 So I used to do this music business podcast for a lot of years. We were one of the first music business tech discussion podcasts, and definitely the only one in the punk indie sphere when we started in 2014. I did this with my co-host, Zack Sarillo, who's managed bands like Brand New, Knucklepuck, and now works with artists like Cave Town, Chloe Moriondo, and Kevin Devine. He has a label through Electro and Warner Music Group, and does a ton of cool things, and most of all, he really knows his shit. We decided to do a reunion episode of our podcast where we talked like we used to talk. While I think the whole podcast really hit on a lot of things, and you should definitely go to the description and follow the link and listen to it all, we had a particularly interesting talk that I'm going to play after this that artists should hear part of the conversation of. I thought this was particularly important for the musicians who pay attention to my channel to hear as it talks about how you build YouTube and how you should see building a fanbase. So what you're about to hear is a portion of our conversation on how to use YouTube right and build the fanbase slowly. If you enjoyed what we talked about, you can listen to the full podcast by following the links in the description. But speaking of YouTube, I think one of the cool things you and I should talk about, because I talk about your bands on my YouTube channel because they do such cool things, is you have two artists that particularly do amazing things on YouTube. I wanted to ask you to talk about what you see as the YouTube landscape these days, and how your artists connect on there. Because one, Cave Town and Chloe do YouTube better than most any artist. And two, I never think musicians put enough of an emphasis on YouTube and they do it well and are really rewarded for it because their numbers are insane out there. Yeah, I never took YouTube seriously as a platform for my artists that I managed before I started working with Robin, who's Cave Town. First of all, I would say I am not a big YouTube person myself. I subscribe to a bunch of channels. I watch a few creators regularly and pretty much nothing else. So like I was a huge fan of like when Casey Neistat was in the heyday of his vlog days, that really inspired me. And I love that. I subscribe to a bunch of tech YouTubers like MKBHD. And then I watch one series from The Ringer, which is a sports publication called NBA Desktop, which is one of my favorite things on the internet. But otherwise, I really don't like engage with YouTube that much other than watching. And honestly, I probably, the most YouTube I watch is probably like my artists when they're putting new stuff. So I'm kind of like a bad person for that. And that's why I think it was a blind spot for me where like Grace, my wife, like she watches, I don't know, she might watch an hour of YouTube stuff a day, you know, or more. I'm about that. If not more. Yeah. And as I started to work with Robin about two and a half years ago now, like it became more and more clear that like YouTube was just is just TV for younger people, right? And that's a very known thing. It's not like me saying that as a surprise that that is considered to be like an industry standard thing that people know now. But it was not something I really thought much about because my artists, like a lot of like the more like punk or alternative artists I worked with and some still do work with, they were not creating content, right? Like they were they're my age, they're anywhere from 20 now, seven to whatever, 30 something. And they did not grow up with like a phone in their hand, like an iPhone in their hand, like Robin or Chloe did. And I think because of that, like how they create stuff is very different. So when I found Robin, his music was only on YouTube and Spotify. Nothing was on BSPs. So funny when you see that. It was insane. I mean, really now when we think about how much he's grown in two and a half years, it's pretty staggering that he did not exist on streaming services two and a half years ago. And so Robin always considered himself an artist first. But you know, to many people was a YouTuber, but he definitely did not want to be considered. And I did not want to manage a YouTuber. And I still don't. So that was very important to me. But I said, we really got to get all your stuff on BSPs. What was great about Robin was that like he really liked talking to his audience. And it was just him in his bedroom. And he didn't know we could step outside of his bedroom. And what we've done over the last two and a half years was step him outside to tens of thousands of people outside of the bedroom. Unfortunately, as Robin has done that and has toured and has grown and has lived life, like Robin actually makes a lot less YouTube content now and kind of like a vlog he sends. But we still treat his channel incredibly seriously. It is a loss leader for us. We spend a lot of money when he's on tour, having really incredible videographers and sound people, et cetera, out to film and edit. And it's incredibly expensive for us. But the stuff looks great, though, that you guys put out. Yeah, we view it as a marketing tool that we think a lot of what I spend my time thinking about in like a big picture behind the sky of you as a manager right now is like, how can we invest in places where others can? Robin is fortunate in that he owns the majority of his catalog, which means he sees the majority of his income from Spotify and Apple, et cetera. And a lot of his peers don't. Most people in the world don't. But that gives us a real head, a leg up in that if we decide to invest that money back into talk about this like a business, if we decide to invest that money back into business, we can grow our business stronger than others can. And that's what we want. So we use his YouTube channel as a loss leader for us and as a marketing tool. And we want really high quality stuff mixed with personal personality things with Robin, whether that is him rating milk or him rating jobs or him doing a Q and A. And then we mix that with really incredible music videos and live performances, which I think now are kind of more valuable than ever when people are missing those things. So that's Robin. It's been a winding road. There was definitely a period where we really wanted Robin to be uploading one video a week. And then we gave up on that because it just blew up and we didn't think it was going to blow up. We had him touring to his detriment pretty much for two years straight in music and Oh, wow, I didn't realize that was hard. I mean, he was really just the mistake. It's hard. It's not so much a mistake and not really regrets it. But like, we didn't think he was going to blow up how he did. So when we booked one tour, we every tour we booked for a year should have been twice as big by the time that tour actually happened. So we had to keep kind of doing the next tour bigger because we didn't want to let it language, you know, now we're like kind of restructuring moving forward. But so yeah, like YouTube for him is still really important. We care deeply about that relationship with his audience, but we don't want you to at some point, you two kind of became a chore for him. So he didn't want to do it if it wasn't like out of passion. So now we try to mix it up with what we put there. Chloe is a little different. Chloe is like a monster on YouTube. Every time I go to show her to somebody, you know, it's funny, I showed her to I was talking about both her and Chloe to Alan Duchess's daughter, who is she's really becoming amazing at what she does. But it was like funny. It's like, when I looked at the numbers on Saturday, I was like, Oh my God, like this is so bigger than the last time I looked. Yeah. So Chloe just crossed three million subscribers. When I started working with her in August of 2018, I think she had just under a million, which is crazy. She was 15 at the time, which is stupid. Now she has three million. And Chloe, unlike Robin, has actually never done the like talking to the camera about my life thing. She's only had one video like that ever. Chloe got really popular on YouTube by doing covers and her own songs. But she talks a little bit before the song. Yes, she does talk. Yes. And that's really appreciate it. It's very compelling because she you see you learn about her. Yeah. It's also, you know, we could all use the word authentic for a lot of things. It's so like more beyond what most artists are doing of connecting with somebody. Yeah. It's very welcoming and revealing. And Chloe is, she's 17. And so I think she wants, that's what she wants out of her, the artists that she cares about too, you know? And so yeah, Chloe does that and she's really good at it. Unlike Cape Town, she's never done those videos of like talking to the camera, I'm going to rate whatever dogs or cats or stuff. But the algorithm has always loved her. And I mean, her videos, especially when she was doing coverage, when I started working with her, would just explode. Like sometimes, you know, they get a hundred thousand plays in a night. And still now, because I mean, we have Chloe, Chloe was in school all year. She just finished her senior year of school. And we had her working really hard on music. So the channel has been a little less active, but when we are active, it again, takes off. We just released a new song. So for Chloe, it's like whenever we release a new song or like a studio produced song, we also have her do like a stripped down acoustic version or ukulele version of her bedroom. And those do incredibly well. So we're always trying to hit you a couple of different times with the song. And that works really well for us because her audience, I mean, they love her produced music, but the YouTube audience really wants to see her in her bedroom just like they did two years ago. So that's really important to us. And it's an incredible marketing tool. Because a week after we release the studio song, we get to hit you again with it and the link is in the bio and she talks about it and all that stuff, you know, so it really helps us. And because she has such a wide audience and can talk before the video, she can also be like, I'm going on for next month or I haven't just shared up or like, I'm doing this thing for charity, whatever it is. And it's incredibly beneficial for us. I think you just hit on a thing though that is part of the YouTube thing that is so simple that people don't get, which is just the like, make a different version of the content. Yeah. And just make it compelling. Like, you know, when we like the music videos we've released for Chloe so far, we did a first music video of this past January and it blew up because she had never done a video before a music video before. And it's really like, well, high quality and it's like kind of like a gory, like spooky video. And so people were really into it. But then we did an acoustic version of it and that crushed too. People want that, you know, if you're going to, I mean, some of her audience, I'm sure listens to her new song several times a day, they're definitely not watching a different version of a YouTube video, you know, especially when you have a younger audience. And that's more of the artists that we're working with right now. I just, you don't know this yet either. I guess it's very new. I've been working with a new artist named Addison Grace, kind of like Robin definitely wants to be a music artist, but it was, it's really popular on a platform. She has two million TikTok followers. Oh, wow. But she wants to be an artist and she's really talented songwriter, has an incredible voice. And so we were in this quandary of starting to work with her. She had nothing on YouTube, nothing on DSPs, nothing recorded, but she like has these songs that she plays on TikTok and stuff. You know, so I thought back to what we were doing with Chloe and Robin at the beginning and I said, okay, let's not rush music onto DSPs. Let's take our time. Instead, let's, you had a YouTube channel that you haven't published to in two years, let's start releasing every Monday, one original song, then one cover song, then one original song, then one cover song. And she went from having 10,000 subscribers a month ago to close to 50,000 now in just a month. Wow. Her first song that we put up has over 100,000 streams in a month on YouTube. She put a Billie Eilish cover up just one week ago and it has, by the time this is out, 100,000 plays. So, you know, we're really trying to develop an audience there for her on YouTube so that people are really familiar with Addison Grace, the artist, not the TikTok person. And so by the time you release any songs on DSPs, which is hopefully going to be in the next six, eight weeks, it's much more like, oh, hey, like, by the way, I have a new song out now on Spotify. Go check it out because now she'll have, hopefully by then she'll have 75,000 YouTube subscribers. So, we're really also trying to build things in a smart, slow way. We're never trying to rush with the artist we work with. We like to build. I just strongly believe in building foundation. So, but that is counterintuitive to what a lot of people think. What informed that belief? I'm just here for a little long run. I mean, working with Kevin Devine is like a great other swing of that example. Kevin's career is older than Chloe. Like, truly. I think Kevin's been a professional artist since he was 20 and he's in his early 40s. Yeah, I think we're the same age. Chloe is 17. That doesn't happen by accident. A lot of hard work goes on. And we're always trying to build a little more every time, right? Even with Kevin, when I started managing him in 2016, he's still growing. He isn't done growing yet. And Kevin's been doing this for 20 years. It is always a marathon for me. And I think for our company, and that's why we've had success. It's just like, look what I love, like any artist I work with to go mega viral. Yeah, sure. But most artists that do come back down just as fast. You know, it's the very few, it's the very few that sustain to long careers. That doesn't mean there aren't those that do, right? But most don't. And I am not interested in managing an artist that I don't believe in. And I'm just excited. You know, I just want to be a part of them to make money from them for six months. Like, I want to be working with Chloe when she's 30, not just when she's 19 or 15. And in all the years of doing this, I still work with, like, a ton of the artists I started with in day one, a couple of broken up, couple were just mutual decisions to stop working with each other. But like, Nakapak, Citizen, Real Friends, Movements, Kevin Devine, like, these are all artists we have the company of been managing for almost six years now, which is a long time in this world. Oh, and management, that's in turn of the year. Yeah, we don't get, I mean, we've never been fired by an artist, and we don't plan on that changing, you know. So yeah, we just want to grow. It doesn't do me any good, especially for say this, this young Addison that I'm working with for us to release a song on Spotify, too, for it to go well, and then to have nothing else for four months, right? Like, we need to have a plan, we need to have lots of stuff coming, and we need to build a real audience with her over time. And I don't think I would have gone this route if I hadn't been working with Robin and Chloe before, but this strategy is already working, and I'm excited about it. Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing I see working now that people just can't seem to accept is real, is that it's consistent, sustained promotion that it's got to be. Yeah, it always has to be slow growth. It always, obviously lots of people do the other thing and they have success. It's not like my model is the only model, but it's cave town touring for close to two years straight was like really exhausting, obviously. And it was exhausting for me too is exhausting for everyone. Yeah, but I view that as like a punk artist, like that's what I told him. I said, I want you to know what it's like to play in a 250 cap room in Philly without a green room, where it's literally a chair closet of where the chairs are is the green room. So you get to see this. So maybe you never have to see it again, right? But like, I want you to see this, you know, if he did his first two tours in a bam, then we went to 500 cap and 700 cap and 1500 cap, right? I wanted him to see every step and I wanted his audience to also see every step because I thought there would be a better connection for them with him. If they were able to see him in 300 cap room and then at Webster Hall and then hopefully at Terminal five next time, I want you to be a part of that story. And I'm concerned that if we just started at Webster Hall, some of those people wouldn't come along to Terminal five, you know, I want them to be invested in the artist just like I am. Yeah, I think there is that thing that it is true that fans tell themselves a story about an artist. And when you have a story that begins to go shitty, it can be really detrimental to artists. And it's really hard to get around. Yeah, it's hard to turn that back, you know, especially when you're going really fast. It's hard to like, yeah, it's hard to turn that back around and get to back to where you need to be. Yeah, YouTube has been interesting. It's tough. I wish I was like, I'm not a great social media person. People I think sometimes people think like I'm good at social media. I'm good at working with artists that are good at it, I think. Well, yeah, filling in the blank. Yeah, like I don't use TikTok. I don't like, Grace spends two hours on TikTok today. Wow. She is hooked on TikTok. China loves Grace. I only use TikTok to look at her profile, you know, that's it. And you're not seeing things from the algorithm that make you interested in keeping watching? No, no. But and I'm also not interested in, I mean, so many people I'm sure you know, like just, I mean, TikTok is the new like you only record labels are only only sounding artists that are probably on TikTok. Yeah. And that's just not my thing. Like Chloe and Robin record labels, respective labels are not pleased that they don't use TikTok. And I always, I have to tell them once a quarter, they are not using TikTok. You can't make us, you know, because they don't want to. The last thing I want is for them to use that profile because they're being forced and then being bad, you know, I always go back to that thing with the younger artists of like when Lorde started blowing up and her label, like she tells the story, they're like, you got to use hashtags on Twitter. She's like, if I do that, my career is over. You guys do not get it. And she was right. And there is this thing that like, obviously, we've both worked at large labels and have been around this, but there are a lot of people whose only brain cells tell them must imitate other things successful and don't get that there's lanes and separate things that all work for different artists. And not everything needs to be maximized by doing everything all the time. And you can have your own distinct personality and brand. And it's not about being an exception. It's actually about that, like authenticity weighs more than anything else. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, the trust, like the label definitely would rather Robin not be on TikTok than to make videos and why he thinks TikTok is dumb. Am I missing anything? Is there any other way you would have done this? I need to know your questions. And when no one else is telling you, since I want to answer them. So leave them in the comments, since I answer every comment in every post. I hope you liked this video. And if you did, please like, subscribe and get notified. And I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future. I have a Facebook group linked below that is only helpful information. No playlist or con artists, only artists having helpful discussions allowed. If you want to learn more about me, work on a record with me, or check out any of my books, podcasts, or anything else I do, go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on all the socials. One last thing, there's two playlists here. One is on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. And the other is on how you promote your music with Spotify. Or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as I have tons of tips for musicians.