#141: How to Brand Yourself as an Artist and Why You DON'T Need a Record Label with Jesse Kirshbaum

Forget everything you know... Do you want to know how to promote your music? Maybe you're seeking answers to topics on how to get your music noticed, how to promote your own music on social media, how to get into the music industry, how is AI used in the music industry, or maybe you just want to know how to market your music. Then check out EP 141 of the Inside The Mix podcast.

Prepare to navigate the shifting sands of digital music marketing with Jesse Kirshbaum, the creative force behind agency Nue, guiding us through the evolving terrain. This episode promises a treasure trove of insights on how independent artists can thrive amidst the rise of AI and the transformation of streaming platforms. Jesse's expertise illuminates the path for musicians to forge authentic connections, broaden their influence, and capitalize on the amateur artist revolution that's redistributing power in the industry.

We also delve into the intricate dance between music and branding. I chat with Jesse about the importance of artists maintaining their core identity while weaving their stories into partnerships with brands. From the unexpected resurgence of bands like Creed to practical tips on aligning with companies that resonate with your values, we uncover the nuanced strategies that can amplify an artist's presence. Jesse shares how these collaborations can be more than just deals; they can be a harmonious extension of an artist's narrative.

Wrapping up with a jaunt away from industry talk, we share our enthusiasm for Miami's winter allure and the potential for digital nomadism. We discuss the magnetic pull of creative meetups and the enriching experiences of travel. It's an invitation to explore the geographic and musical landscapes that shape our world, one beat at a time. So, tune in and get ready to march to the rhythm of innovation and connection.

CLICK HERE to follow Jesse Kirshbaum: http://nueagency.com/

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Chapters

• 0:51 Digital Music Marketing Trends in 2024
• 11:54 Navigating the Streaming Music Landscape
• 22:02 The Power of Music in Brands
• 30:18 Music and Branding Industry Trends

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

Greetings Inside the Mix listeners. It's Eric Mitchell.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Follow my engineering and the artists I'm involved with via my profile at ericmitchellaudio. You're listening to Inside the Mix podcast. Here's your host with the most, mark Matthews. Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favourite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learnt with you. Hello, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. If you are a new listener, a big welcome and make sure you hit that follow button wherever you listen to your podcasts and to the returning listeners. As always, a huge welcome back.

Speaker 2: 1:41

So this episode is a return to an interview style format and I am joined by Jesse Kirschbaum, who is from Miami lovely, sunny Miami and is the co-founder of creative agency New, and he's also an American entrepreneur, talent agent, author, executive producer and dealmaker. So in this episode, we're looking at digital music marketing for independent artists in 2024. So what do we discuss in this episode? We talk about the ever-evolving world of digital music marketing and Jesse shares what key trends and shifts he's observed in 2024 that you, the independent artist or producer, needs to be aware of. And, importantly, we also discussed the decline of streaming folks and, in particular, the rise of AI. In relation to that decline, jesse shares how independent artists can effectively use AI to promote their music and grow their audience and leverage these new tools. And, in particular, we delve into the topic of trends are your friends? Jesse shares his top tips on building a sustainable career in the music industry and how important it is that artists and producers view themselves and promote themselves as a brand and, in doing so, also attract other brands for new opportunities in this new landscape. Jesse shares why authenticity is the higher frequency in the music industry and, importantly, the amateur artist revolution and how the power dynamic within the music industry is changing in favor of amateur artists. And then we wrap things up with Jesse sharing his final key takeaway for artists navigating the evolving landscape of digital music marketing and the music industry in general.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Before we dive into my chat with Jesse, I just want to make you aware of my producer growth scorecard. It's entirely free. It's a 28-day challenge to gamify your music production and songwriting and, in doing so, release more music and push forward your skill set in music production, songwriting and mixing as well. To be fair and you can find it for free at synthmusicmasteringcom forward slash free, and there's loads of other free stuff there as well. Go and check it out. So let's dive into my chat with Jesse Kirschbaum. Hello folks, in this episode I am very excited to welcome my guest today all the way from Miami. Co-founder of Creative Agency New Jesse Kirschbaum. Hello, jesse, from Miami, how are you and thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 1: 4:11

It is my pleasure I'm doing fantastic. It's an awesome time right now in Miami. It's summer in Miami, aka winter in the rest of the world. It was just coming off the back of Winter Music Week, which was like Miami's music conference of sorts, and then also Miami Open is going on this week, so it's like this mix of tennis and music. Everywhere I look there's a different event or um reason to be outside, so it's a good time here in miami, if you like tennis.

Speaker 2: 4:47

I'm always massively jealous, especially when I speak to people in the states and they tell me where they are, for example, miami, because here it is gray and wet, as it is most of the a lot of the time. That's what people perceive the uk to be and unfortunately it is a lot of the time. Um, but miami it just sounds amazing like the the weather. It's a classic british conversation and the podcast audience probably know this because I mentioned it a few times. But, yeah, mildly jealous of that.

Speaker 1: 5:14

So it sounds really exciting where you are really does it's definitely a city on the rise, so I feel like I'm part of this kind of cultural movement. It's had this post COVID boom. It's like very exciting. There's a big Latin music scene here and it's just there's a growing industry, it's. There's a lot of reason to come and visit.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Yeah, most definitely. I've. Through the podcast and once again chatting to people in the states, I've now got this sort of map and pins of places I need to go, based on who I've spoken to. So I need to do this incredibly long tour of just going around the states and visiting these people that I've had on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 5:50

So well, you've got a friend here in mi. I'm happy to show you around it's wonderful food. I went and saw Sampha last night perform out of the UK Awesome performance at this kind of band shell art venue. So it's a growing music scene I'd love to show you around on that.

Speaker 2: 6:15

When I say when I get to Miami, I'm gonna have the growth mindset and say when I get there not if, when, but that would be amazing and the same if you ever make it to the UK. But we'll dive into your bio now and for the audience listening if they're not familiar with you, so I'll just read a few bits from this. So you started your career finding and developing talent from there. You have extensive experience securing talent for concerts, tours and endorsement deals with various clients and brand partners internationally. You're known for helping to break artists and you focus on building robust strategies and campaigns for big and emerging brands that wish to break into the mainstream zeitgeist.

Speaker 2: 6:49

I've always wanted to get that word into the podcast. In 2021, you were hired as the CMO of Dreamstage, a revolutionary music live streaming company which sold to Deezer, and you currently reside, as we've mentioned now, in Miami and you're the CEO of New Agency. So this episode is going to focus on sort of digital music marketing strategies and just marketing creative strategies as well for independent artists and what that might look like in 2024. So I think what would be a great question to kick things off with? Maybe what can you talk about some key trends or shifts that you've observed already in 2024 that independent artists should be aware of.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Yeah, 2024 has been defined in a lot of ways by the AI revolution. It's been here for a while, but it is definitely driving trends and it's what I feel like is this kind of start of. What we're seeing is a great transformation. That's kind of brought on by the creator economy, the post COVID kind of hangover and recession and also this AI revolution. There is so much opportunity for artists, for the industry as a whole, to thrive. When it comes to what's happening in AI, the music business is very healthy right now. As an industry, it's probably different and better than it's been in a long time in a lot of facets, and as streaming is starting to decline and the industry is looking for its next big boom, it really feels like ai can lift all boats.

Speaker 1: 8:34

For independent artists, it's a great creation tool. It's a fantastic way to connect with your consumers, to be able to make more content, to keep up with the speed of the feed, which is so important in a social media landscape. Now artists have the tools to create. It's also a really interesting time for the influencer market and that kind of creator economy where influencers are doing a really good job with brand partnerships, but musicians are also getting savvier about how to do these brand partnerships and I think the creator economy, or at least the influencer economy, is leading to a way for people to realize that musicians are the ultimate creators. They're the influencers.

Speaker 1: 9:26

With talent and with their songs and their music they can open up so many doors and to get into so many rooms that it makes a lot of sense for brands to partner with artists on different campaigns and activations and that can be very beneficial with independent artists as a marketing vehicle, as an opportunity to get exposure, to gain new revenue, to get a co-sign to be more credible in certain instances. These brand and artist collaborations are a very hot space in music right now and I think that that's just going to continue to grow. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for artists to understand the trends and to realize that the trends are their friends. And sure they have to stay true to who they are, but by understanding where the market's going they can be at the forefront of, in a lot of ways, the new revolution in music.

Speaker 2: 10:29

I love all that. It's very exciting, isn't it? And I'm glad you mentioned AI, because it's quite a common. Well, it is a common thread that's running through the podcast at the moment, whether I'm talking to engineers and mastering engineers, mix engineers with AI, or talking to sort of music marketing and agencies, such as yourself with AI, and it's everywhere, it's proliferating and it's amazing. I love what you said there about the speed of the feed as well, and we were discussing off air about how I put content together for the podcast and I'm using AI to help speed up that process, so it sort of mirrors exactly what I'm doing as a podcast. So that's fantastic, and it's great what you mentioned about opportunities as well, because it really does open opportunities. But one thing you did mention there which I thought was quite interesting was the decline of streaming. What have you seen that is sort of echoing that? Why do you think there is a decline in streaming at the moment, or why is it declining?

Speaker 1: 11:28

The market's just saturated. There's only so many more people that can go on to Spotify and to Apple Music and to Amazon. The licensing deals for these platforms aren't that advantageous, so that's why they've spun off where we see Spotify is interested in obviously, podcasts, but now books and masterclasses and video, but now books and masterclasses and video. It's a hard market to keep growing when it comes to the streaming world and a lot of these labels did these partnerships with these platforms, launched Spotify. Spotify went public and they had huge windfalls from the equity that they were able to leverage. And those moments have come and so it's less interesting in terms of blue sky.

Speaker 1: 12:17

In terms of growth, I don't think Spotify is going anywhere in terms of relevance and importance, but definitely when it comes to growth.

Speaker 1: 12:25

As a business, you know you're always looking for that next big boom and it doesn't feel like there's as much to grow when it comes to streaming, especially with all this fragmentation and all of these new platforms and people getting sick of spending, you know, $10 across the board and all these different streaming platforms.

Speaker 1: 12:48

I think what we'll see probably happen with streaming is the same thing that happened with cable TV There'll be a rebundling where you can have them all under one roof and that becomes the new package in terms of what happens with streaming.

Speaker 1: 13:03

But then people have to be thinking about, well, what's the next big play, and I think artists could create their own streaming platforms. I think there could be direct-to-consumer conversations, where an artist doesn't have to go, can have direct conversations with their fans, charge a monthly fee, but also then super serve their super fan. Something that's important to understand OnlyFans really does this well is that not all fans are created equal and that different fans have different amount of love for your artist and for who you are and for what you do, and want to support you in different ways. So you want to be able to almost tear your fans, or what really hot trend in music right now is super serving, or trying to figure out how to get deeper in with the super fans that are willing to do more to support you as an artist, and I feel like there's a big opportunity in kind of creating these micro streaming networks as a way to super serve super fans.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Exciting stuff, man, and I noticed, going back to what you said right at the beginning there about Spotify, and they're kind of like pivoting because they being a podcaster I've been a podcaster, the audience know that I've seen they really are pushing that video element of Spotify and I saw a notification just today which was with regards to a new feature I didn't actually try it, but enabling you to do something alongside watching a podcast on Spotify. But they're also releasing that element now where you can upload it's almost like you can upload tool format videos to it now. So they're moving in terms of that short form content element as well. So you can definitely. It definitely sort of resonates with what you're saying there about how they're sort of looking okay. Well, we need to pivot slightly if we want to stay relevant.

Speaker 2: 15:05

And, as you mentioned there about the decrease in sort of streaming itself, and it's really interesting what you mentioned about the super fan element as well.

Speaker 2: 15:18

But before I get onto that, the umbrella I've written umbrella here in my notes and that was to do with the idea of packaging up all these streaming platforms into one sort of box, as it were, or variable to get in computer science terms here, because I was having this exact conversation with someone I cannot remember another podcast guest and we were discussing the same thing how I remember having Sky years ago over here in the UK and then we would have all these channels and then got rid of it and now I've got all these subscriptions, but basically it's now getting back to the point whereby I'm paying 40, 50 pounds a month and I might as well just have the package again.

Speaker 2: 15:48

So it's amazing how it just goes around like that. But going back to what you said about the super fans, so can you maybe talk a bit about how maybe this kind of leads into my next question how can an artist sort of leverage AI? Imagine they're starting from the ground up and they only have a sort of handful of super fans. How could they leverage AI to build that super fan audience? I think they probably will not want to leverage AI to build that superfan audience do you think?

Speaker 1: 16:11

I think they probably will not want to leverage AI. I think in a superfan audience, you want the real thing. Your highest frequency is authenticity. So what you want to do is, if your fans want more from you, I would figure out ways to connect with them deeper, using your authentic skills, your voice. If it's a handwritten note, if it's a card, if it's a chord, if it's a video, if it's a song, if it's artwork that's not released to the public, I would think that what you want to do is super serve your super fans without ai.

Speaker 1: 16:52

Ai can be helpful when you do something on scale, or when you want to create 10 different versions of an album cover, or if you want to do conversations with all these different individuals that are reaching out.

Speaker 1: 17:05

You know when, I think, you have tens of thousands of subscribers that you're talking to on a regular basis. Ai can be really helpful in responding to DMs, which is a way of super serving the super fan. Right? If you're a big artist, you can't keep up with all these people messaging you. With the power of AI, you can be able to communicate, you can write customized messages, you can mass DM. You can have a really good conversation on scale thanks to some of this technology, but I honestly think what you want to do as an emerging or independent artist is, when it comes to your super fan, you want to be customized, you want to be personal, you want to be authentic. And then when you're talking about putting up messages on all these different platforms and you only have so much hours in the day, it can help you write copy, it can help you size artwork, it can help you to reformat videos and music, but I think that your real fans want to hear your real voice. They don't want to hear a robot version of it.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Yeah, you're kind of like picking the optimum time to use it, aren't you kind of like you've got to know when to use I, when to leverage it? Um, because you want the authenticity to shine through and, in theory, I guess, if you're just starting out as well, you I don't want to say there's probably a sweeping statement, but you've probably got the time to really have that sort of deep relationship with those super fans, whereas, as you mentioned, then, the more as you grow as an artist and you get slightly, you get more interaction and then that's when you can start leveraging AI to help you with those sort of particular tasks. And going back to the podcast, again, it's something that I've done myself, so this kind of leans in nicely. Then to the. The next question I've got here, and this is regards to Can you sort of talk a bit about, like long-term marketing strategies that you might recommend for an independent artist, maybe someone who's just kicking off their sort of music career in this landscape that we find ourselves in?

Speaker 1: 19:09

You have to think about yourself like a brand, and I know that's kind of unusual, but when you go to marketing, marketing at the core is storytelling and brand marketing at the core is storytelling and brand marketing. So you want to understand who you are, what your content is, who your audience and fan base is, who you want your fan base to be messaged to. Sure, a lot of your music is going to come from the heart, but a lot of the way that it's marketed is going to be through mood boards and intention and action and tactics and strategy. But really it's going to come down to the core of who you are, what you stand for, what your values are and who you want to attract or appeal to, and then your tactics will be designed accordingly. So I would almost even come up with the same way.

Speaker 1: 20:02

I would be thinking about launching a brand, I'd be doing a mood board, I'd be thinking about kind of the vision of your brand. I'd be thinking about the voice. I'd be thinking about the audience that you want to attract, what platforms they're on. Really, this is down to like a branding exercise when you're launching and starting off that you can then build into as you get success and your serendipity muscles are starting to get stronger and opportunities come knocking and festivals and promoters and brands start coming into you. Initially, you really want to have a really shiny, strong brand that speaks to for something, and then it will hopefully attract new opportunities while you're continuing to move forward to where you want to be.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Great stuff. I love what you said there about a mood board, because I did just that last year when I was releasing an EP, and I went through this process of creating a mood board because I was thinking, actually, well, I need to probably figure out who it is I want to appeal to, who am I? And it's a really powerful thing to do, and I've actually got it saved on my phone as the background and it's there every day when I look at it and it reminds me and I also use that whenever I'm creating content. I'm thinking, okay, well, who am I trying to appeal to? And I can just look at that and reference it and think, actually, well, this is who I'm trying to appeal to, because I think I've heard the terminology if you're trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. I don't know if you necessarily do you agree with that sort of statement.

Speaker 1: 22:00

I think you have to know what you stand for and if you stand for nothing, then you'll fall for anything, if we're going to play the cliche game. But I think there's a world where you could appeal to everyone. There's universal themes like love, there's wider themes and then there's more narrow themes. I don't think that there's a world where everybody can't agree with the fact that they love love or they love music or they, you know, drink water. You know there's differently universal themes and traits out there that you can appeal to a wider audience. I think people want more niche, they want something that's going to hit them more on the head, but I think you can do that through different channels. There might be certain interests and passion points that you can go down the rabbit hole with your fans, but I think that it's less about trying to appeal to a niche market and more trying to appeal to where you feel comfortable or where you speak loudest to or where, for some reason, your music is connecting and gravitating.

Speaker 1: 22:45

There might be a song that ends up getting picked up for a campaign or a commercial or, uh, you know, a revolution and you didn't even know it, but now, all of a sudden, you have this huge fan base in this certain um category or genre, like I've seen it with artists where, like all of a sudden, their song gets picked up for a baseball team and now they're, you know, like creed this year became the theme song to the world series and now they've got all these huge fans, you know, in Houston, and they didn't even know that they had fans like that in Houston. So I think that you don't know that's the beauty of being a creator and artist when you put your work out into the world, you don't know what's going to come back. You just want to give it the best shot at seeing as many people, as wide an audience as possible, um, so that as many people are impacted by your craft I love the fact that creed of this is picking up what you said there, but creed have made a resurgence.

Speaker 2: 23:49

I remember creed from back when I was sort of my teens man and they were like this huge american band and obviously mark tramonte went on to do his other stuff with and whatnot, um, I was sort of moving in that musical circle. But it's amazing to see creed make a resurgence like that and it is, you see, that in popular film as well and tv, don't you? I mean, there's the classic stranger things with um. I've totally forgot the artist's name now. Uh, kate bush, that was it. Um, which is a fantastic song and yeah, you just need that little bit of I guess you don't call it like You've got to be in the right place at the right time and then you can just springboard from that. So, moving on to sort of like artists and brands, so imagine you're an artist now and you've established, you've got the brand, you've got your identity down, you know who you want to appeal to. If you're an artist and you're thinking, actually I want to look into brand partnerships what would be your top tip for sort of entering that realm?

Speaker 1: 24:42

It's really about law of attraction at the early stage. What brands on your mood board do you like, do you resonate with and why? Really understand the mission of why you connect to these brands and then don't be afraid to showcase them. If you have an affinity for a certain brand and you love that and you post about it and you tag it like there's never been a world where an artist can get the attention of and their fan base. They can mobilize their fan base to get the attention of a brand. There's a very clear world in how brands can work with influencers, micro-influencers, artists.

Speaker 1: 25:24

This is a changing landscape where there's a lot of opportunity to connect, even if it's a social post to a tour sponsorship, to a Coke lab, to creating a new brand with a brand.

Speaker 1: 25:37

These are all open conversations with artists, no matter how big and small.

Speaker 1: 25:41

It's really about the creativity, the fan base and the messaging.

Speaker 1: 25:47

So I think that if I was an artist trying to attract a brand, I would almost like create lifestyle content that ties and shows how that brand aligns with the artist's story and help, you know, do a little bit of, even if it's a category like, if an artist is like I really like to hike, say that, put that out there to create some thought leadership pieces.

Speaker 1: 26:18

Try to get get some SEO around that, because there's 50 Gore-Tex hiking brands that need to have music as part of their overarching strategy. That's a big thing about what I do is my thesis is that every brand should be thinking about how to incorporate music and their brand identity and you know, I know that we're getting a little meta here, talking about bands creating brands and then brands connected to music, and it can be a little heady and complicated, but there's real science to doing effective marketing by putting music in as kind of part of your overall brand identity. And musicians can really be the creative directors or be able to help brands to make deeper connections to their consumers by leveraging their fan base, leveraging their voice, leveraging their content, leveraging their music.

Speaker 2: 27:17

So I would really be trying to find categories or brands that resonate and then making content that gets the attention of some of the leaders in these categories and see what comes back Really really good, because what you mentioned there about I'm not a hiker but you mentioned about hiking and then like posting that and then like tagging these brands that are associated with it whilst your music is playing and it's not something that I've consciously thought about, but I have done it in the past where I've been out because I live near the coast and I'll be doing it on the coast or a coastal walk or something along those lines, and then there's a video of the of the sea or sunset or something along those lines and I put my music behind it. So I kind of was subconscious, subconsciously doing it anyway, but it's a great idea and I love the idea of sort of you're thinking a bit further outside of the box than just the immediate music industry, but you're thinking, okay, well, there are these other brands, these other interests I have. How can my music be aligned with that? And then, yeah, and it's the immediacy as well of being able to do that you can just create a post and then you can tag these brands. I've done it numerous times with there's a, I guess, and sometimes they sort of repost or they might tag me back.

Speaker 2: 28:42

But I think it's fantastic doing that, and it's great to know that I was doing it subconsciously. Well, I was doing it anyway without actually realizing, which is amazing. Jesse, I'm well aware of time here, so I thought it might be quite cool now to move on and maybe talk a bit about your agency new and in terms of support and services to navigate the sort of ever-changing landscape. Maybe if you could talk a bit about the your, your agency, and what you're, what you're doing and what you're up to at the moment so I live in the intersection of music technology and brand partnerships and that's kind of my multi-hyphen niche.

Speaker 1: 29:19

And what happens is brands hire me to connect them to consumers by leveraging the power of music. It could be music activations at festivals, it could be artists in campaigns, it could be social posts, it could be licensing a song, it could be creating a custom song. Every brand benefits from having some form of a music strategy, and that's the whole thesis of what I do. I'm a big believer that music's the universal language, music's the great connector. Music is the way to shift culture, or the lowest barrier to entry to shifting culture, and when you shift culture, brands get the results that they want long-term in terms of relevancy and ultimately, I think it leads to sales and great business when you're really connected and tapped in into these worlds. So that's my business.

Speaker 1: 30:18

I also write a newsletter that chronicles everything happening in this section, so it's a great piece of information for an artist that wants to see everything happening in the music and brand and music and tech world. It's focused on brand marketers. It's focused on music industry aficionados. It's focused on music industry aficionados. It's focused on artists. It's really like this kind of robust tool and resource that weekly breaks down what's happening in the music branding world From my perspective, usually incorporating some of the projects that I'm working on that week or clients that are of interest to me.

Speaker 2: 31:00

And it's a great newsletter as well. I was reading it just today and I saw that you featured the James Blake scenario in there as well. Where can our audience, if they want to sign up for the newsletter? Where should they head?

Speaker 1: 31:12

They should go to my website, newagencycom. That's n-u-e-agencycom. Or my LinkedIn or my Instagram or my Twitter everything connects to my newsletter. That's N-U-E-A-G-E-N-C-Y dot com, or my LinkedIn or my Instagram or my Twitter Everything connects to my newsletter. That's really my outlet in terms of. In a lot of ways, it's my give back to the industry because it's super highly curated in its particular niche of music and brands, with the really technology focus, and it's just a helpful tool. So I think you could find it by finding me and then following along.

Speaker 2: 31:48

Fantastic and for the audience listening. I will put links in the show notes as well, so you can go on the show notes, the episode description, and you'll be able to click on the link there and navigate to there. So, Jesse, closing thoughts for today. As we wrap up, maybe you could give our listeners one piece of advice or a key takeaway for navigating this. I've mentioned it a few times now evolving landscape of sort of content, strategies and marketing in 2024. What would be your one piece, key piece of advice for our listeners today?

Speaker 1: 32:18

Well, I've covered treat yourself like a brand. I've covered that the trends are your friend. I've covered that you want to attract versus. You know, attract brands by kind of leaving honey out there for the bees to follow. But I would say that I also mentioned that authenticity is the highest frequency, more than love, more than happiness, people connect to true, real self. But I would say that music business is an amazing place. It's really exciting, it's a super dynamic industry, but it's healthier than it's ever been. And I would say that more and more artists are going to come into music right now, especially thanks to technology and AI, and we're going to see this kind of amateur revolution where there's going to be more amateur artists than ever and that is going to ultimately change the power dynamics of the overarching music business.

Speaker 1: 33:27

I think we're coming into an era where the long tail wags the dog of the bigger business. It's not about the hits. You probably can't name the five best songs or five biggest songs on the pop charts. It doesn't matter. In the same way, it's really about your audience and giving your audience what they want and connecting deeply with them and figuring out ways to create new, exciting ways to serve your fan base and to leverage your fan base to create more art. So I would say this is an era of the independent artists, the long tail of the artists, the amateur artists, that's going to use technology to be able to get their music out there more or to create better music. It really raises the floor of what an amateur artist looks like and I would use the technology to be creating, to re-releasing music and to really understand that your fan base, that's your calling card, and to treat them right, because you can go really far with a loyal fan base.

Speaker 2: 34:45

Fantastic stuff and I think it's very exciting. What you've mentioned today is going to be really refreshing, I think, and sort of invigorating and inspiring for the audience listening, in particular, the bit about power and the amateur and the growth of the amateur artist, musician, and the power and being, as you mentioned there, about the tail wagging the dog, which is fantastic. That's going to be a great soundbite for the episode in particular. So, no, really really exciting stuff and I know the audience is going to get loads out of this. It's always great to sort of have professionals such as yourself on the podcast and chat about these trends and strategies and whatnot and what we're seeing at the moment. So really, really exciting. Jesse, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast today. Thank you so much and the audience listening please do go sign up for that newsletter because there's a wealth of really useful stuff in there. And, jesse, again, it's been an absolute pleasure and I will catch up with you soon sounds great, mark.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Look forward to it, hopefully in miami or in the uk yes, I'm leaning towards miami.

Speaker 2: 35:46

Man, I'm leaning towards miami.

Speaker 1: 35:47

Come visit, not in the summer in the summer most people are going to head to europe, but uh, to see taylor swift, but I think that. But I think that in the winter please come visit art Basel, miami Music Week and everything in between.

Speaker 2: 36:04

Oh man, we were saying off air that I need to. I've got this tour like lined up for all these different places. I need to go in the States now for all the individuals, such as yourself that I've spoken to and that'd be amazing I just have to take a whole sort of like six months off work and then just dial around A digital nomad. That's what I'll be for six months a digital nomad just travelling around to all these places. Fantastic stuff, jesse, brilliant, and I will speak to you soon. Buddy Cheers, man.