Michael Walker: If you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician is a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where Modern Musician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been a result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, without really a fanbase or a business. And you’ll take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions of fans with your music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who have shared their knowledge and success with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now. 

Dorian Perron: So putting all the energy you have, taking every opportunity, being very positive about it is definitely the way to go. It doesn't mean it's going to work, but if you put the right energy and you're always on it, at some point, it will turn out the right way. Even with your music, even if you feel that your music is not good enough, or people are telling you that it's not good enough. If you keep on working, it's going to get great. If you’re determined about it, like it's going to get great at some point. 

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Alright, I'm excited to be here today with Dorian Perron. Dorian is the co-founder of a platform called Groover. Groover is a music promotion platform that's facilitated over a million connections between artists and curators. It's led to over a thousand record deals, publisher contracts, and other opportunities. He was awarded the Innovation Prize and was featured at high profile music industry events like the MAMA Festival, M for Montreal, and Liverpool Sound City. And today I'm really excited to connect with him and talk about really kind of the root foundation of one of the most important things to focus on in a music career, which is about music promotion and getting your music heard by more people and facilitating those connections. And it just so happens that Groover is an amazing platform designed to help you do that. So I'm really excited to have him on the episode today. And thanks for taking the time to be here. 

Dorian Perron: Yeah, I'm really happy to be here and thank you for inviting me. 

Michael Walker: Absolutely. So maybe to kick things off you could share a little bit about how you started the platform Groover and what would you say is like the main problem that you're looking to address? 

Michael Walker: It's very interesting. We started with my co-founders when we were at UC Berkeley in the entrepreneurship program. I was a music blogger already indie folk, indie pop, indie rock, mainly. It was in French, but it still exists, but not as active as before and it's called Indiefugration. I was just sharing music that I loved and I was already receiving hundreds of emails every week. I think it was 100 emails per day from musicians who wanted to be featured on the blog. And it was quite a small blog. It was the time of Facebook pages. And I had 4,000 likes.

It was cool, but it was still a niche thing, so receiving a hundred emails per day, I had more emails than visits on the website. I honestly think it was the case which was crazy and my co-founder Romain had had a lot of issues promoting his music and his project and Rafael had experienced this, my other co-founder. So when we started what we wanted to do was help independent musicians. We had a different idea in mind first, but we started by calling a lot of them, 200 musicians for a full and straight month, asking them what was their biggest issue, what kind of things that were doing themselves and stuff like that. Everybody was telling us that they would manage production, mixing, mastering, distribution. They had friends helping them with setting up an artwork or music video. But the thing they couldn't do was how were they able to get the music heard by more than their mom and their dog. Everything that we're saying for an hour and we're like: okay, let's focus just on that.

We focused on this idea of how can we make sure that when they send the music to tastemakers, to curators, bloggers, to radio stations, how can we make sure that at least the music is going to get listened to and they got to get feedback on that music. We just focus on that since the beginning and it was the foundation of what Groover is today. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah, it definitely seems like that's one of the biggest challenges and opportunities nowadays with the internet and being able to create music so cheaply and efficiently. It's just, there's so much of it and learning how to make that noise. 

Dorian Perron: When we started in 2018, if I may just add, it's like when we started in 2018, it was 20,000 new tracks every day on Spotify.So not even like counting SoundCloud and today it's 120,000.

Michael Walker: 520,000 tracks per day. Wow.

Dorian Perron: On Spotify. Yeah.

Michael Walker: And do you know how many of those, I feel like I heard this stat at one point and it was just like mind boggling. How many of those tracks never get a thousand plays? 

Dorian Perron: Yeah. I think it was, if I'm not mistaken, I think it's like more than 90%. Like it's mind blowing. 

Michael Walker: Yeah. Man, so, Groover comes along. Maybe you could describe how does the platform work and how exactly does it help connect artists with tastemakers? 

Dorian Perron: Yeah. The way we wanted it to be is to make a simple way for artists to connect and get in touch with bloggers, radio stations, playlist curators, record labels of their choice to make it so that they could choose who they want to get in touch with. So they add the music through a YouTube or SoundCloud link and also a Spotify link, they write a small pitch about their music they can also like fill in a profile and then they select who they want to get in touch with in a list of, today, it's 2,500 currently active music creators.

So it means it's not like a database of people that's just never ending, like a growing, but it's more like the people that are actually currently active on the platform and giving feedback and they choose who they want to get in touch with and they pay a small amount of money. So it's two euros now by contact, but we also have 10% of the curators who are more influential and cost a bit more that are considered the top curators and professionals and they can cost four or six instead of two, but it's like only 10% of them. And they pay this small amounts of money and we guarantee them that within a week, the music is going to get listened to, and they're going to get at least read and feedback on it. So not forcibly a share, not forcibly being accepted at least feedback and the music is listen to. If it's not after seven or eight days, they would get credits back, which we call the groovies and they would get them back so they can send new campaigns and get in touch with other people. The current answer rate is close to 90% to give you an idea.

So if you get in touch with 40 curators and professionals on Groover, you're probably going to get 36 answers within a week. It can be positive or negative and more than 20% of those answers are positive, meaning that the creators and professionals want to do more then just write feedback. They want to share the track in a playlist on a playlist, in an article, in a review and on the radio, they want to get in touch with you because maybe they want to sign you on their label. It's really working that way. And on those, that money that is spent by the artist half is going to the creator and half is kept by Groover as commission. That's basically how it works. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. And it's, it seems like such an important service just because you witness this with a very small, like, niche blog, just the amount of submissions, that is one thing that you have to appreciate about musicians is how our music is precious to us and we want it to get heard. And in a lot of cases, if you don't have a good curation system, there's so much that it's just hard to filter through. So I can imagine both for the artist and for the people receiving it, it's really helpful to have this filter to make sure people are actually intentional. 

Dorian Perron: Exactly. And that's the very positive thing about it is that because artists are paying, even if it's small amounts of money, they are more careful about who they get in touch with. And we help them choose the right one. So we have matching algorithms. We also have a very detailed filter system where they can filter by music jar, by country, by the type of creator they want to get in touch with, if they just want to get in touch with record labels or with place creators. We also have advanced filters with other categories. And the idea is to help them get in touch with the right ones for them, and that has an effect that all the curators and professionals are receiving tracks that are much more in their editorial line than what they are receiving in their email inbox. So it has a very positive filtering effect because it reduces the noise of I don't know, a reggae artist getting in touch with a metal magazine. 

Michael Walker: Yep, that totally makes sense. One thing I'm curious about is, especially nowadays, there are a lot of services that, some of them are… There's a continuum, like some that are very much so just: pay some money here and you'll get 10,000 likes on your Facebook page and they're all fake bots or just not legit. And then on the other end, you have things like Groover. I'm curious what sets Groover apart from other promotion services or things that maybe artists have tried in the past and they feel like they've been burned or they spent a bunch of money and maybe they saw some initial results, but they didn't really see like a connection or engagement from it. How do you see Groover differentiating itself?

Dorian Perron: Yes. So many scams. And the main difference is the big difference there is between pay for play, and pay for consideration. So when you're paying for those services that you're describing where they guarantee a number of shares or a number of streams or a number of a visibility you're more paying for the exposure that is guaranteed. And the way they guarantee it is not through curation, but just through finding ways to ensure you're gonna get placed, but those places are not forcibly relevant. They can be spotted as fake, artificial by services like Spotify. Sometimes they're not spotted as artificial but they put you in a playlist that has not a single inch of relevance regarding your music, so it will totally mess up your algorithmic presence in the future. But they guarantee you plays and you pay for that, but there's no value in getting those streams because anyone who pays can get those streams. And they will be found out as artificial. You're not going to get paid for those and you can really harm your future presence in algorithmic and editorial playlists on Spotify. I would really suggest you never buy for the services that guarantee plays. On Groover, you're not paying for plays. You can get rejected by everyone. Like it almost never happens, but the thing is you're paying just for that time listening. They decided they want to share it or share your music or not, and they're not paid more to share. So, if they decide to share your track or they decide not to share your track, they will get the same amount of money. They're not incentivized to accept a track. So if they accept a track, this has value. This means that your music is great. It means they loved the music and they will share it. And it has as much value as if you hadn't paid to use Groover. So that's the biggest difference between Groover and another service that will be ensuring that you will get a certain number of streams or some exposure. That's the biggest difference. 

Michael Walker: Yeah that totally makes sense. I mean, especially… I think at the time of recording this, Spotify recently made an update where they're really cracking down even more on artificial plays and you could very easily… it's always been the case that it's against the terms of service but if I remember correctly, there's something recently that really is cracking down on this and makes it especially important that you're suggesting that you don't want to use a service that breaks those terms of service and literally you know, it's just bought farmed.

Dorian Perron: They can blacklist you because if you work with a distributor and Spotify reaches out to the distributor saying: Hey, there are artificial streams that are there, like this really can push to remove the tracks from the platform. You also can have Spotify reaching out directly to an artist saying: Hey, you paid for too much artificial streaming performance and that's against our values and our guidelines. So you should be very careful about that. Especially since it won't be a real stream. So it won't be real people. It won't bring anything to your music in the future. You would have paid more than what it gives you, especially knowing, if you're not going to get royalties for that, because it will be seen as artificial from a Spotify and they will remove the payments for those artificial streams. I would really suggest never buying and paying for guaranteed streams, any service guaranteeing a number of streams, it's probably either a scam or really a dangerous service for your music. 

Michael Walker: Yeah, and like you mentioned before, too, there's another case for some of those that might guarantee streams where if they have a playlist that's completely irrelevant, then you might get a certain amount of streams and maybe it's shades of gray. So maybe the 70% of it is bots or 30% or whatever, but like you mentioned, still like algorithmically, it's just not a good place to put your music. So if I understand it right, one of the benefits that you've done with Groover is you've really dialed in the process to match people up with the correct curators so that if they do get placed, then it's not only they're getting streams, but they're getting it from the right people. 

Dorian Perron: That's exactly it. And it's also because we vetting the place creators, we tagging them and we making it so you're going to get in touch with the ones that can have a positive impact on your music. The Spotify algorithm, I talk a lot about Spotify because it's a lot about independent playlists on Spotify and Spotify is the only place where there is like a mature third party playlist ecosystem. On Spotify, the algorithm works a lot in clusters of genres and similar artists. So if you're getting in a place that has nothing to do with your music, it can mess up a lot how Spotify might be able to recommend the music to other people through radios, other algorithmic playlists in the future. What we're doing at Groover is really spending a lot of time vetting playlist curators, the tastemakers. It's an ongoing process, but we're always doing it. And also tagging them correctly, so that when you get added to those playlists, it has a positive impact on the future recommendations you can get through Spotify algorithmic playlist and gain more listeners. And one thing that is interesting is that it's a study that I saw that if you reach a certain number of streams in 30 days on Spotify, that's how you can get into Discover Weekly, like the playlist, the algorithmic playlists, that can have a lot of impact on your streams. And one of the ways is to reach a certain amount of streams by different listeners.

If you get into independent playlists, third party playlists, it will help you reach that goal. Sometimes you think you've paid on Groover, you got into a playlist, maybe it brought you, I don't know 30 streams or 50 streams. And this is not a lot, but if those 30 streams and 50 streams are real people that would like your music, they will save it. It will have a positive impact on your future presence in algorithmic playlist as well. So there's this kind of like the direct effect and the indirect impact that getting into a third party place that is relevant to music can have. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah. Super interesting. And if I understand it, not only is the opportunity to get more streams and monthly listeners and people that are true fans of the music, but you've also facilitated a lot of relationships between record labels, artists getting signed and maybe you could share the, like the the goal when someone first submit their music, what are some of the use cases or some of the success stories that people aim for? 

Dorian Perron: Yeah, so artists are really looking for different things, sometimes for everything, sometimes for just one thing. What we've seen is that they have mainly like three different goals possible. One is getting visibility for their release. They're releasing the music on the platforms and they want to get more streams. More visibility on it. So they will get in touch mostly there with a playlist curators, blogs, journalists, YouTube channels, Social media influencers, this kind of people. Then the second goal they can have is they really want to build up a team around them or have support of a brand, like a record label, a publisher, a manager, a booker and this is like a different big category they can aim at. And the last one are people who really want detailed feedback and advice on their music. It could be from coaches, sound engineers that could give detailed advice on their production, what they want to do next or what, how they can  develop their career. This is the third category of what they could be aiming at and looking for. And we really make it visible on the platform, how they can reach out to these different types of people depending on their target. So that's really like the three kinds of situation that you can find. And we have a lot of artists submitting to record labels. It could be small ones. Intermediate ones. We have some of them that are quite big or really good YouTube channels linked with them. And we have big surprises of some signings that could be super interesting with a very relevant record label in a specific niche with an artist. And it really helps artists connect with new people and make new connections that could be relevant for them and for their music.

And also on a global scale because they can get in touch with people outside the country that like the kind of music they do, and especially we've seen the US, we’re seeing a lot of artists using it to promote their music elsewhere outside the US and now inside the U. S. As well, because we're growing the community of creators in the US. But it's been a very big thing. We've seen that they are using Groover to target Latin American countries or Europe or other places that could be interesting for their music.

Michael Walker: So cool. Having been someone who's received a lot of submissions from other artists, and now you're witnessing literally hundreds of thousands of artists making requests and making submissions using the platform, what advice would you have or like best practices or tips and tricks as it relates to how should they go about the process of reaching out on Groover to have the best results? 

Dorian Perron: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think what's very interesting first and important is to fill out your profile extensively. So adding social media links, adding a short bio, your fresh news, and a picture of course because. It will be a way like if the creator likes what  they're listening to, they will straight go to that, get to know you better, get to know the project better. So it's very important to fill out your profile the best way. The second thing is to Spend time trying to identify your music, even if artists don't want to be in specific genres or specific cases and be blocked by that, it's important to understand what other people will think your music is. It doesn't mean that it's only that, but what, if you doing music, like understanding mostly what the other people think your music is, and especially creators, tastemakers, or professionals, it can help you really target the right people that are the most likely to like your music.

So it's important to ask this question around you. I don't know if you're playing shows. Ask the people that come to you after the show. Like just get this feedback of okay, where I am, where am I in terms of genre and in terms of what my project says.

It can change. If you can release a new track and totally change that kind of approach, but it's important to understand that and spend time on that.

Michael Walker: As it relates to that, cause I know just based on the way you answered that you probably get that a lot. And that's one thing that I hear a lot too, is just sort of a challenge around defining like, what is my music? I don't want to put myself in a box and the advice to ask for feedback from other people, super valuable. But just to clarify that, do you mean main genres? We're talking just like straight up like rock, alternative, indie. Or do you mean even deeper than that? Yeah, kind of coming up with separate sub tags of that? Or how do you recommend that they actually start to categorize themselves?

Dorian Perron: I would recommend going more into sub genres like indie would be too big. It would be like indie-rock, or if you're doing especially electronic music, for instance, there are so many different genres, it's important to know between which genre you are because people like the creators are going to be looking for especially a specific genre.

So it's important to check that and Groover can help you get feedback on that. Like people can tell you: Hey, your music for me is more that than that. And it can help you also define that. This is very important. It's also important to use it in your pitch. Like your campaign pitch when you're pitching your music to tastemakers. Just like using keywords, using just to give them an idea of what the music will be, and they can use that language if they decide to talk about you or use your music in different scenarios. This is important. And the other thing is to spend time using the filters. I would really advise you if you use Grover to use the filters and spend time checking them out, depending on your target, depending on what your music is to really use your budget the right way. And another thing I would say, which is a bit contradictory with what I'm saying, but it's important is you should get in touch with at least 30 and ideally 50 contacts on Groover if you want to get significant results. It's what we've seen witnessed in terms of the feedback, satisfaction results, and impact is that when an artist gets in touch with at least 50 creators, like the satisfaction level that they get of their Goover campaign is like stratospheric. Like we get more than 95% satisfaction on their campaign, while when you get in touch with only five, maybe one will answer, maybe two will tell you that your music is not in the editorial line. Maybe one will write a good piece of feedback and one will share and you'll be like: why did I spend 10 bucks? But then if you get in touch with more people and 50 people, 30 people, 50 or more, then you get a lot of replies, a lot of feedback, a lot of opportunities, and it really gives a view of the impacts you can have with your music, with making new connections, getting some visibility out of it, really seeing some impact for the future. So that's my recommendation on that. It's interesting for everyone. It's interesting for us, it's interesting for the curators, it's interesting for the artists. But definitely we're seeing that artists who spend more are happier. I wouldn't say spend all your savings or anything, but there's a sweet spot between 50 and 100 curators. So between 100 and 200 bucks, that is really cool if you want to have impact on Groover. 

Michael Walker: Super helpful. Yeah, one thing I feel could be helpful for people in terms of identifying genres might be making a list of similar artists to them and just like looking up those artists and seeing what are they listed as in terms of genres and then using those in conjunction with the filters that you're describing.

Dorian Perron: Very important. Very cool and very interesting. And it will be useful, for example, if you run YouTube ads at some point because you can target those similar artists' YouTube channels and at the same time, also, if you're looking for playlists that could be great for your music, looking at the discovered on section on Spotify for those similar artists is a way to identify some cool third party playlist for your music. You can only do it on desktop if you have the app. Because the section is not visible otherwise. But you can go and look at the list of the top playlist that have the most impact for artists. And you can look at similar artists, or artists that are like similar size or a bit bigger. And you can find the cool playlist that added the music and could be a great way to try to reach out to them or identify them then on Groover, use Groover to get in touch with them or just get in touch with them directly through Instagram.

So knowing some similar artists is a way to position yourself and really get options of getting in the right cluster. 

Michael Walker: Super smart. Yeah, it just, it seems like there's so much benefit to, in general, if you're a big fan of an artist or there's an artist that's similar to you, then likely your music's going to resonate with their fans the same way that you resonate with their music. And even, for a tale as old as time, just going on tour with another artist that is in the same genre and as it relates to things like playlists and everything else. It does seem like that is a good core strategy is first to identify those similar artists and then to use a platform like Groover to be able to actually target people who are affiliated with those artists.

Dorian Perron: Yeah, totally agree with that. It's a good way to approach things and to ask yourself this question. It doesn't mean that you’re stuck in a specific box, but just to ask a question about my music right now and where I want to be, who am I closest to, and it's interesting.

Michael Walker: Awesome. All right, so at this point, they’ve started to identify their sound and who they are, maybe what genres they can target and filter and they've created a profile. They've linked up their socials and their profile picture. What's the next step and how do they get the best results from their campaign? 

Dorian Perron: Yeah, so then you basically have to wait until people answer. It can take up to a week or eight days, but you're going to get feedback all along that period. Then what's important is that when you get a positive feedback or someone who's interested, I will definitely suggest to follow up with them either to just “thank you” or give them a bit more information about how they can share your music.

It's proven very fruitful when you do it and when you do it the right way, which is not just: sending an email with an object that's not clear and say: Hey, thank you. And just keep in mind that the creator has probably listened to a lot of music that very same day, so it's important to put a very clear subject line saying: Hey, thank you for listening to my music, adding the Spotify link. And it was very cool that you said that and I liked it and and thank you for that and I'm looking forward for you to share the music. It will help accelerate the process for sharing. I would definitely suggest you to keep those curators in mind for your next campaign so that for your next campaign, you add those creators who liked your music and then you add new ones, maybe because your track changed a bit or maybe because there are new ones that arrived on Groover, and you can build that success and and get even better results on your campaign after campaign on Groover. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah. So it sounds like one thing that's really important is after someone has a positive response and that, or if they say they're going to share it, then use that as a way to initiate a relationship with them.

Dorian Perron: Yeah. You've hooked them already. So now it's the good time to enforce that. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. One idea that popped up, and I think this is a great way that we could kind of tag team our services here. So we have a platform called StreetTeam that's basically an email and a text message platform for artists to connect with their fans. I can imagine one really powerful email to follow up with to a curator who says: Yeah, like I'm going to share, I really like your music, I'm going to share it, who’d be actually following up with them and saying: I'd love to shout out the playlist, or, I have an audience of 11,000 fans who I think might like your playlist. 

Dorian Perron: That's very smart. A very smart approach. If you have an audience. And the creator is probably looking to expand their audience as well. So if you're offering these kind of things, they will always be happy about it. 

Michael Walker: Yeah, I could imagine even if someone is just starting out, humble beginnings, you're using StreetTeam and you have a hundred fans or a couple hundred, it's going to be so much more powerful to follow up and be like, could I share, like, what's the best link to send people to listen to get to the podcast, nobody’s going to be like: how dare you like, want to send me extra people. It seems like it would be a great way to provide value and build that relationship. 

Dorian Perron: Fully, yeah. 

Michael Walker: Cool. All right. Aside from that, maybe we can zoom out a little bit and I'd love to hear your perspective just, in general as it relates to music promotion and building a successful music career and how Groover fits into the bigger picture. Obviously right now we've witnessed some major revolutions in the music industry. And, since the internet kind of came along and streaming came along and there's sort of a bubble that got popped around music NFTs temporarily, and maybe an opportunity there long term. But I'm curious what you see as sort of like a zoomed out perspective of how someone can best leverage Groover in addition to a holistic career and continuing to focus on music full time. 

Dorian Perron: Yeah, it's complicated because as we were saying, 120,000 new tracks a day, it means that you need to do so many things to stand out. It usually seems that it can come from just one thing, but actually, you never know from where it's going to come. So you need to try out many things.

I would say that one big piece of advice I give is in the beginning, when you really want to grow and grow your audience, try to say yes to almost everything. Take every opportunity that's thrown your way. Every single fan that offers you something or visibility, take it. Even I have lots of stories of artists who've been invited on obscure web online radio. Maybe nobody was listening to the show, but on the show there was another artist or another professional that was invited. And they really connected that time and the person became their manager, or they become a really cool artist that they did a collab with. You never know where it's going to come from. In the beginning, if you have the energy and you really want to go with that, I would say go out, meet people, use Groover, use the internet to connect with people, use forums, connect with as many people as possible because you never know from where it will come from. Many people make it. Many more, independent artists are able to get significant revenue from streaming platforms from doing shows. It doesn't mean that it's easy. It's not, but many more independent artists are able to do it without being part of a big record label more and more. Like, it's impressive. I know that Spotify has a lot of flaws and everything but they have something that is interesting in their vision that I heard is: two of their biggest target is to get to 1 billion people subscribe to their service and paying for streaming music, which is nice. The second thing is to have at least 1 million artists who are making a significant living out of just streaming on Spotify. So it's interesting to say that even Spotify has this target of bringing more and more artists to make a living out of their platform.

Many people are able to do it. And most of the time, when you listen to them, and when you hear about what they say, they hear about, they tell about… A few very random things that went along their way and made them go to the next step and you never know where it's gonna come from. Honestly, it's like… You never know.

So putting all the energy you have, taking every opportunity, being very positive about it is definitely the way to go. It doesn't mean it's going to work, but if you put the right energy and you're always on it, at some point, it will turn out the right way. Even with your music, even if you feel that your music is not good enough, or people are telling you that it's not good enough. If you keep on working, it's going to get great. If you’re determined about it, like it's going to get great at some point. If you're working on it, like with a lot of good intention, you're going to be able to have progress and then something back. So that would be like… I don't know if it answers your question, but in a way it's: even in the current context, there are so many more musicians that to stand out, you need to be everywhere, be smart, and work the best way possible on your craft and take every opportunity. It's the only way it will happen. It's so complicated. 

Michael Walker: Yeah, I think that was articulated really well. And what it reminds me of is this concept I've heard described as opportunity flow. And opportunity flow is basically at the beginning of any new endeavor or new project if you have no momentum, that is exactly like you're describing. There's very little opportunity flow and at that stage, you really want to say yes to as many opportunities as possible and just sort of get things going. And eventually you start to pick up steam and there becomes a point where opportunity flow flips and rather than saying yes to every opportunity now, because you have this like incoming flow of opportunities, the most important thing you can do now is to start to learn how to say no and how to say yes to the right opportunities. But certainly it seems like for most of us artists who are just getting started, you're at that initial point where it's like opportunity flow to start, you keep saying yes,

Dorian Perron: I love it. And I feel it, it connects a lot with Groover, for instance, in the beginning, I was really saying yes to absolutely everything like with no exception. And now that Groover has grown a bit more, I've started to say no to some things to focus more energy on some other stuff, because it's not possible to do everything when you're getting a lot of requests. So I totally agree with that vision. I was mostly saying that because for independent artists, it's even more complicated. There are so many people releasing music. I saw recently an interview, I loved it, it was an artist saying: Success is not a property. You're renting it. In a way that even if you're getting some success or some traction at some point as a musician, but it works with every project and project leader. Even if you got to get some success at some point, it's not forever, like you will still need to like invest in your project and put energy if you want to keep it and keep being able to rent it and to rent the success. So in a way it's interesting because if you want to make it, you need first to take a lot of opportunities because it's going to be hard to get to that level of success. And even when you think you had it, maybe just project yourself to the next step and say like, where can you go next? And very successful artists will tell you that they had a goal and that when they reached that goal, they created a new goal that was higher and it's important. This is very important. It can sound very basic, but it's very important to keep in mind. And I really like the opportunity flow allegory that you made because it sounds very true, but for most independent artists at first, it's like the opportunity flow is thin and you should take as many opportunities as you can. 

Michael Walker: So good. Yeah, one thing I appreciate about your story too, and the advice that we're talking about right now is about how both personally with Groover and in general, with this, starting at the beginning, opportunity flow, it sounds like one of the biggest pieces of advice is to put yourself in the room with the right people. Even if you're just starting out and you're saying yes to opportunities, you might end up networking or connecting with the right person. And with Groover, you mentioned at the beginning you had phone calls with hundreds of artists and you connected with them and you asked them questions, you got to know them. I know for my band personally, when we first got started, our big breakthrough happened when we started approaching fans waiting in lines for shows. We started having conversations with them and sharing our music, and we sold 24,000 CDs doing that in about 6 months. And that was, the thing that really helped us breakthrough was connecting and getting to know who the people were that we were looking to serve. And so it definitely seems like it's a plus one to everything you're talking about right now with Opportunity Flow and just putting yourself in the right rooms and starting to network. Even if you're someone who considers yourself more like a shy kind of person I know I certainly did, I did, that did not come naturally at all. It is a skill that you can develop and it's certainly a worthwhile thing to get comfortable with.

Dorian Perron: I agree. And I'm kind of the same. I really don't like to bother someone at an event that I don't know and say: Hey, hi. And I don't do that. Like I've just started to do that recently because I realized I was losing so many opportunities out of it, but it's really against my nature. But still I'm doing it because I'm trying to get in touch with people and talking with people because a lot of things can derive from it.

And I like the thing you were saying about getting in touch with people one by one. I think some artists would think that getting in touch with people one by one, fans one by one, it would be a lot of time to spend when maybe wasted because you need to get in touch with so many people today to make something out of your music. But it's not totally true because if you look at, you make I don't know, 100 or 200 really hardcore fans that we'll spend on your music, on your shows, on your vinyls, or just support you through things like Patreon or listen to music or tell the people around them to listen to your music, you can make a living from just a few not just a few, but like a few hundreds fans. Not forcibly, like thousands of millions, like with a few hundreds very strong fans, you can succeed in your niche and in the way you want to. So it's important to say that. It's like kind of the super fan model of: if you want to earn 10 thousand dollars a year and you consider them a super fan, and you got someone who's going to spend 50 on your music during the year, it means that you just need 200 super fans. You don't need 200,000 super fans. So it shows how important every single interaction can be in the beginning because one person that you meet, maybe they will tell all the people around them about the music.

I know that when I'm really a fan of a project, I tell everyone about it. And I'm very convincing about how much I love it. And I know that for some musicians that I love and really discovered and I’m really like I'm passionate about, I've really converted some people to their music and to really liking them and in return, they will tell other people. So it can come from like a few people that trust in your music that you have trust in. So it's really important to go out there and to also build on the people in the first interactions you can have, even if it's a single 1:1 interaction, it can have a lot of value. 

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Yeah. It definitely seemed like that's the place to start, right? That's the place to start. So then after you reach the point where you're really gaining traction through doing that, then you have to start to kind of step up and scale things up. And it's a great point that you made too, around just like the scope of a lot of times we think of: we need millions of fans or millions, tens of millions of people. Most of the artists in our community that are doing six figures a year with their music are actually somewhere in the vein of like 20 to 30K fans on their email list and their StreetTeam.

We have an artist who made  7 figures last year and I think 80,000 street team members. So it's not millions and millions of fans. Although that can be the case on social media, especially, but there's a difference between a social media follower and email subscriber, but yeah so true.

Hey man, this is, this has been awesome. Yeah. It's been really cool connecting with you and hearing about Groover and it sounds like an amazing platform that I would totally recommend that people check out for their releases and be able to network and connect with curators. For anyone who's listening to this right now, who is interested in diving deeper, what's the best place for them to go to get started? 

Dorian Perron: I think the best would be to go straight to Groover and create an account. Just so you know, if you lost at some point, we have a chat support window that you can use to ask questions. And you can also just, we try to onboard you and guide you the best way possible, but you can also look at our help center to see the guides to get started and some advice on this, but I would really say go to Groover, sign up, check it out, see if you see some contacts that could be interesting for you. Spend a bit of time getting accustomed to the platform itself. It's quite easy to use. You can spend a bit of time to do your selection of contacts. If you have any questions, you can reach out to us through the support chat. We're quite reactive. We really try to be very reactive. We'll be helping you out, trying to help you out as much as we can. That would be my advice. Just... Go to Groover and get started. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Like always we'll put the links for easy access on the show notes. And again, thanks man for coming on here. This has been great. It's been great connecting about Groover and also just about some of the fundamental mindset and principles around getting started and building a long term career. So appreciate you taking time to be here today. 

Dorian Perron: Yeah, thank you very much. And it was a really cool conversation. Very interesting. And yeah, let's see you soon. And I hope that the artists listening to you are really getting the energy up about their projects and really want to to get their music better promoted, get more visibility, and will take this advice the right way. And we'll keep on evolving. We really try to help artists as much as possible. So we're with you.

Michael Walker: Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure and check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

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