 going live. And I think we're live, Jesse. All right, all right. Yeah, we're live. All right, well. All right, Jesse, well, welcome to your first live stream. Well, I'm really excited to do this. One of the reasons we're doing this is this is from a studio called Podstream Studios Times Square, which I'm a partner in. As you can see, we are in the heart of Times Square, so we wanted to mess around with a little bit of live stream while also doing some questions. My beautiful co-host is, of course, Nick Karp. You may know Nick as a wonderful, wonderful photographer. He's photographed so many people. If you're not following him, what's your ad on Instagram again, Nick? My ad is Nick Karp Photos, N-I-C-K-A-R-P Photos. There you are. Yeah, Nick's a great photographer. He's going to help me out by asking the questions and kind of running this thing. But yeah, I want to do more live streaming in the future. And now that we have this awesome studio and we're all vaccinated, we're going to have access to this and be able to do this a little bit more often. So, Nick, where are we? Oh, I know what we're doing. We're going to answer some questions from my brand new Discord first. So if you don't know, in my forum and starting to be populated in my videos, there's a link to a Discord where we're having lots of fun chats. It's all about this channel. I'm trying to keep it as high quality as my forum. So if you're not a member yet, I highly suggest that you join the Discord. But, yeah, Nick, what questions do we got from the Discord? So, let's start with Victor. I've asked this before, but all presafes are all presafes still useless. DistroKids Hyperfloor has presafes and follow-ups. And you've mentioned in newer videos how presafes can help future listens. Okay, so I think I should be clear, because unfortunately, we always have to navigate the hyperbole that works on YouTube with some things. And I always try with my videos to really be as forthright and real as possible. But I think with my presave one, I kind of dunked so hard I broke the back rim thing. Presafes are not good because they don't harness when you could be getting attention and you get very few clicks from them as it is when you do them and there's nothing for people to listen to. But, and as well, they don't help you for playlist consideration for that song. But, presafes after the release are out, are a bit of data that Spotify can see and do help set your next songs up for success. So if you do get that engagement and you help that song grow, that is a good thing. So what I always advise is that you use the tools, whether that's show.co, Tone Den, Hyperfollow from DistroKid, using those are a good thing. Did I answer all parts of that question? I'm sometimes bad with only answering one part. I think you did. There is another question from Victor. I'm someone who rarely despises Twitter and TikTok for various reasons. Rarely or rarely despises? Really despises Twitter and TikTok for obvious reasons. I prefer to go hard on Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. Is that okay or am I still missing out big time? So, use the thing. Obviously, if you're the type of person who can do every social media thing and do it all, everything is going to go better because you have more outlets that you can bring into everything. But with that said, most people's personalities only allow for you doing certain things and to do certain things well. I don't think you're missing out, especially if you're in certain jobs. Now, if you're a hyper-pop artist and you're not doing TikTok right now, it's going to be a lot harder to build a following than it would be. So which ones was he saying he doesn't do? He doesn't do TikTok and Twitter. So, I think that the big thing is Twitter has a lot of great tools because you can find people who are adding at certain people, you can add other people in your community and it'll worth them to your existence and things like that. So there is good tools, but I would also argue a lot of time that yes, TikTok is way more performative and you have to develop all this content and all this stuff. But Twitter takes so little effort. Honestly, when I was doing more promotions on Twitter, I could often just do it for the time that I was waiting for the subway in the morning at night and I'd have gotten all my work done and scheduled some tweets for the week. It's really not that much effort to get a decent amount out of Twitter when you're just starting out. Alright, this is from ShimDog on Discord. I love everybody with a name with dog in it. We all know I love to call people dog. If I'm in an alternative band that's starting to consistently release singles every six weeks online, any tips in sight on when my bands start tapping into live shows in a city like New York City as an important way to get more fans? Should we concern ourselves with live shows before or after hitting one K monthly listeners? Yeah, you should concern yourself with live shows from day one. The big thing is, now that people have gotten so into online because we were all forced to stay inside and this was the only way to promote, everybody's like, live shows are ineffective. You're only talking to 20 people at a time or 30 people at a time. But I argue that those people who you talk to at live shows are often some of the most important people that you actually build real bonds with because we build bonds in person. You also, we have to remember the other thing about live music. Loud music is literally one of the things that best makes people feel music. One of the reasons, and this is a pet peeve of mine as a record producer for many years, people are like, you're so much better live. And it's like the power of actually really, really, really playing music live often makes people think that it's better because they've never heard music at such a loud volume. And it really does affect it. I mean, I'm sure we all have had that experience of seeing a band live and then going back and listening to the record and thinking, man, this band sucks afterwards. That's not usually, I think, the record producers fault as much as that live music and being around other people while you're enjoying it is a hell of a drug. So using that drug to one, convert people into liking your music and to meeting new people, which I think is equally as important, is crucial. Now, I mean, the funny thing is when we say this with New York City, Nick will tell you, since Nick and I work together all the time, I'm obsessed with seeing when concerts are coming back. And so when to do it? Well, it seems like the concert venues are pretty big, poked up with big acts for a minute here and they haven't even started yet. But I really think you should get started playing live as soon as possible. Even if it's before you have a ton of people in your audience, I think it's good to get warmed up so that when opportunities are happening for you, you're not going up there cold. It's best to fail in front of seven people and get good at it and get your sea legs than it is to do that when people are really into you already. Just ask Garis, like Grimes, who did it. This question is from Adam. I'm hitting the reset button on my music career, wanting to release new music under a new stage name. With a new release strategy, parentheses, single-screen video on week one, lyric video on week three, music video on week five, still be applicable for me since I'm starting again? Or should I release as many songs as possible within a month? So this is probably a version of the question I've been asked the most that I haven't made a video on, which probably should give me a hint. So here is my thing. Everybody has a different thing with this in that they feel a different level of disposability with their music. And what I mean by disposability is some people are like, I mean, man, I get so many comments on this channel that are like, I wrote 90 songs in the last 90 days. Well, it's like, well, pick the five best that you wrote in the last 90 days and put those five up to get started so that if people love your first song, they can get really addicted and go down the rabbit hole with your music because you have a few songs up. I think in general, it is always best to put a few songs up, even if they are not your best material. But everybody has a different level of preciousness with what they put out. So it's a very hard answer to do. But here is my thing. It's like maybe it's best to talk about the risk reward. The risk is, I think of my favorite band in 1975. They kept out for a while a few songs from before they really like found themselves, let's say. One particularly is called Antichrist. And they are berated at all times to play this song even though they're like, that song is fucking trash. I kind of agree. It's kind of fucking trash. Anywho, so a big thing is like every song you do put out can potentially be a song you're annoyed by your audience buy for the rest of your life. If things go well. And it's not the worst problem to have. But what I will also say to that is that it really does make a difference if your song is hitting that people can bite into the Apple deeper and they can keep getting more addicted to your music and if you have good songs that people are hearing, it goes so much further. There's this fine thing. There's this act called Henrik the Artist. I want to say that I fell in love with their songs but they had four songs on the thing and you forget to have a relationship with the person when you only have the many to go through. And then I went back recently because I heard one of the songs on shuffle. I'm like, wow, they never put anything more. I never formed an addiction. I forgot about them for two years. And it's like I wasn't able to form a deeper addiction but if they had had a deeper back catalog, I could have probably been listening for a few more months and get me the next content they put out if they had put it out faster than two years, I should say. So that is like the decision you weigh. And yeah, I think a lot of the time you do want to get some material up if you have it onto your page to try to have something for people to bite into. We have a little bit of an audio issue. I just wanted to fix that real quick. I didn't want to interrupt you mid-sentiment. Okay. Okay, yeah, we're going to have a little clippy clip. A little clippy clip. Yeah, the trick is here, people, this is the maiden voyage in the studio with our little switcher. Said with headphones, it's a little loud. So let's see if that fixed it. Okay. All right. So next question from Cassius, or Cassius Dead. How important is it to have legal down at the beginning? Where should a brand new artist or band drop? Just SoundCloud or start off done blazing on everything? So legal down. I went through this with my video with the name that you use. That's really the only thing you need to do aside from having an operating agreement if you have multiple band members. Operating agreement, really the second you put music out, I kind of really think it. This is another one of those videos like I'd love to make but that no one will watch because I've seen what you all watched over the past year. But an operating agreement is a really serious thing because it really does solve problems down the road. If you think of it this way, when, so for example, running this studio, one of the things I do is I make a list of what is someone's responsibility and what is not someone's responsibility. Same thing with an operating agreement if you're in a band. Is you got to say, for example, a lot of bands choose even though there's one to two people really writing the song to divide the royalties evenly between everybody who plays on the performance of that song or who wrote it at the time. You got to write certain things down. So if we're talking about legal, those operating agreements aren't always signed contracts, but they are a basis that's established that can be held up in a court of law that you don't need to do a thing. If you look for these operating agreements, they're riddled with it. I believe Bobby Borg's books on the music business actually have some templates in it, if I remember correctly. May have that wrong, but regardless, Bobby's books are very good. Anyway, so legal-wise, just having the name done, I will reiterate to people yet again that streaming software and digital software allows your songs to be copyrighted. The biggest fear mongering people have is copyrighting their music and whether they need to have it or not. I can go much deeper on that some other time, but I really don't like to talk about legal things because I'm not a lawyer and lawyers should be the ones who do that. Okay, what was the second part of this question there? Where should a brand-new artist or band drop? Just SoundCloud or Start Off Guns & Blazing Everywhere? Spotify, YouTube, Apple. So I actually do think that you should proliferate everywhere. And by proliferate everywhere, I mean, really, you're putting it on your distro kid, which is going to upload it to all the DSPs, put it on SoundCloud, put it on Bandcamp. Honestly, I think one of the biggest things is you want to get feedback for your music. You want to start to understand what the ecosystem is and truly, even if you're not going to change your music, depending on what people say, just starting to understand your music in the context that other people talk about. One of the biggest things you'll hear artists talk about is that somebody's like, oh, you sound like this group and they may have never heard that group before, but that becomes a big thing for them and understanding all sorts of things that happen when you put your music out in the world is good. People choose to listen to music on different... what do we call these? Outlets. I think the feedback you get on SoundCloud, if you're a person who... Here's a good example. Let's say you make obscure electronic music, not really EDM, but like that. You can get totally different feedback from the type of people who use Bandcamp, the type of people who use Spotify, and the type of people who use SoundCloud. Now, SoundCloud might be useless for a punk band, but the feedback you get as a punk band from Bandcamp users and Spotify users, when they tweet at you or write things or Instagram DM you, is often totally different because Bandcamp just has such an obsessive music neuro audience. So I think you put it everywhere. All right. This is from PopWalker on the Discord. What is considered the best practice in terms of hiring staff to sell merchandise at shows? I have merchandise I want to sell, but I don't know how to go about hiring a responsible individual to sell them at venues where I perform. What else should I compensate, and what else should I watch out for? It's funny because like, don't you feel like this is true, that like most of the time, the Merch person is like your best friend, or like the person who's never going to get money, like maybe you're going to give them a drink ticket? I mean, Nick's the better person to answer this. You've been a Merch person a lot. I was a Merch person for a little bit. It's someone who's responsible with money, I would say would be the first. Yes, of course. Just to go ahead and say, someone you trust obviously. I've heard plenty of horror stories on bigger tours. I'm sure you have as well, Jesse. But to go back to it, yeah, someone you trust for sure, someone that's good at money, someone that can count inventory, if you're a bigger artist. Jesse, you want to continue? Yeah, I mean, but let's say this. I imagine since you're asking this question, you're probably like, hey, I don't have that. So if you don't have that, I think if it's a night out and you can't get somebody to do it for a favor, it really is somewhere around minimum wage that you get somebody to sit there and do the Merch for you. Now, I will also say this. One of the things I argue and get more fans is a charismatic Merch person can sell the hell out of that Merch. I mean, I have watched so many times certain bands have like a Merch person who basically makes the band make three times the money they should because they start conversations with people. They know how to engage people and get them to buy things, and it really does make a huge difference. When I managed Man Overboard, they had one particular Merch guy who was just so funny and great at starting conversations with people that it really did skyrocket their Merch at sales way past what many of the other groups that were way bigger than them were doing. I would like to also add that good tip jars and good catchy things that will appeal to someone's eyes, especially a good conversationalist, as Jesse said, will definitely increase sales. You got to be personable. This person is representing your band. So make sure they're also a good person. All right, let's go to the next question. Hold on. There's a bunch of this guy asked. The musical projects I tend to get involved in usually have a lot of variety from track to track. Since I'm the early stages, I release one song at a time instead of albums or EPs at once, but a problem I run into when pitching to places like Submit Hub that offer feedback for rejections is I often get responses like, this isn't a single. Usually based on the rest of their response, I take it to mean this isn't a banger or this isn't a lead single. In some cases, they're right, or obviously singles. And I still need to pitch in the places and give them their own release windows at this point in my trajectory. And I'm not interested in only making quote-unquote bangers. Is this a problem that can be fixed by addressing it in my quick pitch? Also, is there a problem that is inherent to releasing a variety of music in the early stages of my career? Buried music, I'm sorry. My question is not about the validity of Submit Hub. I'm aware of the criticisms, but I'm still in the process of assessing it for my own situation. Okay, a lot of polls here. Let's first talk about variety of music. Variety of music can be your greatest asset and it can also be a major pain in your fucking ass. One of the most interesting things if you watched the last video is Spotify is now allowing you to tag multiple genres in your submissions. And that is because people blend music so much. Like, you know, I think of like, there's like, I'm so bad with song names, but there's that one from Rina Sayama that like is like a fucking metal, a new metal pop song. And like, yeah, like which one would you pitch it to now? I would probably pitch it pop because new metal audiences are not, are gonna say that's posy shit or whatever. And but like, I do think the biggest problem we often have with like when you're doing genre divers is that you're not an expert enough to one know how to find the outlets that are gonna give you good feedback. And what I mean by that is like, so when you're searching Summit Hub, truly, and this goes for all the other things like Summit Hub, I sometimes forget what they're all called, because all of them are fucking terrible names. But like, people spread themselves too thin. I think the way that the people who have the best success on Summit Hub really target the outlets and say, you know, this is a good outlet for me. And some people, there's no good outlet for them. I mean, blogs are really fucking dying. And while I could go on and on about how important blogs are still, how important blogs still are, I do think that the biggest thing is you're getting feedback from people who shouldn't really be commenting on your music because they wouldn't be susceptible to it anyway. So one of the things like, I think it is, is that like, Summit Hub inherently is people who are not gonna understand your music well. So one, I mean, and this is a hard thing. There's so many startups that offer feedback on your music and almost all of them are trash or bots and AI that are just taking your money. So I think like, this is a tough thing and that it's like, it's hard to get good feedback from these things for lots of hours. Now we are talking about your bangers versus your album tracks thing. One of the things I think is a tough thing and I talk a lot this about when I do the one-on-one consultations with artists is that like, you may want to song out in the world, you may know it's gonna change people but context is important. And so like, I would argue, I'm a real into moody music as motherfucker. There's lots of tracks that may be my favorite songs but they really do work in an album context and not as a single. I think I'm actually a person who really, you know, like one of my favorite bands, Mew, has singles, they have really poppy songs but some of my most favorite songs for them are just the moody tracks on the record that I want to vibe out to but we have to accept that just as like, you know, your pajamas are not what you would wear to a first date to make a good impression, you have to accept that some songs are first date clothes and some songs are pajamas on the couch after people need to know you better and that really is a fact of life, like there's just no way of getting around that like, not everything is the best first impression to make somebody like you and we have to look at tracks that way that, you know, releasing those songs and keeping some of them to be your album tracks is a big part of this. Did I answer all the parts of that question? I think you did, Jesse. Okay, okay, I mean, you know. Alright, going back to Victor, another basic live stream question. Is Show.co still the best site for sharing your music? Okay, here's one that I should say. People have been talking to me and seeming to say that Show.co has gotten a little weird since they updated. I'm going to be honest, I've been so busy writing strategies and opening studios that I have not been to the site to start a campaign because I have other people do it and I really need to actually do that so I can update you guys on it. So I mean, I can see that I've been ignoring that and I'm going to also say I'm going to update the forum on the Discord on that very soon. Alright, well, here's the last question on the Discord. I know collabs are a great way to grow your audience, especially post release after songs have been performing well to add more fuel to the fire. We've never collaborated before, but we love to have a bigger artist than us. We're at 60K monthly listeners featured to help promote it. How big of an artist is realistic to add and how do you go about asking their management? Most of our target features are with people that already comment on and engage with their content. So I'm already a fan, which I hope would be more organic. Any help here would be much appreciated. That's from Crystal Casino Band. Cool, so here's the thing. Reaching a little higher than you, even a good deal higher than you has helped explode a lot of people's careers. I think with features, a lot of the time you shoot for the stars. Now, as far as, I should also say this, but I will argue all day, every day, and I think most of you will agree with me that we hear a lot of collaborations that are fucking lame. Some are magical. What would we do without a full writer's song and the verses with a Keshella on the chorus? How would we ever live without those? But I think it's much more important to often try to find the person that you really have a good idea that really feels like their style will complement the song you're working on and then reach out to that person because a good song above good monthly playlists numbers is always going to win out. So that would be my first thing. Now, as far as how big to reach out, yes, I mean most management companies are going to ignore it unless you have an in. If you can get an intro, you have any connection to this person in the door, you do it. One of the things I could say that I see all day long is one of the parts of my day job is I have to reach out to people who are blowing up in famous and I have to try to get them interested in working with somebody I work with. The biggest thing is having somebody who's a friend of a friend grease that palm a little bit or write the intro. That's a world of a good. So think about that first. Secondly, a really good pitch. Hey, we have 60,000 monthly listeners. Hey, you know what? You're doing great. That's a really good number at this point. There should be some people who are interested in you. Talking about the metrics, talking about the promotion that will be done, talking about what you would do with the track, sending along the song especially. Those are all things that could really do, or if the ask is that you want to get in a room and write together, that's a good ask because a lot of the time the managers, they're always looking for the... Actually, here's a really good cheat code for this. Managers who have artists who are highly collaborative are always looking for new collaborations. So when you slide into their email and make their life easier that they may have found an answer, you're much more likely to get that email returned if you send some tracks along and say like, yeah, we're looking to write together because write together may mean that that artist puts their name bigger than yours and while that may not be what you're intending on, that can be a big opening of your career. I can't think of how many people's careers have started because they were not the big name on the track but that opened doors for them when that track blew up. I could think of one off the top. Bruno Mars is... Oh yeah, that's actually a great point. I was in the studio with Bruno Mars before he was a big solo act when he was just a writer and a charismatic short guy that I was like, wow, this guy, like really, he's really got something bad. All right, let's go to the Facebook form. From Dimitri, how can I move my catalog of three songs from one distribution company to another? Is it safe? Yeah, it's safe and people do it all day and to be honest with you, there's like FAQs on every distributor's website on how they particularly do it but really it is the thing. You don't lose plays, you just lose a few days of access. You take it down off of one distributor and then you put it up on the other distributor. There's an ISRC-unique identifier code on every song and then it makes it so that you don't lose your play numbers which I know everybody's very concerned with. But yes, even when big artists do this all the time, you may have went to one of your favorite artists. Pages that play have been like WTFDog, like there's no songs here with the hell. That's usually that they're moving distributors. Alright, from Richard. I've recently viewed the Building a Community video and I've noticed it did not mention any sort of in-person promotion. Social media is great, but there's still value in going to shows and handing out... But is there still value in going to shows, handing out CDs or business cards with QR codes? I've been introduced to a lot of bands like With Confidence and Sleep on It this way, Back at Warp Tour, but those days are gone. Would I be making a fool out of myself by trying this? In my head, this would be a face-to-face interaction that could help build a fan base or does this make me look like a clown? No, and that was something I overlooked in that video is that when I was talking about community, I really should have said online because that's what I was talking about. No, as I said at the top of the stream, in-person connections are the best in-person connections. I'm sorry, in-person connections are the best connections. You can set off way more of a lasting impression by being in front of somebody compared to just seeing like shawawa-dick 97 online or whatever it is. Like, truly, you are not making a fool of yourself and this is how I do it. Even still with bands... Now, the other thing about this channel is I've largely made this channel under a time where I couldn't tell people to go outside. I've never made a video about live music a single time, which I'm going to fix because nearly all but... What was it? Yeah, about 10 weeks of this channel that I was actually making videos were when we couldn't do that. So, don't think I don't endorse in-person connections. I talk about it a lot inside the book Get More Fans of like what you can be doing there and how much you can make impressions on people and do great things with in-person interactions. Okay, do we have anything from the chat? Yeah, we do have a bit from the chat. That actually looks like a good amount, Jesus. Yeah, let's start with a Shira official. Hey, Jesse, my single is set to be released on June 10th. As a new artist, what are some key things I can do about the promo waiting up to my single release even though I have a zero fan base? So, the zero fan base things comes up a lot and there's like a lot of temptation for me to... Jesus, I'm like spitting. Damn, this motherfucker's spitting. There's a lot of temptation to be like, this is what my channel is all about. But when you say as a new artist, I know it's really, really, really intimidating when you have zero people who are watching you so far. So, what you do, and I think is the helpful answer, is the lower the number of people you have watching you, the more you have to value one-to-one interactions. Like a thing I've said to many people is that for the first nine months of this channel every single day I would just interact with people on message boards all day and paste my videos in and then it got to be a point where I'd go on those message boards and somebody else was posting my videos and then I didn't have to do that anymore. When you're at the start of this, you have to think about how you have one-to-one interactions with people all day. And I even see artists who are doing very big numbers who still feel this way. Like, there's this video of City Morgue when they were like doing literally songs with like millions of streams in their video where they were still like, all we do all day is interact with fans on Instagram. And say things because it revs them up and it gets them to build their relationship. What you got to do at this point that's different from later points is value every single interaction and understand that maybe every five people you talk to isn't going to click that link but slowly but surely if you got something good it will build up. Alright, this is from Laurel Sain. Hey, Jesse, big fan of your channel. I'm starting a new band and we will be releasing a four-song EP soon. What would be the most effective way of promoting the EP? Well, the four-song EP, put out those four songs as singles is the most effective thing and don't put it out as an EP until all four have been released as a single. This is the tough thing is that I really am dedicated to trying to give people good answers when I do these things but this is what the whole channel is about. I've been talking about this for months as every nuance of what you do with that four-song EP and I kind of hate to say there's this playlist on the channel page how to get people to notice your music that is kind of the answer and kind of my advice but I think what I can also say that may be helpful an EP is an event and one of the things we are often talking about is that there's this balance of trying not to annoy people while also trying to get people's attention and when you put out a four-song EP it's time to call it your birthday and be that person who's resharing being extra and bragging a little so feel free to take your time to do that but also spread that thing out and don't just put out a four-song EP we live in a singles world live in that world with us. Alright from Mostly Leg great name What's the name? Mostly Leg I like that Hey Jesse, love the channel I'm a newish to LA and I want to find great band to join Any advice? Yeah, you know I feel so bad for people trying to find other musicians to work with right now because like I think you know there's this book I read that talked about like chaos periods where like things have been jumbled up like for a while it was like yeah you go on Craigslist and you know the funny thing is like the guy who founded DistroKid actually tried to make a site that would like obsolete Craigslist and he could find musicians who were playing with him and he was like yeah I'll do this other thing and it kind of was successful and he threw the musician thing finding each other thing away it is so fucking hard right now to find other people to play with and it should be so easy I have no idea why people can't fix this problem with a good app but I think it's also that it takes a lot of awareness and monetization my best advice though is that you really need to just let people know that you're looking for this here's the thing every day I talk to somebody who's just broken up with another musician and I don't mean in a sexual way I mean that they've just thrown somebody out of their band or they're no longer clobbering with this person that the real thing is is you gotta let the people know in your community you gotta get involved in chat rooms and Facebook groups and let people know that you're looking and don't be shy about it like hey here's shit I've done in the past here's things I'm really looking to find somebody new does anybody know those posts are not things that are found upon in internet communities so I would really really really push it and also I would say this too I'm a part of a couple music discords I see those posts all day trying to find the discords that you can exist in I'm very new to like being a lot of time in Discord and I'm seeing that all over the place if I can also add jam card is a really cool website that hired me to do something once and a lot of studio musicians go there to look for work for albums and stuff but I'm sure it's a way to connect to a musician a musician to jam out and play some music and stuff I'm gonna recommend an experienced player a lot of those people are very very very talented but yeah check out jam card if you have it this is from The Royal Chief what up Jesse I operate a J. Cole type space want to employ a release strategy but thought it may be better suited as a lyricist to release an additional song or two with a single thoughts yeah I mean if you're in a J. Cole space hip-hop releases particularly like minimalist modern hip-hop is just I don't like the word disposable because disposable sounds like it's garbage but you're able to make music faster and you're people really do just crave a larger quantity of it now do I think that also in this genre that quality is highly highly highly rewarded yes and do I also think like to the point of that Rick Rubin video essay I made you know there are very few artists who are served by not trying to just make a song more exceptional especially if it's a good idea then putting in promotion time and rubber the road time on mediocre songs like the biggest mistake a lot of people make is that they're like slaving away over a song with low susceptibility and if you don't know the concept of susceptibility watch my video on Facebook ads and why I don't like them but like I go through it there heavily and your susceptibility is increased when you vet the songs you go you know this is the best one you really try to find the ways that you can make it as good as possible and make it work so yes I would argue that this genre releasing more and airing more on the six week side of releasing songs and like doing a higher clip of them can really really do you some favors but much more than almost any other genre I could think of but with that I also still do feel that the biggest thing right now is that like when you're in a world with 60,000 songs being uploaded to Spotify a day trying to find how you do higher quality things and spending time to like outdo people in the arms race may be a better use of your time Alright this is from Trey pros and cons of having certain songs be exclusive to a single platform Bandcamp SoundCloud verse every song on all DSPs always I kind of went through this in my video on Russ's idea of releasing a song every week which is that when you're flooding the zone with that much it starts to be that it's just not special anymore that you're releasing things people are just like this is a fucking loudmouth who's always fucking talking just like you start to zone out when your uncle's always talking about Trump and how great he is and says it all day and eventually it's just like it sounds like a fucking drone you become a drone when you release too much like very much in line with that last question part of what is a special spot and like I will say this like you see Billie Eilish, Young Blood all these people concentrating on a song every two months I haven't measured it in fact check but somebody told me this is also one of Olivia Rodrigo's doing who's arguably the most descendant artist of the past few months but I haven't fact check that yet so I don't want to say that for sure Anywho what I'm saying here is there's two places that reward quantity some cloud rewards that because people are just constantly doing things and they're discovering through hashtags the more you're posting the more your discoverability can be increased Ken being the ideal word I have to go far down that one day and I've been wanting to make that video forever Anywho but Spotify Spotify does not reward putting up a song more than every four weeks and people's attention spans don't reward it so that's the biggest balance you have to do and then I would point you to a lot of my answers from the previous question Alright this is from inhale Marty How long do you recommend spacing out your releases between singles Well that point alright this is what I'm going to have to do There is one of my most popular videos of my release strategy is the thing 6 to 8 weeks this is a cornerstone of this channel in fact it's anything I'd say that this is like probably what I'm best known for at this point so Alright well from the Royal Chief advice on shows things you should do afterwards how to follow up with people, how to maximize pre-during and post-show Okay what's five on this a little since this is something I haven't discussed at all Okay pre-shows the most I think the way people think about this is often wrong and I should say this too Use times you're going to get opportunity shows Opportunity shows are you just got a good opening slot for X artists Obviously you should take those when offered nearly all the time except if you're overexposing yourself to the point that no one's going to show up But really what I would think about with every show you do is how often you can do it with what your life allows to be a major presence at other concerts that are relevant to you, that are close in your community where you can be firing, meeting people and do it this part of the best thing about a show to me and to the artists I see that often break from live performances is that this is an eventful thing just like the lyric video and the single screen video give you a reason that you can say hey people pay attention to me a flyer for a show is a reason you can go to a bigger artist concert and say hey pay attention to me let's talk about my music let me tell you about what I do you like stuff like this maybe you'll like this you may like what I do so to me like that's one of the biggest things is I would plan shows about how often I can effectively do that and promote things like that and then you know during the show I in the most no brainer thing that I see that people do that is like a simple thing that I don't know why it's not proliferated is the thing of literally saying from the stage you're my people would love to talk to you after the show and like make it so that the shyest people who are often usually the people who feel music the most feel comfortable talking to you and building a deeper relationship with you secondly everybody who interacts with you especially if you're playing in a city you don't usually play open up a goddamn spreadsheet if they've made a mention of you in a story if they made any contact everybody you can get a contact for make a spreadsheet of where they attended the show and the next time you're doing it make sure that you have messaged them something before you come to town the next time can't wait to see them and all their friends to they could buy some extra tickets have a good time do the thing that is literally some of the things I see people sleep on the most alright thanks for this Jesse what metrics do you think are most useful for measuring long term growth on spotify streams per listener save rates are mentioned but curious about others you think matter my take on this is all this is too messy and people who focus on data and milestones you're thinking of the wrong goal the right goal is constant growth and maintaining people's attention through the consistent sustained promotion but like truly as long as you're keeping things going that way like things are going good you know what fuck it I don't like to do this but I'm gonna do it this way right now we have one of the most great upheaval moments in behavior we're ever seeing as a society we just had people who were literally inside for a entire fucking year plus now going outside to do things so to lift the curtain back maybe not all of you know this but I am a podcast producer by day I produce some very popular podcasts here's a funny thing with podcasts let's say around November to get in the top 200 it took you 175,000 downloads to get in the top 200 you can now get your podcast in the top 200 with 60,000 downloads because no one's listening to podcasts compared to what they were doing over the winter metrics and numbers are always sliding around different genres are played in different times they're different listening habits focusing on a certain number is not the point focusing on growth is the point don't fixate on numbers don't fixate on things fixate on sustainably keeping the growth happening here's a question that I like what should you say do what should you say do bring not say not do when meeting with a label that you actually want to be on yeah I like this one too there's a whole section in get more fans where I talk about this I call it like a lot of them music industry red flags one of the biggest ones I see that like literally is like the equivalent of like the person who wants to get married after 10 minutes into a first date is like the person who says like we're just not that good at business that's basically like saying I have no sexual organ like a whole piece of the puzzle is missing you have to be a person who seems like they want to be on a in a good relationship with a good team not like hey we're never going to hang out on Friday night because it's man's night I'm going to the man cave like whatever the hell people do like people want a well rounded partner when you're talking to a label and I kind of got into this little bit in the management thing it's like you want to tell them how you're a good partner how you're going to go on an adventure together how you're going to work hard and how you're looking for it you know I haven't promoted this yet but like I just had this audio documentary I produced on the label vagrant records come out and we have 11 more parts of it coming out in the coming weeks it's all about all these bands all over the world, dashboard confessional you know census fail who's the gold record that's behind me during most of the videos it's the lessons of their career and one of the things you see time and time again is what these acts who really really are doing things is they're working hard for themselves and what attracted the biggest management companies and the biggest labels like they did is the idea that like they were already on an adventure and then it would be do you want to come out on the ship and go but they only want people who would get on the ship and pull the fucking lines on the what do you call the things like that that's the thing I'm looking for thank you Nick pull the rope on the sail they want something that's going to contribute just as much as them and the big thing I think people miss in what happens in a label meeting or a management meeting and everything is it's not saving your lost ship it's not propping your sailboat up to make everything go good it's that you're joining an adventure together and that's the language you have to think of and truly it really is a thing of like you know I encourage people even like when the worst label invites them if they haven't done a lot of meetings with labels I always say go do it because you have to learn some mindset things just like if you're a person who's dated a lot I'm sure you will back on your early dates at being very bad and then you're like hey I got kind of good at that thing hey like you get more confidence you start to get what the mindset is and the mindset is that you're going on an adventure and hopefully this person's going to join you've not please save our fucking ship this is from Francisco would you say a follow is more valuable on Spotify Instagram or somewhere else for building a long term fan give it to me one more time would you say a follow is more valuable on Spotify Instagram or somewhere else for building a long term fan you know so I don't have an educated answer and I don't really like to say things that I don't have data on or a lot of thought on and this is not something I've thought on but my free form riff will be this is where are you going to keep people engaged the follow doesn't happen because a platform is more sticky than another and granted you know when you do look at data you know where the most sticky follow is it's actually Facebook but it's also the follow you're at least likely to see it on unless you're paying for it when you pay to get your messages out what matters is where you're going to keep people engaged people keep following you because they have a relationship with you that they want to continue now I will say this the follow on Spotify seemingly especially if they keep going where trends are going is going to notify everybody who listened to you a lot that you have new music seemingly for free I would imagine is where Spotify is going could be wrong so obviously if you're a person who's going to release music regularly and not you know four years later when they've graduated college and they're no longer as interested in music because they're popping out kids and you were making EDM bangers about partying and getting wild a Spotify follow seems to be like what I would put the most value on but there's a lot of variables to this sorry I popped that how important is an album promotion before the release I've had an album fresh way out not great traction I believe in the music is it too late for me to push it further no I think an album is not dead and also here's the other real secret everybody is getting hip though we really sing the record in accordance to the way you should with singles pulling it down calling it remastered I joke I did a campaign with somebody a year or something ago like I literally pretended that the whole reason we were releasing is that it was so good we had to remaster it but really it was just that they realized they should have been releasing Spotify singles and putting out more singles in advance you can promote a five year old album now by spinning the right thing of saying you know this is really touching people right now it's really been coming through and yes some people will fact check for one but there is a more effective way to do it which is don't put the album out until the end of after you've put out all the single worthy songs and tried to appeal to algorithms and the way people's attention spans work I would like to add that Dominic Fike pretty big artist his whole gimmick was he had his thing on SoundCloud for like a week to immediately put it back up in Spotify with the proper album release makes no sense but it does well it's something people talk about it's a story absolutely this is from pull the curtain what about when you lose momentum last year I dropped an EP for the first time we went to two editorials we maxed out 10k monthly listeners haven't released anything else I'm kind of stuck I'm sorry you got to give it to me again yet again oh you're good what about when you lose momentum we maxed out 10k monthly listeners I haven't released anything since and I'm kind of stuck last release was a year ago well I mean I think some of this is answering its own question which is like your momentum was caused by releasing music this is what I like when I talk about consistent sustained promotion being the most important thing is that all here's a better answer we have to remember and if you see music through any prism but this you're seeing it wrong music is a mood altering drug that people get addicted to because they want to feel a different way you gave them a way to feel a way they liked now you've stopped giving it to them and they're not rewarding you just like a drug just like a drug addict would not come to a drug dealer who's out of product you are a drug dealer in a very nice way I mean you know I don't think we should demonize drug dealers as it is but we don't need to get into my libertarian views on drug policy any who we have to remember people do not come to you because they're barring that you're like good at making personality videos or tiktoks or Instagram content or you're just so good looking that they're addicted to you they're here because you're giving them a mood they'd rather feel just the same way as if you change your sound and you no longer get that feel it is often hard to get people to stick around unless you've given them a more effective drug seeing music through any other prism is a mistake and what you've done now is you've diminished your supply of this mood altering drug and you have to re-up your product to do it there's not many ways around this aside from that if you can tell a story that gets more people interested in it or find a platform where you can get more new people into it who then are talking to those people who are previously into it and you're building relationships with new people and now I said this in an over-accommodated way but let me put this in an easier way one of the only ways that people ever do reignite their thing is let's say they get into a new thing let's say for some reason you get in a commercial and then all these new people are hearing it and then your old fans start hearing talking to friends who were never into you before they may revisit your music and re-up the relationship with it again but that is really about it we have to always remember the reason that the consistent sustained promotion works is because you're continually giving people more supply to get higher alright does any of your content or advice change for people living outside the US and then I'll add another question from someone else would you say it's a good strategy to promote to cheaper markets like countries where ads are cheaper the rules do not change when you're outside of the US but there is some weird things like yes Japan is a market and Australia for that matter you're never going to really be the new artist that breaks unless a gatekeeper lets you in America's music discovery market dictates what a lot of the rest of the world not all of the rest of the world not all of the rest of the world but a lot of the rest of the world's music discovery happens from as far as the ads thing go I kind of got into this in the last video and I will say it with the caveat that I still don't believe in buying ads for your fucking music but just like I said Latin America those are the most music discovery if your genres are popular in Latin America yes focusing on Latin America can be great if you are make EDM and you're not putting your ads in countries you're a fucking idiot if you're going to spend advertising money which yet again I don't think should be done for artists under 10,000 fans if you are an EDM artist and not doing there you're missing one of the largest markets you can do there's tons of Latin American countries where hip hop literally can have their numbers propped up immensely through Latin America listening focusing on cities in Canada music can be absolutely huge same thing with here's a really funny thing let's call it outdated rock let's call it like you play not like even a new version of new metal like something like kind of outdated hard rock if you target city, the four major cities in Canada you can literally do some serious damage especially with radio promotion because those cities consume and like I should say the around them outrageous amount of outdated like nickel back type shit I don't get it but I know it to be true from all the people I've talked to about it we got a couple more Jesse okay yeah I can do this for a few more minutes before I collapse what are some strategies for getting the most out of live performances for artists just getting started live performances just getting started one you have to videotape yourself every single time I mean like if you are not begging a friend to hold the camera the whole time and review it you're basically not learning from it that is one of the main things that I think people really just totally misses that like you know what it looks like when a good live performance you have no idea what you're doing on stage because you're not confident yet and you don't own it yet you need to look back and learn what the reflection of yourself actually is to within that also diagnosing what it sounds like when you play in a different environment than what you practice in you know one of the most underestimated things I talk about that inexperienced performers have trouble with is that you one aren't you're used to certain ways that you perform music it takes a while before you get see legs with headphones it takes a while before you know how to hear yourself in good monitors or in ears or however else that you're not used to a funny thing for me I worked so much on headphones during the pandemic to not awaken certain people in my household that when I'd hear music on speakers it would actually sound weird to me because I'd only hear things on headphones ever I hadn't turned on my Genelex in months at one point because I didn't want to disturb people you need to get used to what it is like to hear music in a live environment which is another reason that like you know I do think that it's like sometimes worth it at the start to take really really terrible shows was there any aspect to that question I didn't answer no you nailed it and also like every comedian I like oh yeah literally grabs like a tape recorder or has a camera and analyzes their set afterwards I think that's a really good piece of advice I like and not many bands especially newer bands do that like really you can look awkward on stage really easily we've all seen it any strategy on booking shows getting notoriety in surrounding cities of your immediate area yeah I mean my best advice on this is in Get More Fans which is I call it the cheeseburger franchise technique or something like that like really what you're doing is you're moving here's your city that you're in you're going to the surrounding cities and then slowly making it bigger but you're also concentrating on can you put fires up in that city can you get I mean record in stores not so much a thing as much anymore if you're going to do Facebook ads are you targeting that other city and the listeners in it are you repeatedly going back at a good frequency you know a good frequency for a DJ can be every month a good frequency for a rock band can be every one to three months but like slowly hitting those cities over and over again and making sure that your presence is wherever people would go and hang out for a show so for example like I talk a lot about this actually in get more fans at times but like you know Nick and I live in Brooklyn and everyone who listens to shitty like what's called low production punk all hangs out at about seven to ten different bars if your stickers and fliers are in that area you're going to have a lot more notoriety and name recognition from just literally the hour takes you to do that each time can be immense in many small towns all the skaters who may be coming to your show if you play a certain type of music or whatever they all can be found by simply going to that one skate park or the coffee house they hang out at and making a presence known the biggest thing people forget is that strategically breaking down people who you are and be curious enough to listen to you and then decide if they're going to go out to see your show and I think right now we are about to experience the greatest opportunity to build fan bases on a local level again because people are so thirsty to go out I mean shows I've seen here that would not have been sold out are already selling out two nights now because people are fucking ready I mean I was at a goddamn fucking dance party at three in the morning on Saturday I was like hell I'm fucking ready to be out again making your presence known and making people see your name whether that's stickers, flyers or whatever and then seeing that you're playing that local venue creates curiosity about you to the people who matter to build a fan base early do not underestimate that if you took a little trip with like you know maybe you work some firing into that daytime and you're going to be kind of a bad date but you know you go to that city and it repeats the place for dinner or whatever but you do a little flowering on the way around whatever you got to do to work it into your life make yourself a presence before you're playing that town after you're playing that town and then regularly in that town take over one town at a time in a circle that just keeps getting bigger and bigger and you can do it's worked for a lot of people we got two more two more yeah that's great to piggyback on the sticker idea of conversations about bands whose stickers are everywhere in New York City there's a couple that we point out regularly it works because we talk about them I don't know what they sound like but we definitely have had conversations yep tips on how to get out of the cycle of unpaid internships there's no context with this but I feel like it's a pretty good question so yeah the big thing is there's one spotting which internships and actually asking beforehand if it is there's a certain point where yeah like there's a lot more unpaid internships than anything else but I will say this and I don't want to make any accusation to this person the majority of people who interned I say this as a person I've probably had over a hundred interns work for me in my time and there's two polls that not a lot of people find the right thing every manager and the manager does not need to necessarily be that the person who's in charge of that they will hire you at the end is looking for one or the other of like two polls one is what could I be doing how do I do this I need help with this I'm so happy you did this and the other is shut the fuck up get shit done and don't fucking talk to me and learning to know which of those two are and acting as effectively as you can on each of those things is a lot of what makes a difference in somebody wanting to hire you or not now I say this as somebody who I'm nice enough to always be like hey what's this thing but I also am like let's if somebody takes a lot of initiative I'm very happy that they've taken a lot of initiative now the other thing I will say too is that everybody has preferences of like what is a good fun hangout too many interns make themselves the thing that like I should be getting a lot out of this really everybody I hire one of the reasons Nick does work for me I like being in a room with Nick Brian who I work with on records who co-produces them with me I had a lot of people who were options Brian's somebody I like hanging out with every day you making things about yourself and making it that they owe you knowledge does not make you somebody people want to hang out with that comes with time and with things I think a lot of interns like that is that fair fuck no you're working for free for somebody you should be allowed to ask this but life isn't fair and I've seen that be a thing that has held a lot of people back and having the mindset of like just being somebody who's enjoyable to be in the room with in giving that person a good experience is often what gets the job all right let's go for the last question because I have strong opinions about this when should I put on my big boy pants and set up a website is it crucial I don't think websites are big boy pants websites are a thing you do for a handful of reasons one some people's SEO is terrible and we need to get a landing page so people can find what they need to find I wish I remember what the person was it was like so funny I was you know I had this best write me the other day and I had to look them up beforehand and I could not find them because their name was absolutely un-Googleable and I was like this is the exact person who needs a fucking website and so the big thing is like first let's say you're having a hard time going up Google then yes you absolutely need a website the only other reason you need a website after that is if you are doing marketing or you're having enough demand for yourself that you need to use a website to get things done to make fans do the behaviors you'd like them to do now that brings me to like what I do for websites so for example I think I've mentioned this before I do not manage active touring bands that are trying to be on this end but I do work with some bands who are estates and that they're broken up and we need to get their fans to do certain things that we want aka buy merch I make their websites on Shopify because Shopify is amazing at SEO it's amazingly easy to use and it gets the fastest way to get the fan to do what we want which is buy merchandise from us your website should have a goal at all times and you should send people to that goal if you do not have a goal in marketing that a website is going to enhance you do not need that website but some of you are like well I want to tell potential managers and ANR my story that's what YouTube, that's what Instagram and that's what Spotify are for you can tell your story very effectively in behind the scenes videos I was just talking to a friend who wants to make a better impression on the music business and it's like well you got a lot of personality start making some personality videos on YouTube in fact I give this advice on consults all the time so that is my very angry way to wrap that answer up Nick did you have something to say about it? I think that the merch idea is a very good idea for a website I think they're almost obsolete when it comes to smaller bands personally Jesse correct me if I'm wrong I agree but for SEO it makes a lot of sense especially if you have a band the band Health Health is the worst thing to Google I know that's just my opinion if you have a very basic band name you're probably going to need it for SEO otherwise if you have less than like 15,000 monthly listeners I don't think you need it I would even go as far to like 50,000 because most people don't do here's what I'm going to say if you enjoyed us doing this we'll do it more if you comment below and give it hearts and tell us in the discord join the discord there's a link in the forum we'll put a link in the description for the discord and yeah thank you guys so much for watching hopefully we'll do more of this since we have this awesome studio with the view of the worst neighborhood in all of New York City thank you