Spencer Grimes: You're being formed by that struggle and struggle is what actually grows and connects us. And so those dark times, those hard times, the times where you feel like what you're doing doesn't matter or no one's listening or you're not actually who you say you are. Those are the times that are actually growing you the most. 

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.

All right. Here we are. I'm excited to be here today with my good friend, Spencer Grimes. So Spencer is one of my favorite humans in the whole world. He is someone that I connected with a few years ago when we were bouncing around these ideas of starting an application; a software application for Modern Musician. I remember Spencer, I'm sure you remember this too, when I sent out that first email outreach. I wonder if I could find that email that we'd sent out, but it was basically like: Hey everyone on our email list. So we had this idea. We want to do something with an app and I have no idea how to build apps or how it's working, but if you do, and if you're a software developer and you have experience, then I would love to hear from you so just respond to this email. Yeah, we had a few hundred responses and most of them were real bad. [both laughing] Most of them were, like me, they're like: we have no idea how to build an app, but I want to do that. And then there were a handful that really stuck through, cut through and yours was on that list, of course. And I remember hopping on one of our first sessions and we just had this team of probably 6 or 7 software developers of different skill levels. And it was really a trial run. We were just figuring out what: how are we going to build this thing? And since then StreetTeam has grown significantly. It's grown with Modern Musician. And now we have this service; this app that can handle so much functionality from everywhere from the CRM functionality, but also the music relics and the inner circle stuff we're working on. It's been an honor getting to connect with you and you're probably the person on the team, one of the people on the team for sure that I get personal FaceTime with on a regular basis, and it's one of the great joys of my life. So I just want to say, thank-you for being awesome and being a part of our team. And thanks for being part of the podcast today, man. Spencer Grimes: Thanks for saying that. I was thinking: okay, what are we going to talk about on the podcast? I was like, man, it's so fun that we get a lot of FaceTime, we get to talk about stuff. Especially as I think back to that early on, when we were working with that initial team, and it was just all this energy around: we know we want to build something amazing, and we don't know exactly what that is yet. We would just end up with those: Oh let’s have a 1 hour check-in call that would end up being 3 hours because we would just talk, and things would just expand as we're dreaming together. And so I was like: oh man, it's so fun that we get to invite some other people into those kinds of conversations that we have. 

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Yeah, I think this will be a really fun conversation to connect with you and to share a little bit behind the scenes of the StreetTeam and the software development process. You as a musician yourself, super talented musician, and a software developer and helping to build the StreetTeam from the ground up, I've learned so much about software development from you and from working together and a lot of them, my mindsets as well, just in terms of the music industry and what we're doing with Modern Musician have been born / come through from the software world. So I guess to start with, I would love to hear a little bit about your story and how you got started with software development and your music and how you found your way to Modern Musician.

Spencer Grimes: Yeah, man, that's good. The journey of being a musician, like a lot of people, goes back so far that sometimes it can be hard to say: Oh, here's where it started; here's where it began, whatever. But I think as far as the two intersecting I have… I was raised by a couple of engineers. We didn't have a lot of music around the house. But my brothers and I discovered music as a way of expressing and communicating and connecting when we moved right in some pivotal formational years. I was that late middle school, early junior high, where you're starting to find: who am I? Am I an athlete? Am I a… Just in that defining time. We moved and so we lost our friend group and our family and everybody we were close to. And so we were really searching for just: How do we belong and music was a place that we found. Just like hearing songs that were like: wow, this song is about me. That feeling of connection through music. And so pretty much as soon as possible, I was trying to write and communicate those songs. Even before I really could play, I'd have a couple of notes on a guitar and just this is enough. I'm going to write how I feel. And so I started a band with my brothers in that early development time. And we were terrible at the beginning, but we just kept at it. We kept learning together and growing together and creating things. And we ended up getting to do just some really fun stuff. We did it all through high school and into college and through college and afterwards and just getting to travel around and play songs that you wrote for people who believe in them and believe in you and made a difference to, continue to inspire me. But coming from a family of engineers, I also have a very practical upbringing. And so we had a very much: I know I want to pursue music. I don't really know how to do it. I don't know anyone that's doing music as a career and I don't see a formula for how to pursue it. There isn't a place to go apply. That's a common thing you hear from people trying to navigate that early on. So My parents were like: go get a degree. I was interested in school and I was interested in engineering and software development. That was what my dad did. So I just got that degree. And as I was doing it, we were taking whatever time we could off of school to continue traveling and navigating both of those worlds together, which, for me, is a place that I've always existed in a sense of: in the engineering world, I'd go to class and my engineering friends would be like: man, did you study at all for this exam? And I'd be like: Oh no, I was out all night, playing show and I was on the street busking, and they were just: man, why do you do this music thing? And then I would be on tour and run into other musicians, right? People we;d be playing with and they'd be like: why are you putting yourself through the pain of school? Both camps felt like: you have to be all into this or all into that. But I always found myself just really enjoying navigating both worlds and bringing the things I was learning in engineering and software into my music and the things that I learned in music into how I build software. And just that whole integrated experience and the creativity that exists in both of those things that when you are developing code, for example, like we're doing with StreetTeam, right? We're very creative in how we're thinking about: what is it that we want to build? What do people really need to hear from us? What is it that I want to express through this thing? And it's so similar to music. I feel like I took your question and just told you my whole life story in one.

Michael: That was exactly what I wanted. Fantastic.

Spencer: Great.

Michael: Both as a musician yourself, and now helping build StreetTeam and working on this tool for other artists, I'd love to hear your perspective on what you see  are some of the biggest challenges and problems right now that musicians are facing. Obviously this is exactly why we built StreetTeam, but I'd be curious to hear from your perspective, what is the core problem that we're looking to solve with StreetTeam?

Spencer: Yeah, I really feel like a lot of times when you identify that the core problem, you're also identifying your greatest opportunity. They're really tied closely together. And that's not my idea. A lot of people think about that.

Michael: It's a universal truth.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. It's just true. With musicians, I think there's a different challenge at each stage of the career journey, and everybody is on their own path in that. But one thing that I see as a really common theme is people really needing to figure out: how do I connect directly with my fans? The industry has built really big ways of connecting art with their fans early on in the digital era with iTunes. And it was like, okay, now you can release a song and anyone can hear it. Like, wow, that's great access. But the connection point of directly from the artist to a fan is a big challenge and social media introduced this idea of: oh, now everyone can connect with everyone so that should make it easy. We've seen, especially in my own experience with social media, it's just so much noise, and it's very hard to figure out: okay, what am I really trying to say here? Because there's a lot of things being said in this space. I think with social with StreetTeam specifically, we were looking at: how do we help people go from: Hey, I have this great art into: I'm connecting with real fans who really care passionately about my music and are being impacted by it. And then: how do I help those fans have an opportunity to continue to support me? So we have on the other side of music, business, and technology, there's the Patreon model, right? Of: oh, you have fans? Here's how you monetize them. But there's this big gap between: I have fans who are coming to shows; I'm selling sold out stadiums and I've posted on social media every day and no one's commenting or liking or subscribing, right? And so that gap there is where so many artists find themselves trying to navigate, especially as independent artists, right? Trying to teach themselves how to build their brand and build their business. That's really the opportunity that I think we saw. There's so much room for us all as artists to get better at doing that.

Michael: Yeah. I think the core of StreetTeam is really about what you said of helping artists connect with their fans. And connect with them and build relationships and communicate with them directly, whereas with Spotify or different platforms, it can feel a little bit challenging. You don't know who your fans are. You don't know who they are and you don't have a way to connect with them and build a relationship. So with StreetTeam, you can get to know your fans better and you can not only get to know them, but you can see who are your top fans. With a stream from one fan… a stream isn't necessarily indicative of someone who is a super fan; someone absolutely loves you who's one of your thousand true fans. So being able to have a place where you can actually identify and honor and reward your top fans for being a fan, is awesome! So glad that we get to build it together. It's so much fun.

Spencer: Yeah!

Michael: Yeah. One thing that I think is interesting is you when we talk about applying the software development world and some of the mindsets to the artist, it seems like one of the things that really struck me about the software development world was how collaborative it is. And how with github, you can really sync up and contribute to each other's projects and you can publish these branches and you have the mother branch and you can do different ideas off of it. And it also seems like traditionally, music scenes have really formed around artists who can collaborate with each other and in bringing those branches together and those different fandoms. One thing I'm really excited, longer term to build together with you is ways for artists to integrate with each other and to be able to collaborate. I wonder if maybe we can work in something with a GitHub model. When it comes to music production, that's the one that seems like a huge opportunity to me. Not necessarily something that we're going to dive into short term with StreetTeam. [laughing] It's like: “Here! you can produce your music on StreetTeam!” Maybe, who knows? But that definitely seems like a big opportunity for a GitHub style, if you had a project, a bunch of people could contribute ideas to it. The owner, the producer could approve the ideas they wanted to. Yeah, that could be really interesting.

Spencer: Yeah. One of the things that's always most inspiring to me in collaboration within software development is just the open source attitude and not that every project is open sourced, right? Obviously there's like different reasons that you do or don't, but there is such a sense of: Oh, when I build a tool that's really useful that other people could use, I'm just going to publish it and put it out there for other people to start using it and building on top of. And you just have this spirit to the development community where if I build something and put it out there, someone else will build off of it. And then I may end up using their thing that built on top of my thing to solve some other problem I'm doing. It’s the whole “rising tide raises all ships” concept. And I totally see that in the music world. Thinking about this scene, we used to talk about generations of scenes, right? So I've been living in Minneapolis now for most of my life and have seen seasons of local bands, right? Where there's like a scene develops around a couple of people and a collaboration and there's this sense of: everybody comes to everyone else's shows because we all want to see everyone succeed, right? Or we're all buying each other's merch or we're all supporting each other in that way. And it feels very much like the same attitude, right? Of: If I'm helping you and you're helping me, we're all helping eachother. And then we're all just growing alongside each other, right?

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things that I really appreciate about you too, Spencer, you seem like a very grounded, just human-centered person. And that mindset of “we're all on the same team”, “we're all in this together”, and “rising tide lifts all boats” is something that is a part of what makes a healthy music scene happen, I think, is like the ability for people to, I don't know, cross pollinate. And to be able to collaborate and to share with each other. And it's something I hope that we can build into this community that we're building with Modern Musician now. And what we're really focusing on in 2024 is bringing all of the artists together in one place. It's part of the reason that we're doing this live right now in the discord community, and we're doing the breakout rooms after the live podcast is cause I know that there's some magic that could happen if we just sync up the right artists and your music can come together. It certainly seems like some of the biggest music scenes that have developed have come from the collaboration of two different music scenes that you wouldn't normally expect, but they came together and then they had a baby. So it's like jazz beats/death metal. That's just a crazy example.

Spencer: Yeah that's a perfect example. Yeah, exactly.

Michael: But I think for all of us, being active with connecting with other people who are here in the music community and reaching out to them to collaborate and record music together, to co-write, to do cross-promotions, to do live streams together? It'd be a really cool opportunity. And that's something that we can also build into Street Team as well. There's ways for the artists to collaborate with each other.

Spencer: Yeah. I'm really excited about building tools that make it easier to do that. Cause I think there are a lot of tools for musicians to use right now out on the internet, but there aren't a lot that are focused around that piece of collaboration. And really, musicians, especially independent musicians, but all musicians are entrepreneurs, right? They're innovators. They are people who take something known and another thing that's known and bring them together in a way that's never been arranged before, right? And that innovation process is just like a part of what makes a creator. It's part of what makes someone creative. But when you get to do it interpersonally… you get to do it and you get to collaborate with someone else, then those two knowns can come from totally different worlds, right? And that's when things get really exciting, like you're talking about.

Michael: Yeah. There's something about what you just said there about the fact that we're all creators and we're literally creating things. There's something about that word too, just in general…. creation, creators. It almost goes back to a Genesis standpoint… What is creativity? Where does it come from? Certainly seems like some of the most well known and like successful artists, just from a standpoint of their artwork, speak to this idea of tapping into something bigger than themselves. And almost like channeling the music through them. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the creative process and being a creator, where that comes from. And how you see that both in the software world and also the music world. There is like this creative force that is going through all of it.

Spencer: Yeah. There's something fascinating, I think at least, in the tradition that I've grown up in the public schools that I went to, the influences that I had, we were taught to bucket things into: This is math, this is science, this is geography. Those three things are separate areas of expertise and they are buckets. But the deeper you go into any field of study, the more you come through those buckets to see: oh actually, we were studying the same thing in three different ways. We were taking a different lens, and I think this has been something that I've seen so many times throughout my life that there will be people… math is my favorite example because there's so many musicians who say: oh I don't do math or I can't do math or you're trying to do budgeting or you're trying to figure out how many people are coming into your show or whatever, and they're like, Oh, I don't… math is not my thing when it's really, math is all around us. It's happening. It's happening all around you all the time. And I think creativity is that same thing where in my time in the engineering world, I've heard people say: Oh, I'm not creative or I don't create things. And it's…. Well, you are. You're making decisions that are creating the life that you have. We're all intrinsically creative in that way. And I think it's hard sometimes for people to wrap their minds around. Sometimes we pick identities to form us. Creator is one I've heard, right? I'm creative and that's my identity. It's all around that. That’s the sole thing that I am. But it can be so beautiful to be able to expand past: There are people who are this way and people who are that way and see that everyone's got a little bit of this mix in them, right? As somebody who's been straddling different worlds so much… I talked about when I was just sharing some of my experience through college of my engineering buddy is saying: Oh, you're not really an engineer. Or my artist friend saying: why aren't you 100% an artist. And I think it's easy to develop an imposter syndrome around that. Everybody experiences that in some way. I think about… I just watched the John Baptiste documentary. Have you seen it? Just, I think it's, I don't know, Netflix or something. My wife was like, Oh, we got to watch it! In it, John Baptiste shares a moment of: yeah, people say I'm not really a musician or I'm too much of a musician, and it's like… hearing someone who is so critically acclaimed and clearly capable have that same experience. I think it's helpful to me to remember that who is a musician, who is a creator, it's largely a choice. Those identities are a choice. You decide who you are, and then you pursue it. And in pursuing it, you continue to develop and grow and make other decisions, right? But that creative energy is in all of us. You can't escape it. We're all created beings, and by being created, we're a part of that flow, right?

Michael: So good. I love this conversation. Yeah, there's something in particular about the creative ability to, like you described, create ourselves and create our identities and become who we want to be: our ideal self. I think it's particularly interesting. There's a lot of books about self image and about how big of an impact who we believe that we are has in terms of who we actually are and who we become. There's all sorts of books about fixed mindset versus having a growth mindset around who we are. If we think that we just are this way and we're always this way, versus what you're describing with having an open mindset and realizing that things can evolve and that you can grow.

So, 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 just don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money towards 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, it’s why I have 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, but without really a fanbase or a business. And if they take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, thousands or even 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 success and their knowledge 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.

But it seems like in particular, there's some things that are a little bit more tangible and are a little bit less. If I'm looking at my computer screen right now, then I can say this is a computer screen. And, I can close my eyes and I can still imagine the computer screen, and I can see it. Whereas our sense of identity and our sense of self is so completely… I think artificial is the right word necessarily, but it's created. It's an idea. It's literally an idea of who we are. And we really do have the ability to transform who we are and identity and multiple people can see the same person in different ways. And so that question of: who am I really, and in what is the nature of a self I think is one of life's greatest mysteries and most fulfilling questions explore. It might be like part of the core of what we're all doing is just trying to figure out who are we and how do we express that and connect with ourselves and others and in a greater way?

Spencer: Yeah, it's conceptual, right? So there's nothing physical about it, but it's something that we're all on a journey of. I had an experience during COVID. Everything was shut down, nobody was seeing each other and so we all fell into new social environments that we hadn't been a part of. I had a neighbor living across the street, a high school kid who I never really interacted with. He was always busy off doing other things. And he started coming around just because life had been interrupted. He'd seen me carrying in gear and stuff and so he heard that I was a musician and was like: Hey man, I'm a musician! We should collaborate. And I was like, great. I've got nothing going on. Come on over. Let's collaborate. I invited him in and I sat down at the piano and he said: Oh no, I play piano, but I like guitar. And he grabbed my guitar and just started wailing on it. Like not any notes that I could pick out. He just grabbed it in places and hit it. And I had this sense of: Oh, he thinks he's a musician, he's not really a musician. He's not yet a musician. Maybe someday he will be. But as we continued spending time together and we started recording stuff together and he would play a beat and then cut it up and then be like: okay, here's what I want, a piece of that. And he had this whole creative process that was totally foreign to me. And my box of: oh, you need to know how to play G, C and D on the guitar to be a musician, was actually not helpful, right? He had chosen for himself that identity of a musician and he was a creator because of that, right? He just continued to pursue it without any sort of external validation or instruction or whatever. And for me, it was so inspiring just to reframe: I don't have to be who other people think that I am or who I come across as. I can actually just do the thing that I enjoy doing it and letting it be called whatever it is, and just pursue the thing that I'm finding life in. And whether that's a creative endeavor or building software or running and skiing, right? I can just not worry about: am I a skier, but I could just ski.

Michael: Are we humans or are we skiers?

Spencer: Exactly.

Michael: Yeah. I don't know how much of a rabbit hole I want to go down here…. we could get pretty philosophical here and go deeper into this idea of identity and self, but there's something about just the nature of self itself. No pun intended.

Spencer: Oh, there we go. You're quick on that. [both laughing]

Michael: It certainly feels, a lot of times, like we're isolated or that we're separate, like we're separate from everyone else and we can feel lonely or can feel like I'm in my own world. And, at the deepest level, it seems like what you described earlier in the sense that there's not really… if you actually look for a self… this is a very like Buddhist concept, but I think they call it a nada, but it's basically: one of the principles is that that there actually is no separate self. There's no separate self, and everything is connected. Everything is part of one being, and therefore we are nothing and we're everything at the same time. We're all one. It's one thing. And it's really interesting to try to look and see what is it? There's certainly a sense of self, but if you actually investigate and you try to find like, where does it exist? Does it exist in my head? Or is it like, am I solar plexus or is it my hand? If I cut off my hand, I'm still me. So it's not that.

Spencer: Yeah

Michael: If I lose all my memories, am I still me? Well, maybe? It depends. But what is it that we really define as that separate self?

Spencer: I don't know how much of a rabbit hole you want to go down this. I know we've had discussions around this before and I've heard from the podcast, it's a regular, recurring theme, but I think this concept of self and concept of who is a musician and a creative in the face of what's happening with AI technology right now is very fascinating to me. Because as we look backward, we can see a history of new tools being developed and changing music. And then those tools being incorporated into how we define creation and music. That stuff's fascinating to me. I know you have a lot of thoughts on that, but even the idea that after humans were using their voices, everything since then has been technology. They were using a lyre, and there was like one string on a piece of wood. And that was a technology that then changed how music was experienced. And that continued, right? Then there was a guitar and then there was the electric guitar and the people playing electric guitar were like: Oh, that's not real music. That's something else, right? But then as the technology continued to change, “what music was” continued to change. And now we're sitting on the brink of a new revolutionary change that’s going to redefine a lot of how we think about: who am I as a creator? What is the value I actually bring to the creative process, right? 

Michael: Yeah. That's super interesting. I don't think about that very often. Just like the fact that instruments themselves are tools. Tools that haven't always existed and that we're going to keep creating new instruments. I guess like instruments is literally another word for tool. It's a tool to convey something. And yeah, I agree. I think that AI… I really don't know. We'll see in 5-10 years when the singularity happens. But on one hand, you have a lot of the general consensus is that AI is a tool and it's like other tools that have come before it in the sense that this is a way to augment our current skill sets and it's not going to replace humans, it's just going to help us to augment our existing creativity and our existing music. It seems like that at this point right now, that's absolutely true and I think it's probably going to be true even in the case of a singularity. Let's just hypothesize that, I don't know, 10 years from now we have AI that is a thousand times more intelligent than humans in every way. And let's hypothesize that we have a Neuralink device that all humans are able to communicate with each other telepathically and in that we're actually augmented with that, like our brains are actually interfacing with an AI, then, on one hand, coming back to our root question that we talked about: what is self? Who are we really?

Spencer: Yep.

Michael: Maybe the true essence of self is something that's not part of our bodies, like our human bodies. Maybe it's something that is actually connected more at the mind or thought or creativity, like that soul essence. And maybe this type of technology, and we're really going far out here, but if we do have a singularity or we have this AI that’s a thousand times our current capabilities, maybe it's just going to help us plug into the same thing that's always been driving this, which is that creativity; which is that soul and that's that creative force of the universe.

Spencer: Even the language around the singularity and everything becoming one, it's very reminiscent of the Buddhist themes that you were talking about earlier, right? Of: we are all one. And in some ways, we have been building crude tools that seem separate from us. And that then that singularity is actually just the expanding of those tools, inviting them into the oneness. This is my first time actually ever thinking about that. So I'm not going to write a book about it.

Michael: I would read it. I would definitely read it. [both laughing]

Spencer: But it's an interesting idea. I definitely think it's going to continue to be a challenge. Musicians and creatives will constantly be asking the questions of: what am I? What is my value really? And I think people, in general, ask that question all the time. If you spend your whole life learning about the combustible engine and being a mechanic for gas powered vehicles, and now everyone's using electric vehicles, you have the question of, okay, what is my value? These are the things I've been working on. These are the skills that I have, but what is it about me that is actually valuable to other people; to myself? It's scary for people, I think, especially when it's like: oh, man, I've been working so hard on all of these things. But in some ways, it feels to me like a big opportunity to ask more important questions, right, of not just how have you been spending your time, but the question of who are you and what are the things in your life that actually matter.

Michael: This is great. I didn't think that we were going to go this deep conversation to have this kind of conversation, but I'm glad that we are. This is a lot of fun. So you know what, we are here with a live audience right now, and I think it'd be fun to invite folks who are here live to participate and be a part of the conversation. So I just want to put it out there. If you are in our discord community right now watching this live, if you'd like to come on stage and raise your hand come on here. If you have anything that you'd like to contribute to the conversation or any questions, feel free to raise your hand. You can just right click on your icon and you can raise your hand to come on live. Or if you have any questions in the chat, feel free to put them in the chat and we can have a conversation through there.

Going into what we're describing right now with the singularity in the creativity and our role as a modern musician, I really do think what we're talking about right now is a core movement that is only going to get more and more important. But there's only gonna be more… We're gonna be asking these questions in the age of AI is: what is our role? What's our purpose? What does it mean to be human now? And there will likely be some sort of trans-humanist movement where we start to blur the lines between how we identify ourselves right now versus digital intelligence. So I do think that even though this is some pretty far out stuff, I think that we're actually entering an era where this becomes really important to understand so we can actually have purpose.

Spencer: Yep. Yeah. And in some ways, they're not new questions. People often in thinking about the trajectory of their life, will start to ask questions like: okay, when I'm on my deathbed, what's actually going to matter? And in some ways, we are just taking that question and fast forwarding it to when we're living our lives, right? You're like: Okay, I think about it with programming, obviously the tools that are out there right now have totally transformed the way that I originally learned to write code years ago. And I can see the progression of: wow, this is getting really good to where my ability to write code is not going to be what defines me. So then, what is it, right? What is it about my life that I want to define me? And what is it that I actually care about? And, for me, that question is not answerable. It's an experience, right? It's continuing. It's a journey that I'm on. I know we've talked about this quite a bit. It comes back really to relationships and connections. And for me, my family, my close friends, some of the relationships that I've been able to build through music, even… that brings us full circle back to why we started building StreetTeam, which is around helping artists build those relationships. But I really feel like that part of taking away my skills as being the defining factor of who I am, then it feels like it leaves, for me, so much of relationships and connection and community.

Michael: Absolutely. That's so well articulated. And that exercise with the deathbed… I have an account that I follow on x.com that is called daily death reminders and they literally just post like once a day and it's: you're going to die someday. [both laughing]

Spencer: That’s good.

Michael: It's great. It's one of my favorite accounts that I follow. There really is something powerful, if you're listening to this right now and you just imagine what would it be like if you knew without a doubt that you had 5 minutes left to live and you have 5 minutes left, and you're about to say goodbye to everyone and everything. All of us are going to have that experience if we’re lucky enough to die a natural death, where we're about to say goodbye to everyone and everything that we've known. Everything that we've built. And you do hear a lot about when people have a near death experience and they have that experience where they're about to say goodbye to everyone and everything. For a lot of people, that's one of the first times in their life that they've woken up. They woke up and they realized what really matters, and what doesn't matter. And it seems like some of the recurring themes are: I wish that I went for it. I wish that I didn't hold back. I wish I didn't let fear hold me back. And the things that matter, really being around the relationships and around the people that we've connected with. And so it does seem like a good lesson and amazing exercise for us to all reflect on somewhat regularly is just to remember that we do have a limited time here and time is incredibly precious and the way that we spend it is really important. It's something it's easy to take for granted, but sometimes life can be lost unexpectedly, very quickly. So it's really important to cherish the moments that we do have.

Spencer: Yeah, no, totally. I feel like we don't talk a lot about death in our culture. Even that X account that you mentioned, it's counter-cultural, right? It's: Oh, that's not like the other content that's on that site. But I think there's a biblical saying in the book of Ecclesiastes, it says: a wise man thinks often on death; A fool thinks only of a good time. There's this idea that when we confront our humanity, it actually changes how we live currently. And I think for me, it changes my risk profile, which is sort of what you were describing of: I wish I had taken that chance or I wish I had tried to go further because when you think about death, you realize: the things I'm afraid of losing aren't really there, right? They're all transient. “Worst case scenario”, right? That's a game we often play of: okay, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? And the worst things, a lot of times in when we're making decisions are like: Oh if I pursue music full-time, or if I take this opportunity, what if I don't make enough money and lose my stability, lose my house or lose my car? And then to think about when it comes to the end of my life, those things aren't really there for me anyhow. So then it changes the risk profile. You're like: Oh I'm actually more likely to take that risk because I would rather try and fail than not try and keep things that matter. Right?

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. That's a great lesson that it's better to go for it and “fail” then to not try it, or not gone for it at all. Because it's actually a good thing. If you really go for something that you truly care about and you learn from it andit doesn't work the way you're expecting, you get so much value from the lessons that you learned. In fact, you probably get more value from the things that were mistakes, than if everything went right.

Spencer: Definitely. Definitely.

Michael: Isn't that kind of counterintuitive?

Spencer: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And it's those hard things that form us. When we create more challenge in our own lives by taking risks like that, those are also the things that form us, they're the most inspiring parts of our journey.

Michael: Absolutely. Okay. Hey, let's get ready to wrap up for today. Spencer, this has been a lot of fun. I feel like we've been able to explore some deeper concepts. It's rare that I get to have a conversation like this and just philosophize about the purpose of life and existence. It’s one of my favorite conversations to have, especially as it connects to what we're working on here, and being a musician and thinking about our role in society; thinking about the future and where things are headed. I think it's really important to be having conversations like this. I appreciate you being here and being a part of the podcast and the team. The last question that I have for you is: if you had a time machine and you could go back in time, let's say to your most challenging moments, like one of your darkest moments, and you could give yourself a piece of advice. What's the number one piece of advice that you'd give yourself? And let's actually focus it specifically on music as well.

Spencer; Man. I feel like when I think about the hardest times in my musical experience, it always comes back to just remembering that the thing that you're going through isn't the way that it's always going to be, and that actually, you're being formed by that struggle, and struggle is what actually grows and connects us, right? I needed that. I had some people speak that into my life on several occasions. And it's just the more I go through it, the more I really believe that the struggle is the part that grows us. We grow very little when we're comfortable. But man, we grow a lot when we have to. And so those dark times, those hard times, the times where you feel like what you're doing doesn't matter or no one's listening or you're not actually who you say you are? Those are the times that are actually growing you the most. 

Michael: Mic drop. So good, man. I feel like that just articulated our whole hour-long conversation really nicely into one sentiment. Beautiful.

Spencer: This is so fun. Thanks for having me on. 

Michael: This is fun! So Spencer, if anyone here is interested in connecting more with you, or maybe listen to some of your music, where can they go to connect more?

Spencer: Yeah. My band is called Whosah, and you can find us everywhere on the internet that you might look for bands. And I'm in charge of all those accounts so if you connect through any of those and message us, and that's me, you can say: Hey,

Michael: Awesome. Spencer is a core part of our Modern Musician family as well so he'll be here in our discord community and I'm sure you can tag. Actually, I'm sure you'll see him around here.

Spencer: That's right. I'm in the discord!

Micheal: Yeah, he's here responding to questions you guys have and software related stuff.

Spencer: That's right. If you really want to talk to me, you submit a support request and I’ll be like: I get that! [both laughing]

Michael: Beautiful. 

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to 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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