
See my recommended book list (and detailed notes)
If you’re not putting aside the time to read lately, you should. It really helps give you all kinds of new insights that aren’t just influenced by what everyone else in your industry is doing.
Did anything about being a touring musician teach you the skills you would later apply to being a successful business owner?
DS:
Yeah – it’s not much different, is it? Learning about working with people. Setting expectations, communicating clearly, being strict but not an ass, keeping motivation up, taking responsibility for everything, and understanding that a lot of people just flake out.
During your time at CD Baby you worked with tons of musicians who went on to great success Did you identify a trait or handful of traits (other than talent) that lead you to believe someone was going to be successful as a musician?
DS:
Definitely. The successful indie artists are almost always looking at everything from the other person’s point of view. When contacting the media, they’re thinking of it from the point of view of the writer. They talk in terms of helping that person make a great story that readers will respond to. When contacting venues, they’re thinking of it from the point of view of the venue owner trying to make it a big profitable night.
It’s a funny balance of selfless and selfish. Ambition through selflessness. Or a selfish realization that the best thing you can do for your career is whatever’s best for others.
I noticed that you have extraordinary focus. When you set your mind on learning something or doing something you seem to be able to shut out the world and focus on the task at hand. You also seem unconcerned with what other people are doing in the space you are working in. Was this something that came natural to you and if not any advice on this front?
DS:
Focus is hard but important. It’s so tempting to just surf and check for the next email. But I’ve found all the big rewards come from the times you shut out the world and do something difficult.
Maybe it comes from being a musician, which requires thousands of hours locked away in a practice room, working hard on your technique.
You have managed to build up quite an online following for yourself as an entrepreneur both on your blog and on social media sites. While some of this probably had to do with your hands on approach building a thriving company- was there more to it than that? Any advice for musicians on how they should be communicating with fans and potential fans to gain followers based on your experiences?
DS:
Ah…. I think it’s something about being comfortable and casual, while still trying to make every sentence really worth someone’s time.
My online presence isn’t about me – it’s about them. Every time I post something, whether blog or Tweet, I’m thinking, “What could I post that’d be really useful to people?”
Whether I always achieve that or not, it makes me a pretty useful person to follow.
From your website I notice you are pursuing a number of new ventures which of these do you think will be the first to launch and when can we expect to see it?
DS:
I’m really focusing on Muckwork. See http://sivers.org/muckwork and http://muckwork.com
The other ones didn’t get a huge response, so I might just let ‘em go.
The big dumb question… What do you think is next for the music business as the value of recorded music continues to decline? Have you seen any models out there that give you hope?
DS:
Oh I write all about that, here
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If you haven’t already- check out Derek Sivers at http://sivers.org
Other than How do I get a record deal? or How can I License my music? the question that comes up the most is How do I make it in the music industry?”
“Making it” to me just means making a living playing, writing and recording music.
Top 5 Behaviors that will help you make it in the music business:
#1 PRACTICE & LEARN: It is ALWAYS about the music. Practice your craft daily. Learn everything you can about music theory and writing and reading music- this will make you much more employable than the dozens of hobbyists out there. Never ever stop learning and finding people to learn from. This has to be your number one priority no matter what happens. You have to keep finding new ways of challenging yourself because just keeping callouses on your fingers is not enough. If you really hit a wall with your instrument – pick up another instrument or get better at home recording techniques. Sometimes taking a break from your primary instrument can help but there is no reason to stop learning all together.
#2 NETWORK – seek out and befriend people who make a living making music be they session players, band members, music executives (at labels, publishers, management companies or booking agents) or producer / engineers… The music business is all about your talent and who you know. In many cases people can get away with less talent if they know the right people and can convince them to participate in their projects. Find conversation currency with these people and a way you can collaborate with as many people as possible even if it is just throwing networking events. A note about “conversation currency” – talking exclusively about yourself and how you want to be a star could put Sominex out of business – stop it already.
#3 PLAY AND RECORD OFTEN. Play live, get basic home recording gear so you can preserve your ideas and share them with other people. Join a band or two – co-write with anyone and everyone who will let you. Start simple with open mic nights and work your way up. Meet and keep in contact with everyone who is doing what you want to do. Your songs and recordings are like viruses – make sure you have lots of them out there and have the help of people with a vested interest in making them get heard. The best way to do that is to collaborate.
#4 BE PROFESSIONAL. The music business if full of flakes. Don’t be a dude, there’s a million dudes out there. Be a man. (please replace Dude with Chick and Man with Woman if this applies to you). Do you know why Spinal Tap is so F*cking hysterical? Because it’s based on too much truth. Start by being punctual. More than just punctual make sure you are paying attention – it’s your career! Ask questions rather than nodding your head as if you already know and remember the people you are dealing with when booking shows or making records or whatever are making a living in music too so be considerate of them and their time.
#5 LEARN ABOUT BUSINESS. Look at and learn all of the ways that money is made in the music business. A good starting point is Donald Passman’s “all you need to know about the music business” – if you understand where the money comes from in the music business it will be much harder for people to take advantage of you…and they will try. To this end- find knowledgeable people you trust and surround yourself with them. Nothing is more terrifying than things we are vague about.
This last one doesn’t need to be advanced accounting either. Take control of your financial life. Keep receipts for everything and make a spreadsheet of everything you spend (I do this – it has saved me lots of $$$). Most people find they are spending too much in some areas and not enough in others. I once advised someone to do this who realized after three months of record keeping that he spent more on beer than he did on his career… He is much farther along in his career now.
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Got other practical suggestions for me or your peers about how to make it? I’d love to hear from you.
Dane Venable is the head of marketing for Atlantic records. In addition to overseeing several product managers Dane still handles his own roster of acts that he does marketing for personally including James Blunt, Death Cab for Cutie, Jason Mraz, Rob Thomas and Matchbox 20 and a new artist named Robert Francis. I worked with Dane when I was at Elektra and he was kind enough to give me his time and insight on what music marketing looks like today.
Tell me in your words what you see marketing a band at that job entailing for you. Marketing is a broad term, so how do you see your job or your role in marketing a band? What does that look like for you?
DV:
Providing a consistent direction for the artist with the ultimate ability of cutting through the clutter.
Let’s talk about the clutter. When you’re first sizing up a project obviously there’s going to be a lot of creativity involved, but is there a strategy to make a band stand out among all the thousands and thousands of bands out there? Have most of the bands that come to you already identified a niche to market to, or is that something that you try to identify/try to connect them to?
DV:
It always differs with the artist. Some artists come in with a very strong vision of who they are, where they want to go, because some bands have already been out there building touring bases. And by that I don’t mean, “Oh yeah, we played the past six months once every two weeks in Pittsburgh.” The Zac Brown band is a perfect example. He’s been out there ten years throughout the Southeast building a club base.
So funny, yet another time I thought that was an overnight success that turned out to be years and years of hard work
DV:
He’s been doing 150 shows a year for ten years; that guy knows exactly who he is, he knows exactly where he wants his career to go. Sometimes you get a group that is just out of art school and has been practicing in basements and just kind of putting together their music. They may have general ideas, but they need it fully fleshed out, and that’s where we try to help them, because the days are long gone of trying to hang an image on an artist and then make it work. Even though a lot changes year to year with the amount of clutter and noise that’s out there, one thing that’s gotten even stronger is a band’s sense of credibility and what that means in the world.
I think the smell test with audiences is stronger than ever. If you take a look at some of the most trafficked and active websites, they are websites that really do have artist involvement if not complete artist control. Kids go to those sites and know that it is the artist’s voice. It’s not somebody in management, it’s not some uber fan that’s just putting stuff up. That credibility I think really matters for a lot of bands. Look, if you’re an artist that writes big pop smashes or big hip hop smashes and you want to go directly to radio, that’s one route you can take it certainly; that’s always been there. But a lot of the bands we deal with are not looking to go directly there, not that they don’t believe in their songs in the same way, but they want to build their audience, they want to have a sense of discovery before they get to just be known for a song. And so in that way, credibility really matters, the way you approach things matter.
And by the way, when I say credibility, it matters on the other side too. I just got done having this conversation the other day. We want artists to be active with their fans. It’s crucial today. However, it has to be sincere and feel natural. To have an artist on Twitter where it’s not a natural fit and they’re doing it because they think they need to is a horrible idea because it’s not going to come across as sincere or compelling. What we try to do is say, “Let’s choose a medium you are comfortable with.” With some artists it’s writing words, with some artists it’s using video cameras, with other artists they love Twitter, it’s made for them – little short blasts of stream of consciousness. But what we try to encourage is just interaction with the fans in some way that feels completely natural and we completely respect and work with artists that also want to keep some sense of mystery. Maybe there’s an artist that doesn’t feel natural talking about what they’re doing every minute of the day.
How do you compensate for someone who isn’t communicating in these ways because clearly when that is working for somebody it’s a very powerful tool.
DV:
Twitter works amazing for Jazon Mraz. He’s got 350,000 followers but that doesn’t mean Twitter is going to work for a different artist. Why would it? It’s hard to look at a Chad Kroeger Nickelback song and say that doesn’t work, because they are all big hits. But you wouldn’t say, so why wouldn’t my artist just follow that formula?
Well of course, but what are things you do when a band wants to retain its anonymity in some kind of way? How do you end up compensating most often? Do you just look for other ways of connecting through different mediums?
DV: Well, that kind of depends. I like to think in a lot of ways artists whether as diverse as Bjork, Sigur Ros, Tool, even Radiohead, all like to keep their anonymity in some way, shape or form. But all of them have some creative ways of connecting to their fans. With Bjork, it’s usually in art. She does five or six videos per project, or every design she puts out is something that really speaks to who she is as an artist. With Trent Reznor it’s really about just his timing and the inventive way he connects with his fans.
You were talking earlier about bands that were fresh out of art school vs. those that had built a following over ten years. Have you noticed over the last several years that it’s become more one than the other or is the split pretty much the same? The stuff that’s getting signed and winding up on your plate, is that stuff that tends to be more established or less established, or is it the same old 50/50?
DV: Really I wish I could say it’s changed appreciably, but really I think it ultimately comes down to someone’s belief in a song or in a group of songs. As much as in the marketing template or the “Marketing 101” book, I would love to have bands who have had experience touring or have been out there for a while building a fan base or through one or 2 indie releases – that’s the dream come true – so you don’t have to completely start from scratch. But a lot of times an A&R person just hears the song, hears a demo, sees a show and that overtakes everything. It overtakes every other factor. And that happens time and time again, and that’s not a bad thing, because if our company got to a place where we said, “OK, we’re doing 360’s, therefore touring is a huge factor for us so we only want bands that have begun to build a touring base,” that’s kind of dangerous because then it probably means the nature of the songs or the nature of the music is down in the mix, even just a little bit. The music and the song always have to be first.
It’s good to hear you say that, because it can appear sometimes on the outside like it’s something different. Let’s talk about if you’re starting out with somebody brand new. What are some of the low- or no-cost marketing techniques that you consider a must for every band that wants to get noticed?
DV: Building and maintaining your own Web site. And trying to actually market yourselves and build it to a point where, when anyone goes on it, whether it’s somebody from a label, an attorney, another musician, it actually feels like it’s active. It actually feels like you’ve done some work and you’re not just sitting in your bedroom creating these great demos but you don’t have really any motivation to take your music outside your own bedroom.
Along those lines, do you guys spend a lot of time on SEO or is that just not really in the per view for what you guys do?
DV:
We have someone over at Warner Music Group who actually specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and online advertising. He can flip your head back and forth with the amount of research he’s done on it and how you can target advertising to a project. Almost all of our online advertising now is done this way. We rarely just do banners for static placement at this site or that site. The advances in technology and actually trying to be able to reach exactly where you want to reach are like a dream come true.
How are those keywords then determined? It must be kind of hard when you have a middle of the road rock band. Do you keyword tag other bands?
DV: It depends. I’ll give you an example. We have Death Cab for Cutie in the “Twilight: New Moon film.” There’s a person upstairs that comes up with 50-100 word associations that we register and when those hit, “Boom.” You have to just envision yourself and what you do and how you search Google. If you put it in your mindset, it’s not that hard. It’s not like a science. How is anyone going to search: “Death Cab Twilight;” “Death Cab New Moon”? Whatever. There are a thousand different ways. Are you going to get them all? No. But the odds of actually reaching your target as opposed to just reaching all these eyeballs that have zero interest in what you do are light years ahead. It’s completely changed. Print ads are rare, few and far between with the exception of Alternative Press.
Are most of your marketing efforts on or offline at this point?
DV: It depends what you mean, but they all have to start online. Online is where everything starts, it is Ground Zero. Atlantic was the first major label to garner over 50% of our annual revenue from digital sources. That’s a huge accomplishment. If you think that the physical market still takes up 75% of people’s purchases, and 50% of our revenue in the last year came from digital sources – meaning ring tones and digital sales – it’s a really big accomplishment. What that says is that everything we do has to start with some digital structure. That’s where everyone is. That’s where everyone’s living and breathing. So that takes up a lot of our time, especially for developing artists. Certainly then you go to traditional methods depending on your timing. If it’s an established artist, you go a lot quicker. And by traditional I mean, you go to radio and traditional press and there’s touring and tour marketing and hand-to-hand combat out there.
Speaking of traditional, there really aren’t many record stores anymore… Has anything really replaced a band playing in local record stores before a tour date? Where are you guys going when you have a band on the road?
DV: Web chat is the new in-store. You get to see your artists, you get to see them talk, and if we’re doing it right there’s a pre-order or an order right there, and somebody orders their music. Secondly, though if you’re still talking about things that are done more traditionally is that any developing artist that we have, they are out there at the merch booths immediately after their shows signing, meeting, kissing babies, taking e-mail addresses.
Tell me more about Web chat. Do you guys have your own proprietary software for that or are you using something?
DV: There are various methods we can use. One of the ones we’re doing right now on a consistent basis is this guy Jason Castro, and he was in the fourth season of American Idol – he’s the guy with the dreads – and we’re making a debut album with him right now. His first single just came out. Because of his notoriety that stayed around his fan base is exceedingly strong and has remained so. Throughout the process of this album we have bi-weekly Web chats with him. It’s almost like “Date Night.” He goes on camera for an hour and answers live-time questions from his fans. It works, it keeps people connected and it keeps people coming back. The last chat we had we were shut out of three rooms. Three rooms were completely full and we don’t know how many people were waiting. Each one of our rooms would hold a maximum of 1,000 people. I have no idea how many people were trying to get on there, but 3,000 were there.
Anything else you can think of as advice for things that make your job easier when somebody shows up at your door?
DV: An artist that actually wants to work and realizes that they are part of their career.
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Please check out the new artist that Dane is working with Robert Francis.
I was fortunate enough to meet with Jacob Slichter, the drummer from Semisonic and the Author of “So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life”. Jake is actually the first person I am interviewing that I didn’t know whatsoever before interviewing but I found his book so accurate and intriguing that I tracked him down.
Jake, First of all thanks for your time. I guess let’s start at the beginning or close to the beginning. What was it like at the time getting the attention of label guys in 1993-94 for Semisonic? What did you do correctly to get their attention?
JS: We (Dan and John) already knew them through Trip Shakespeare. Trip Shakespeare had been signed to A&M Records years earlier, so they had gone around and met A&R people from various labels, and so by the time Semisonic came along they knew a bunch of people who had all traded labels and were on the carousel of A&R people. So, number one, they already knew them.
Number two, we made really good-sounding tapes. I think also our biggest advantage was also our biggest disadvantage, which was that we were swimming against the tide at the time stylistically. Really at that time the landscape was dominated by Nirvana and then everything that was in that end of the spectrum – dark, angry, huge, amazing music that we were never going to be able to make. We weren’t interested in making it; it just wasn’t who we were, even though we were huge Nirvana fans.
Musician Coaching:
Talk to me about that. Did you feel like there was ever a temptation to say, “Hey, maybe we should knock that off”?
JS: We just never could’ve pulled it off. Never in a million years. It would just have been stupid to try. I think a lot of bands did try, and some of them did a fairly good job. There were a few bands that took the Nirvana direction and did great with it. We were never going to be that, and early on we realized that. I think when we were dealing with A&R people, ours were some of the few tapes that were bright pop music when all the A&R guys were looking for the next Nirvana. So our tapes stood out, and I think that helped us get attention. I think they were good tapes, and that was probably the main thing. Dan is just a really great songwriter, and I think we had pretty concise arrangements, and it sounded like radio-friendly music, so I think that also helped. I think the fact that we sounded as poppy as we did really made us unappealing to a number of labels, like Interscope. We had an A&R person there who really liked our tapes, but she knew it was really swimming against the tide of where the label was at. So she very wisely said, “Hey, this won’t be the place for you. If I sign you, you’ll just be buried.” So we ended up really with two labels that were most interested in us – MCA and Elektra.
Musician Coaching: I guess that was a tough ride through that first album cycle. That must’ve been really difficult on your interpersonal relationships. I know a lot of bands break up over that first record, because they’re pushing you at breakneck speeds, etc.
JS: I don’t know that they were pushing us at a breakneck speed, but we were going around the country. It wasn’t a strain on band relations anymore than any kind of touring is. Just being on the road with people is stressful. You don’t have a lot of personal space, so that’s why it’s such a strain. The band felt pretty tight, personally I think after that first album. I was frustrated, but I think Dan and John were kind of used to this because they’d been through it with Trip Shakespeare. I was kind of on a learning curve about how disappointment works in the music business. I probably took it the hardest. Actually everyone probably took it hard in their own weird way. I took it hardest in the sense that I probably was the most believing that the first record was going to break through. I always thought FNT would’ve done it. That was always my thought, but we’ll never find out.
Dan had written a bunch of songs, and I think it’s natural to feel disappointed when it’s the music you write. And John had been on the road for years with Trip Shakespeare, so I know he felt disappointment after that. And we all really felt proud of the record.
Musician Coaching: You toured with a lot of bands, played with a lot of bands. You were on tour for about ten years.
JS: On and off, sometimes 200 plus days out of the year.
Musician Coaching: Of the people you met, was there a defining or unifying quality of the ones who made it vs. the ones who didn’t?
JS: It’s hard to say. Not necessarily. There weren’t many bands that we toured with that I didn’t think were pretty damn talented on one level or another.
Musician Coaching:
Talent is an X factor but were there personal habits of successful artists?
JS: There were all different shapes and flavors in terms of personalities, etc. But there has to be a ruthlessness of commitment. You can be a very nice person on the outside and still have that. I think they all had that. It’s more than drive. It’s a belief on some level in your own intuition. That’s the hard thing about the music business. You can only really make good things if you are trusting your own intuition. But in the end it’s not your own intuition that matters, it’s someone else’s. So I think people get kind of hung up trying to tap into the intuition of the masses. It generally never produces great music. I think a lot of people think that massively popular music is made with the public in mind. I don’t think so. It’s made by people that have intuitions that are very much like what the public’s intuition is at the moment. But I don’t think you can do it by trying to guess where everyone else is at. I think you really have to commit to a belief. And if you’re lucky, the stars align and you make it. So that’s what I would say they have in common – a ruthless belief in their own intuitions. Some of them I was kind of amazed at how wrong they obviously were, and there might be some cases where eight months later that band was rocketing to the top of the charts or having some form of success come along.
Our first record sold 30-some thousand records, but in the universe of rock records it was pretty successful. It got written up in all kinds of places. So I think our whole experience was one that was a privileged existence in the world of rock.
Musician Coaching:
You got to take the ride while there was still a mechanism.
JS: They were putting money into it back then.
What’s your philosophy on social networking?
JS: I don’t understand it. I’m a Facebook member. I don’t use Twitter, and I don’t understand why anyone would be interested in what I Twitter, and I am not really interested in what other people Twitter. I was interested in the Iranian uprising, reading the Twitters when you couldn’t get news coverage. But, “Hey everybody, I’m going to Colorado to go skiing” or “Hi everybody I just had stuffed grape leaves for lunch” … I think they’ll figure it out, and they probably already have. Twitter and Facebook, since I know about them can’t possibly be the cutting edge of where this stuff is. They’re always catching up. I don’t think it’s possible to say, “What would’ve happened with Semisonic if we had been around when Twitter was around?” We would’ve been a different band.
I was curious if you had used them extensively, but if you haven’t …
JS: I think the thing I would have to say there is, you have to have a really clear idea of who you are, and then you have to have a really clear idea of who you think wants to hear or read what you’re up to. The social networking just gets plugged into that knowledge. Even faking requires a bit of self knowledge and knowledge of who you’re faking out and what they want to be faked out about.
Were you writing this book the whole time, or was this something you did completely in retrospect?
JS: I wasn’t thinking as I was writing the road diaries, some of which got incorporated into the book, “This could be a book.” All I was thinking was, “Well, if I can’t write as many songs as Dan, maybe I’ll write some road diaries and get my writing up in that way.” And then once we decided to press the pause button, I said, “OK, I have to write a book. That will be my next thing.”
Musician Coaching:
What was the experience of re-purposing a musician’s skills to a different commodity?
JS: What did I learn by being a musician that I applied to getting a book deal? It’s all the same stuff. To get a non-fiction book deal you have to submit a book proposal. And a book proposal is very much like a demo – “Here are the things I’m going to be talking about, here’s a sample chapter, here’s my outline, here’s who I think I’m talking to,” etc. It’s very similar to music because whether writing a book proposal or submitting a demo, they serve different purposes to different people. For a band or an author, a book proposal or a demo is like a map – “Here’s where I’m going, here’s what I’m going to do.” If I feel like I’m getting lost, I’ll come back and consult this and think about what my original intent was and just try to stay on track with that idea. For a publisher or a record company, these things serve a very commercial purpose – “How are we going to market this thing?” These are things most bands aren’t really thinking about. I almost think you shouldn’t think about them. You should try to focus on making the clearest thing that is truest to your vision.
More often than not now when I read about an artist I’m reading about their marketing and not their music.
JS: I think that’s the era we live in. Some people are really good at it, so if they are good at it, why shouldn’t they? But I think you do run the risk of getting off target. That’s one reason I don’t really talk about what I’m writing. I don’t want to get into thinking about who’s going to read it and what their reactions are going to be. I just have to sort of go away in my head and write it. It’s either going to be accepted or not, but I have to cross the finish line in my own mind along the path that I set out on, not someone else’s. I know a lot of bands that say, “Here’s our marketing strategy.” If you’re marketing strategy is more interesting than your music, you’re really in pretty big trouble. And maybe you shouldn’t be a musician. Maybe your real gift is to be an A&R person. There’s a kind of magic to that – how to put together musicians with people that are going to like the music. And figure out in the flow of the world, how is all this going to work? That’s an important decision. I get e-mails from a few bands that send out these really dazzling e-mails and have all these bells and whistles around their promotion, but the bottom line is, the music is just not that great. If I want really great bells and whistles about something, there are all kinds of fun Web sites where I can waste time. If I want music, I’m not so interested in how well a band markets itself. I’m only interested in the music. I think everybody else is pretty much the same.
Musician Coaching:
Would you say as Semisonic was winding down, the landscape had become competitive?
JS: No. We started out in the grunge era, and then there was a softening of the radio that happened right before “Closing Time” was released where there were things like “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve and “Brick” by Ben Folds 5. “Closing Time” sailed through that open moment. And then it got as soft as N’Sync and Backstreet Boys and then it took a hard turn back towards Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Korn – really loud impressive music. And our last record came out in that era, and it was not an alternative rock record. Our record company thought it was, and we were unclear ourselves. Regardless, I just don’t think it was the right time for that record. I really think that’s what it was about. I think we were lucky with “Closing Time” and our other two records had a lot of great songs on them, but just weren’t lined up with where people’s heads were.
Musician Coaching:
What changes have you noticed in the way the industry functions or in the way we consume media?
JS: One change I see is that people conceive of coming up with one great song as the arc of their band’s life. I think that’s a little more possible with YouTube. You make a cool YouTube thing, and you may not ever see another great YouTube from that same band, but that’s fine. People go on and make another one. I think that may be one thing we’re heading towards; instead of having an enduring band identity you break off and do other things.
Musician Coaching:
Some combination of the singles model vs. what movie studios do with other combinations of producers, directors and actors.
JS: One great thing about the music business now is that it’s so much cheaper to record that you don’t really need the studio. Most people don’t. They are at home, have their computers and are making recordings that 15 years ago would’ve cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. There’s probably a lot more music you can get to right away, but that makes your job harder as to how you’re going to weed through it. I think they’ll figure it out eventually. I don’t know how, but maybe someone with really cool tastes will gain followers and point out what’s good. I think one thing about the Internet is that it seems to me that there’s more impermanence. Things are more fleeting.
Musician Coaching:
So people will only get 15 seconds of fame rather than 15 minutes?
JS: I never bought the 15 minutes thing. Many people have been famous way longer than 15 minutes.
What do you make of the fact that there hasn’t been anyone that has risen to icon status in the last decade or so?
JS: Give it time. I do think someone’s going to come along and think of the perfect way to think of the perfect way to exploit all the things the internet has to offer. It’s complicated, it’s tricky and it’s always changing. There are so many things you can do with it. That just makes it harder.
Musician Coaching:
What do you make of the pay-as-you-will Radiohead premium model?
JS: An important thing to consider in the case of Radiohead – I think it’s awesome they did it – is the way they got to it was in part by being a major label band. What I’d like to see is, who will be the first band that will rise up from the Internet with no label backing?
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Please check out Jacob’s book “So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life”
David Garrison is the Chief Marketing officer at Indaba Music which is a…well, it’s sort of a …
Musician Coaching:
What is Indaba Music?
DG: Indaba Music is the leading online collaboration tool for musicians. We make it possible for musicians in different places to find each other and then make studio quality music together all online. No download necessary. We have a variety of tools, so there’s a community side to the site, which is 300,000 members right now, 185 countries, growing double digits each month. That’s where you find people who you discuss things with. That community is pretty robust – it’s everybody from 13-year old garage bands who are just learning their first chords all the way up to Grammy Award winners. The common element of them all is that they’re all serious musicians and they are passionate about the music they’re making. The community piece is the lifeblood of Indaba that makes it work. On the flip side, there’s the technology piece, which is the suite of tools to enable a musician to manage their digital life online. And that’s primarily on the music creation side right now.
Musician Coaching:
What is the feedback you’re getting from your community?
DG: We have success stories. For example, recently we ran a campaign with the Derek Trucks Band, which is a bunch of musicians’ musicians, an awesome group. Derek Trucks is an amazing guitarist. One of the people who entered the contest was a guy named Mike Gannon who just graduated from university, was a guitar player and had always loved Derek Trucks. He entered the contest and did a cover of the song. At the end of it, Derek and the band chose him. They thought it was a really awesome version of the song that they’d made, really different, unique, good sound and so they gave him the prize, which was to go up and meet the band backstage during a concert. So he went up to Boston, met the band and hung out with them for a while and they had a bunch of great talks, went backstage with them as they got ready. The band went out on stage and the sound check guy said, “So, Mike, did you bring your guitar?” And the sound check guy gave him Derek’s Les Paul ’59 and pushed him out on stage, and the band started playing in front of a large crowd. And this young guy that had just graduated from undergrad whose hero was onstage just started playing with the band. And everyone took a solo, and he ended up getting a solo in front of a big live audience and got a standing ovation.
Musician Coaching:
There are a lot of good success stories like that?
DG: There are definitely success stories through the contest, but each campaign is different. When we dealt with Mariah Carey, she wanted to retain all the rights to the song so people when they submitted gave up their rights to the music. Other artists like Carmen and Camille — this little unknown duo from Canada – used a Creative Commons license that was basically just attribution. So you could actually go out and sell your remix of their song and make a profit off it as long as you just said it was their vocals. It runs the whole gamut. Depending on the artist, you give up some of your rights, but that’s the price you pay for participating in a really cool collaboration and getting a lot of exposure and getting noticed. There are lots of A&R people hanging around the site and paying attention to the contest.
Musician Coaching: Are there things that people are using the site for that are getting them exposure?
DG: Yes. There are things we intended for them to do with it. But what’s always surprising to us is how people take a platform we’ve created and use it in a way we hadn’t expected. The things we intended for people to do are to find someone to make a piece of music with, collaborate, promote it on the site, and people hear it and more people collaborate on it and it becomes this big thing. A good example of that is Peace Partners, which is a group of musicians who got together, founded by a guy in Quebec who wanted to donate music to the cause of peace and freedom. He got together what’s now a group of over 150 musicians from across the world who are donating songs to an album the proceeds from which will go towards organizations that have a demonstrable impact on peace in the world. Amnesty International Canada Francophone signed on. There are some interesting stories about how people use the idea of coming together to collaborate to do really interesting things.
Musician Coaching: So you’ve started to garner brand attention, and I’m guessing someone participating in a community has a better chance of getting the attention of a brand or a strategic partner and ultimately getting a shot on their own. Have you seen people use this community to procure strategic partners?
DG: That’s another way people have used it. For example, there’s a duo out of the UK called -Felsite-. -Felsite- is this pair of guys who had never met. They met on Indaba and created a song on Indaba and then created a whole album on Indaba and had never met. And then they were heard by a small UK label who really liked the sound and signed the album and the duo. They’re on their second album now. There are absolutely stories of people getting exposure that leads to commercial success through the site. The thing I like about that one is that it’s not like a major artist came out and said, “I’m going to use this site to do something really cool and get exposure for my stuff on it” when he already had a world of listeners. These are two people who had never met each other, didn’t know each other.
ARTISTS THAT HAVE USED THE SITE: Mariah Carey, Yo-Yo Ma, The Roots, N.A.S.A., Third Eye Blind, K-OS, John Legend, Rivers Quomo (Weezer), Marcy Playground, Kennedy, The Crystal Method, Erik Truffaz, Deerhoof, Alkaline Trio, The Derek Trucks Band, Coallesce.
Using Indaba as a marketing tool for them and getting extra exposure is leveraging a bunch of assets they already have. What I like about the -Felsite- example is that it’s creating a reputation from something that really didn’t exist before they met on Indaba. So it’s starting from scratch. That’s the stuff we imagined would happen. And then there are a lot of people using it for things we never would’ve thought of that make total sense. For example, a middle school music teacher in Seattle uses it as a practice mechanism for his choir to look at how the different parts go together, they can use it for homework because it’s taking a rehearsal session that they can record directly into Indaba and then review on their own time and you can comment on specific points in the wave form. It’s really useful as a pedagogical tool. Does it make sense? Of course it does. Would we have thought of that as an application immediately? Maybe not. I think there are a lot of cool things that happen because this exists and there’s a really strong community around it.
Musician Coaching: You’re an MBA, chief marketing officer and have been in the music space for quite a while. Do you have any parting advice for a musician pursuing a career?
DG: If you’re a musician – especially a rising musician – right now, you should be on Indaba, largely because it’s growing so fast, it’s an easy, untapped source of inspiration, exposure, tools to support your creative process. More broadly than that, I think one of the things a lot of musicians don’t recognize is the degree to which their fans want to be involved in their creative process, even at their infancy. There is immense appetite for understanding how music is made. We don’t just listen to recorded music because it’s a cool sound. We listen to recorded music because for us it represents insight into the recording process, in the same way that the live music industry is still big. People like to be around created music. What that means is that Indaba is a creative tool and a forum where you can talk about it and actually watch people create. I think with all the social media that artists have at their fingertips – Myspace, Facebook, Twitter – a lot of artists forget that what’s interesting to audiences about those is this constant insight into what you’re thinking about as an artist, into how you’re making the music, into your life as a musician – things that don’t necessarily occur to the artist. We were talking before about how few people actually do things on a regular basis. Someone said to me once that the thing that defines a blog that’s worth following and will be popular is that you may not know what topic they are going to talk about, but you know what stance they are going to take on it. That’s something that social media gives people the capability to do – just talk about a range of topics and then engage fans. Being in touch with people on a regular basis feeds itself. And it doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be hard to be involved, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, but I think a lot of these tools are built for, but not necessarily used for, this pinging.
My advice is, particularly for rising musicians, to create a relationship with your audience – no matter how big or small it is – by creating a persona so they know what your opinion is going to be. And give them a sense of when you’re going to talk to them – whether it’s once a week, once a month or once a day.
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Please check out Indaba Music, it is a very cool collaboration tool.
