Independent artists lack of understanding of how popularity and royalties work is the core of the bad actors pool. They think that if you fake it until you make it, they can convince listeners to become a fan. Yet when you seen anyone with high streaming rates perform live, there's no one in the room or they avoid playing live entirely and go from being an artist to a content creator. My streams go up and down based on how often I tour. I have fell victim to marketing sites claiming they can posture my work and I have learned valuable lessons from that and this podcast is perfectly detailed to the facts of fake streams. I don't know how one can tell where there fans are on Spotify with so many fake accounts. It's why I use KZbin, Tidal, Apple Music, @Soundcredit as a smaller artist to get a more authentic view of listeners, but in my 26 yrs of experience, the only sure way to gain fans is to play live.

As an artist who has been touring for most of his life independently from a good majority of it, health and well-being is my number one priority taking care of my voice. Eating healthy, exercising. Getting restful sleep. No drugs. No alcohol but the big proponent here is the environment in which you are brought into that influence your behavior and if you have bad behavior going into the music industry, it's only going to be perpetuated by it. So we've got to look at how important the art of music is and our personal health.

Like what you guys are doing! Good content. Great to way to keep up with music news. Just subbed!

I used to love record labels for their ability to funnel interesting talent and develop new talent. Going to record stores and listen to music, hear live showcases and record stores. There's no culture around music and there's no one developing artists anymore and creating a buzz. It is literally all online which makes it become so diluted. It takes away the excitement. It's very rare. I used to follow so many independent record companies from 4AD to jadetree records, tvt and everything in between. That's one thing I do miss.

Nice to know and updated

I feel like this is an old era of conversation because record companies are really only interested in ready-made pop stars and TV personalities because that's more of a proven platform to launch a brand and not necessarily people like the Taylor Swift's of the world, who are not really artists. They're basically entertainers, influencers, and if an artist buckles down and learns a lot of the aspects of marketing, social media and becomes a jack of all trades and does that efficiently you could grow enough to hire a team from time to time and can enlist other people to help you along the way, but technology has made everything so automated and the only way you're going to sell as an independent is to make direct connections with fans through touring through direct communication and then that leads to a sale. I think that it's a far stretch for independent artists, especially to think that those who invest in you are going to make you a star. It still takes a million dollars to create commercial status, but if you want to be a mid-level artist most of those earn it from the bottom up one ear at a time and they grow gradually and they stick with it over years and years. And there's no magic, bullet or process that's going to race you to the top.

Well known artists have more leverage with their fans than independent and underfunded acts. The album, in my experience has been important to gain respect from fans who are typically looking for artists with longevity and who are consistent. Releasing singles as part of the album is a great idea, but to just be an artist of any size who releases only singles and an E.P's worth of music over the course of 4 yrs, won't gain the time from new potential fans in my opinion and experience, what helps me earn new fans is the fact that I have written a library of songs and albums and have been working in various markets performing live. You still need to do the work I think.

I don't mean to be rude here and I love your podcast. But this guy talking about tick tock is merely talking about pop culturalists. He's not talking about any musicians or anyone who self-creates DJ's not a musician. Not that I'm aware of anyway, but at least he's depicting what works on tick tock and his idea of obscure is laughable but people are products of their own environment. I'm just a purist when it comes to music. I like real humans with real instruments, creating something meaningful and doing it in their most authentic way. Always great content. You guys produce no less.

There needs to be new restrictions with the use of technology as it applies to copyright rules. There is benefit to bootlegging someones work to help expand their reach however the limits are hard to manage. I'm only interested in fans who care about human creation over the masses who consume prefab music to dance or get drunk to. It's important to know your target audience. Most of this doesn't apply well to independent artists.

I think Spotify is screwed. There are so many programs and bots being pointed at Spotify and there have been so many fake playlisting accounts and companies affecting the analytics on where the fan data is. There's such an inaccuracy That it's nearly impossible to Target where to tour because there's so many fake accounts and fake playlists and profiles. I just use KZbin and standard social media to determine where the real fans are. I think Spotify is really on its way out of the playing field entirely.

Here's my thought regarding Discovery. Yes, we have an infinite amount of tracks to discover online, but as an independent without the big budget to shove it down people's throats, you have to earn it one ear at a time and make real connections with fans big or small. The other thing is that most people right now at least are heavily heavily committed to nostalgia and aren't interested in discovering something new and what I get from a lot of music fans is when they discover my music and see the large catalog I have, to them. They're willing to listen to me and become a fan knowing that I'm committed to a career in music, whereas so many new artists are quickly fabricating pre-made tracks a five-song EP every 4 years and that's like a bakery only baking bread once a month. It's really hard to gauge the seriousness of the business at hand, so there's a severe lack of career driven artist or those who are committed to crafting music on a regular basis to prove to the music fan that their work is worthy of dedication of being a fan. If you're not tried and trew, it's not going to make an impact to long term fans. Streaming is generally for passive listeners.

There is far too much focus in my opinion on Spotify as the driver for artists success. Platforms like Spotify merely serve the top 1% of artists and they have nothing to do with Independent or the ability to help in discovery of Independent Artists because no one's looking for us unless we tell them to because we don't have the money to be on the Marquee. So since we have many other choices to distribute our music and reach new fans, Spotify should be of least focus. I know amongst my peers less and less of us are focusing on Spotify and playlisting, especially since they're taking money from us for presumed fraudulent streams. Even when you can prove that they are not, there's no opportunity to fight against their claims and I've even had money taken out of my account for a track that they presumed had fraudulent streams. So it's their house, their company they can do what they want. The best fight is to stop using them. Stop supporting them.

I agree that it's a deliberate feeling and approach to the tangibility of music, meaning that it's very human for us to do these things and we always revert back to what is human. So no matter how advanced technology becomes, we still find a way to reconnect with our human side, which is why vinyl is back and bigger than it was when it first came out. As an independent Artist, I have success with selling vinyl proof that there's viability even on a small scale.

I have been pressing Vinyl and it is very exciting to have that human connection and tangible element. I wasn't surprised that vinyl and physical mediums are coming back because let's not forget that we are human beings who long for connection. I get people buying vinyl who are not superfans and mainly because they feel a connection to the music they never felt before and when they see how long my career has been, they feel less reserved in investing in an artist they haven't heard before, because so many new artists have no catalogue and have a short lived career. Human nature cannot be replaced and it is rearing its beautiful head. As for event ticketing, on the larger scale fans know at this point how much they are taken advantage of, yet until they stop paying for these high tickets in fear of missing out, there is no point in complaining for something that consumers are allowing these corporate monopolists to charge those fees.

I have been holding off on releasing to streaming and using a service called @soundcredit that you can generate your own Grid and ISRC codes and release songs and albums exclusive to certain people and be able to track your listens and avoid all the fake accounts on many streaming sites

If AI could just create a song, why would you ever need real human songwriters? So to me what this is going to do is cut out your ability to get sync deals publishing contracts because it can be created through AI. I don't see anything positive here, at least not for the artist. I think it may be a good idea to only allow paid users to stream songs and that would encourage anyone who was interested in the service to eventually pony up the dough and pay to stream provided they like the platform they'd be able to navigate the platform, see how it functions. Maybe do samples of songs but we need to get the value of the music back because independent artists play a huge role in the devaluation of music by desperately trying to model major artist marketing campaigns which doesn't make any sense cuz you don't have millions of fans yet and not the leverage to create marketing tactics that you can trust. And the free model just shows that you don't value your music any more than you want the fan to. So why should the fans bother taking it seriously and discover your work?

I'm very happy to not be part of the corporate structure of the music business. I don't function within the music business parameters. Personally, I love the freedom of being completely independent and in control of my own career. Although small, it's many times profitable and gets me from point A to point b. I know that everyone needs to make money in order to function. You just have to look out for those taking advantage of course.

Congratulations 200 🔥🔥

Like most corporations, Live Nation cannibalizes markets and has gotten away with it for decades. If they are going to go after corps let's not limit it to music, let's do so for good and services as well. Music fans keep buying the tickets so nothing will change until the consumer gets wise and refuses to buy and gets over the "fear of Missing out" ideology.

The streaming services were merely a Band-Aid for fractured industry. I look at streaming like a discovery engine, not a profitable source and because of the pay rate is so low and I knew that signing up so to complain about your rate of pay. Now after you've already agreed to the terms and they are stated in their terms of policy, you can't change someone else's house and their method of business. You can only find other resources that suit you better or start your own

🤔 'Promo SM'

What happened to the rest of the episode??

Great share

Thank you Jay and Mike I learn a lot from you guys for my Rock n' Roll career!🤟

Hey Guys, thanks for having me on the show.

🌹 Promo SM

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