Michael Walker: Yeah. All right. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Jay Gilbert. Jay is a digital marketing innovator. He's pioneered the industry's first digital-only label, and he's run award-winning campaigns for Nirvana, Bob Marley, KISS, and more. He's the founder of Your Morning Coffee, which has over 15,000 readers.

He's the co-host of three top industry podcasts. And he's a guest lecturer at UCLA, USC, Columbia; GrammyU mentor; Recording Academy voting member. And he is a great source of insights and experience you as it relates to the music industry. So I'm really excited to have him on the podcast today.

Talk a little bit about how things have evolved over the course of the last several decades in the industry and where they're going. How, if you're an artist right now, you can best get set up to succeed. So Jay, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Jay Gilbert: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

One slight correction. The bio needs to be updated. We just passed 25,000 for the newsletter and for the Your Morning Coffee podcast. Every year at the end of the year, we sort of knock off anyone who hasn't opened the newsletter in the last year because people change jobs and that sort of thing. So the list is sort of growing, and then it dips a little bit, and then it grows. But yeah, we just passed 25,000, which isn't massive, but it's the right people—artists, managers, labels, that sort of thing. Students.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Awesome. That's a great milestone. Congratulations. Thank you. Alright, so let's just dive right in.

I would love to hear a little bit about your journey throughout the course of the music industry and kind of where you've seen, where things see things evolve. I'm curious to hear from your perspective, what are some of the biggest problems or challenges that you see artists struggling with when they first come to you these days?

Jay: Yeah, it's interesting because, as you know, there are certain challenges today that maybe weren't around 10 years ago. A lot of it is exactly the same, right? It's number one: it's having great music. Let's start there. Okay. One of my favorite quotes is from Jonathan Daniel from Crush Management, and he has this great quote that I use often.

And if you don't know, Crush Management is like Sia, Miley, Green Day, Panic! at the Disco, Train. I mean, Jonathan's an awesome person, but he runs a great company too. The quote is: “If you give me a great song, my job is easy. If you give me a good song, my job is impossible.” Mm-hmm. And today, if you record music, Michael, and you put it up on DSPs, it's alongside of Drake, Billie Eilish, the Chainsmokers, Oasis, whoever. You have to look and sound buttoned up. It has to be world class. So let's start with great music, and everything we talk about after that is just assuming that you put out the best music that you can possibly put out. The challenges today are that the barrier to entry is so low.

You and I could record something on an iPad and get it up on SoundCloud and YouTube tonight. We could get it on all the DSPs across the world in a matter of days. Okay? So that used to be a problem because there were gatekeepers—labels, distributors. Well, now that's gone. So there's this firehose of creativity, of songs being uploaded to all these services, not just the DSPs, but YouTube. And how do you rise above that clutter? So there are some new challenges, but some of the new challenges are the same as the old challenges. And what I would say is that it's still about growing an audience and engaging with that audience. And that sounds pedantic, but I would rather have a video with a thousand views and a thousand comments than a million views and no comments. It's not just about reaching people, because we all have these social media feeds and short-form video—TikTok, Reels, Shorts. I mean, it's just a barrage of all this stuff that it takes a little bit more work, I think, to really connect with an audience. So you've got great music.

You are consistent in your marketing and in your recording, your writing, your touring; that consistency pays dividends. But at the end of the day, there are always going to be new tools and tactics to get your music in front of people, and that's great. And you should know what those tools and tactics are and be a student of the game and use them and try them. And the ones that work you use; the ones that don't, you don't. And you have to be open to learning and trying those things. But at the end of the day, it's really a lot of what it was 10, 20 years ago. And I'll give you one last example. I moderated this panel at Music Tectonics on data and A&R.

People are talking about the different platforms and the analytics that they use and how they can discover developing artists that are flying under the radar. And I asked this one person who was an A&R person, how do you discover new talent today? And he said, “I look for a lineup around the block to see them play on a Tuesday night.” And I thought, wow, that's old school. That's refreshing. So that's sort of where we're at today.

Michael: Hmm. Good stuff. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that some of the tactics and the specific tools and techniques might evolve over time, but really a lot of the foundations and the fundamentals are things that have been true since decades ago, and they're still true today.

That's right. And one of those things is great, quality music. And I guess today we could probably, if we wanted to, we probably could create a song on suno.com, and that's a whole can of worms, but we could probably create that in a matter of minutes and then put that out—at least just distribute it online on social media and whatever.

And so how do you cut through the noise and actually create quality content that rises above the clutter and builds an authentic relationship with your fans? Yeah. So rather than just views or kind of surface-level metrics, how do you actually build an authentic relationship?

Yeah, that's exactly a good example. The example you shared, too, of the A&R rep who looks at the people who are actually putting butts in seats at shows as an example of that level of connection being the most important thing. That's definitely refreshing. Yeah.

So I'm curious to hear your perspective for someone who's—let's say that there's an artist who's watching or listening to this right now, and they are relatively early on. They are an independent artist, and they have their heart set on doing music full-time, and it's their goal and their dream to turn this into a full-time career. And they—let's say that they have a bunch of songs they've written, but they haven't recorded them professionally yet. And they're just sort of like, what do I—where do I get started? How do I create that kind of quality music that's going to allow me to turn this into a real career? Yeah.

What would your recommendations be for them to nail that first point of creating the music?

Jay: Yeah, I mean, today it's so much easier than it was in years past to create great-sounding demos and recordings. Digital audio workstations—they should familiarize themselves with the various digital audio workstations that are out, and you don't have to have a ton of equipment.

But you should have the basics: a decent microphone and whatever your instrument is. But I think it comes down to experimentation. I'll give you an example with just podcasting. I'm sure that when you started podcasting, you're like, “Oh gosh, what mic should I use? What distributor should I use? What platform?” I mean, you try things.

In January, we passed our thousandth podcast, and we've tried every mic, every board, everything, and I've settled on my equipment. Love it. It took me a while to get there, and I think with somebody who's writing and recording today, talk to your friends that are musicians, look online on YouTube and see: what kind of equipment are they using? What kind of software, what kind of digital audio workstations, what kind of tools?

Then once you sort of have that, you can kind of evolve. But when you make a demo of something, there are so many tools out there to make those demos sound amazing. I work with some professional songwriters, and some of them are actually using platforms like Suno. Suno is not what a lot of people read about in the press. It's not simply a platform where you do a text prompt and it creates a song that's trained off of somebody else's work. What Suno is evolving into is basically more of a digital audio workstation. And one of the ways that some of our songwriters use Suno is they will upload their piano or guitar track for a song, and then they'll sort of go through the options—like, what would a string section sound like on this? Or a horn section, or different rhythm sections, and all of that—and just experiment. Experiment: “Oh, that works.” And they bring that down, broken up into stems. They put their own vocal on it, they play on top of it. And some of these demos, they're incredible. I mean, they sound like a finished album.

But that's how Nashville is versus a lot of other places where talent breaks from. It's very competitive in Nashville, but it's also very collaborative. People co-write with each other all the time. They record with each other all the time, and their demos are incredible. Typically, they're world class. And I would encourage your listeners and viewers to check out a documentary called It All Begins With a Song, and it's available on Amazon, I believe, and it breaks down the Nashville singer-songwriter—mostly songwriter—ecosystem and how it's a business and how songwriters go about creating their art. So for a new, developing artist today, man, you're standing on the shoulders of giants. You need to use all these tools that you have that people didn't have 10, 20 years ago.

You've also got something at your disposal, and I tell college students this all the time because it can move mountains. And that is, my old boss used to tell me, “Nobody wants to give you a job, but everybody wants to give you advice.” And I'll never forget that because it's so true. Don't ask somebody for a job or for something. Ask them for guidance or advice. And I'll give you one example. So you've got a new, developing artist, and let's say they want to be—they want to play festivals, or they want to play EDM music, whatever it is.

At their fingertips, they can go online and find out other people that are doing that—who their managers, producers, engineers, booking agents are. They can find all of this online for any of those artists, and they can reach out to them via LinkedIn or social media DMs, YouTube—whatever it is. You can reach out and go, “Hey Michael, I know you do this thing. I'm a struggling, new, developing artist. I just graduated from school. I need a little guidance. Could I trouble you for a quick Zoom to ask you a few questions?” Nine times out of 10, that person's going to go, “Sure, of course.” And that's something that we didn't have 10, 20 years ago. And now a developing artist could actually speak to another artist or manager or important person that they can get great advice from. Mm-hmm.

Michael: Good stuff. Don't ask for a job, ask for advice.

Jay: Yeah.

Michael: It does seem like asking for advice is sort of like a compliment. It's a compliment to the person you're talking to, too. It makes them feel—yeah—feel good. Feels good to pass it forward to. Sweet.

One question that I have for you is around monetization and sustainability for an artist. Mm-hmm. Right now, you've mentioned how there's all these tools that didn't used to exist that just make it so much easier to create and to create high-quality content in a way that just wasn't possible in the past.

And now—well, I'm going to take back my question because there's a step in between there that is super important even before we talk about monetization. Sure. Which is what you described earlier around connection and building a community and an audience. Yeah. I would love to hear you share from your experience how does an artist, especially in today's day and age, where there's more music than ever—it's easier to make music—and we have all the social media tools to apparently connect with people, how do you recommend the artist actually approach this task of connecting and building an audience?

Jay: Yeah, it is the number one question, and I'm so glad you asked it. Let's start with zero. Let's say that you're a developing artist and you don't have any fans yet. You haven't put out any music yet. You haven't played live yet. You're just starting out. So the first thing I would advise that person to do is develop a street team.

And that sounds expensive and complicated. It's not. A street team is your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mom, your dad, your buddy, your uncle—your street team. I mean, you look at artists today—huge touring artists are still surrounded by some of their original street team, the Taylor Swifts of the world.

So surround yourself with trusted people who will tell you what they really think of the art that you're creating. But then, as you start playing live and you start recording and you start releasing music, and you have this group around you, maybe one of them's good at editing short-form video. Maybe one of them's good at posting things to social media or editing longer-form YouTube. Everybody sort of has their roles and responsibilities, and you can move mountains with a small street team.

As you start releasing music, then other things kick in, like making sure that you are—this sounds pedantic—but when somebody posts a comment on YouTube, that you respond to that person, or if it's on social media, whatever. Make sure that you're engaging with your fans, with people who like what you're doing. The other thing that I think is really important and is getting more important as a developing artist: collaboration. Right?

Not just co-writes, but who would you like to open for? Who would you like to have open for you? What covers would resonate with you? I had an artist who, during lockdown, started recording songs of artists that they admired that were strong women.

Let's start with zero. Let's start the—let's say that you're a developing artist and you don't have any fans yet. You're just—you haven't put out any music yet. You haven't played live yet. You're just starting out. So the first thing I would advise that person to do is develop a street team.

And that sounds expensive and complicated. It's not. A street team is your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mom, your dad, your buddy, your uncle—your street team. I mean, you look at artists today, huge touring artists are still surrounded by some of their original street team, the Taylor Swifts of the world.

So surround yourself with trusted people who will tell you what they really think of the art that you're creating. But then, as you start playing live and you start recording and you start releasing music, and you have this group around you, maybe one of them's good at editing short form video. Maybe one of them's good at posting things to social media or editing longer form YouTube, or everybody sort of has their roles and responsibilities, and you can move mountains with a small street team.

Right. As you start releasing music, then other things kick in, like making sure that you are—this sounds pedantic—but when somebody posts a comment on YouTube, that you respond to that person, or if it's on social media, whatever. Make sure that you're engaging with your fans, with people who like what you're doing.

The other thing that I think is really important and is getting more important as a developing artist: collaboration, right? Not just co-writes, but who would you like to open for? Who would you like to have open for you? What covers would resonate with you? I had an artist who, during lockdown, started recording songs that—of artists that they admired—that were strong women.

Well, guess what? Those strong women, once they heard that music, they reached out to them, and then they started co-writing and recording with some of their favorite artists. There's some really crazy cool things that can happen with collaboration, but you just sort of take—you build these blocks.

And once you get people who are sort of a core group, you can have a Patreon. You can have a private group where they get things maybe a little earlier than everybody else, or maybe they see the demoing process or some behind-the-scenes things, and you try to reward those super fans—those people who are—you know who they are—the ones that are gonna be there for everything that you do. But it's about two things. It's about growing that audience that we talked about. Right? And that's a challenge, but challenge accepted, right? You can play live and grow that audience.

You can do those collabs that we just talked about. You can do an interesting cover if that fits your brand, who you are. You can do brand partnerships. Even as a developing artist, there's a lot of ways to connect to an audience, but I feel like where some developing and middle-class artists fall down is they get a little bit lazy in the engagement part of it.

And that is doing things. I just went to a show about a week ago. An artist does an annual show just for their fan club—does a full-on show just for their fan club. I thought that was really cool. I mean, how special are you starting to feel when you know you get something that everybody else doesn't get?

But I think that just engaging with your fans can move mountains, because maybe you don't have a hundred thousand fans. Maybe you just have a thousand true fans. That can be a business and sustainable.

Michael: So good. I don't think you're aware of this, Jay, but we actually have a software-as-a-service platform that we've been developing over the past couple of years called Street Team, and it's literally designed for exactly what you're describing—helping artists in that initial stage to honor and reward their top fans for being a part of their community and helping them grow. So there's gamification, incentives, and ways for them to share exclusive content, and when the time is right, they have their inner circle where they have paid membership—sort of like Patreon—and all of that just speaks perfectly to why we built the platform in the first place.

And what I'm hearing you say is that the number one most important thing is the connection that artists are building with their fans. It's the relationships. And one thing to be careful of—and just really treat with the importance that it merits, because it's the most important thing—is the engagement, is the relationships, the connections, what you're doing to show up for your fans and build that relationship, including things like responding to their comments and paying attention to those people and shedding a light on them.

Jay: Awesome. I'd like to try out your platform, because it sounds like we're speaking the same language. I'll give you one other quick example. For those of your listeners who have ever been on Twitch or visited Twitch, there are so many things that they're doing right there. You go in to see your favorite artist maybe recording something, and they're like, "Oh, hey, Jay's here. Great to see you, Jay," and other fans are talking to you. Man, you are invested now.

And then the other thing is, on social media, when you get your picture taken with one of your favorite artists, that's currency. That is a deeper level of engagement. They're posting that to show their friends, "I'm cooler than Michael, because I got my picture taken with my favorite artist here." It's a different world in that regard. It used to be so detached. I grew up loving bands like Cheap Trick and Queen, and I couldn't reach out and have a conversation—a DM—with Freddie Mercury.

But today, I went to a show the other day, and the artist is, like, between songs, "Hey, Jay's here tonight. Hey, Jay, thanks for coming." That sort of give-back engagement—now you're set for life. You're gonna defend that artist. Now it's a sense of ownership. And I think that's what you're talking about with your platform: tools that allow you to go deeper and really connect. You mentioned the word "gamification," which can be really powerful. It's just a deeper form of engagement.

Michael: That's it exactly. And it's awesome that you brought up Twitch as an example. We just completed our annual event here in Orlando at our studio, and we had an artist who happened to be here who is a Twitch partner. She's an amazing live-streaming artist and built a six-figure income primarily through streaming twice a week.

And she did a workshop all about live streaming and talked about the benefits of live streaming and ultimately exactly what you're describing—the connection that comes from the features that they've added. And it was a reminder for me personally, with the platform that we're building with Street Team, how important live streaming and that connection point is. So you can bet that we left that session with a big list of line items for our developers to be like—

Jay: Yeah, these are some really fun ideas to be able to help artists connect more and honor their fans, and that live connection is just—it's something about that. It's special. And I'm glad you mentioned that, because live streaming isn't as sexy as it was during lockdown, but it's still very effective, and you can deepen relationships with it.

And I think people honestly should do more of it. It reminds me a little bit of, let's say, email—some people call it ECRM or CRM, consumer relationship management. Email works.

And if you can get an email address of your fans and communicate directly with them—because a lot of these platforms disintermediate you, and you can't directly communicate with your fans, which—that's a whole other show. But if you can have that relationship, whether it's a cell number—you can text them—or it's their email address, and you mentioned that engagement on Twitch, then you start developing a community.

I always think of it as: artists that do it right—when you go to, like, when Jimmy Buffett was alive and you went to one of his shows—they called them Parrotheads. You're part of a community. You go to a Grateful Dead show—you're one Deadhead. You're part of this family. And today, with the BTS Army and Swifties with Taylor Swift, and on and on and on—if you can go past just a fan and develop a community, a family, a thing—man, you've crossed into another realm.

Michael: That's a great word to describe. It's like that family connection to the community. And it definitely seems like live—whether that's live streams, like the digital equivalent to live shows, but even live shows themselves—maybe it's just the fact that it's live. There's something about that connection where people can be together, they can belong together, and it creates those roots.

Yeah, 100%.

Jay: Yeah, I mean, there's nothing like it. I went to a show a couple nights ago. A friend of mine is in Lainey Wilson's band, and I saw Lainey playing the LA Forum, and that's a big room, and it felt like everyone was on the same page. It was electric even from the opening band. ERNEST opened—came out.

You just don't hear that roar for an opening artist very often. They were there for the night to enjoy the show, and it really felt like—if you've ever been at a sporting event, and let's say you and I don't know each other, and we're sitting next to each other at a Vikings game and they score—we're high-fiving each other. I don't know you, you don't know me. It's like, boom. We're part of a thing. And when you cross that in the music realm, it just gets amplified, I think.

Michael: A hundred percent. It's funny you mentioned ERNEST. Our guitarist from our band when we toured for about 10 years—before I started my family and started Modern Musician—actually went on to be the guitarist for ERNEST right now. Oh, really? So you saw him perform with ERNEST on that show.

Jay: I did. I was sitting closer to the drummer, watching him. The guitar player came back and forth, but I do remember him. If you can't have fun at an ERNEST show, you probably don't have a pulse. You look around the audience, and everybody was smiling. That's a great sign.

Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. So we've talked about two of the biggest pillars. One: starting with the song—starting with the music—having something that's high quality that's going to resonate and provide value to people who are listening to it. And two: the connection and the audience and building real roots, real communities.

And the third thing I'd love to hear your perspective on is around sustainability and how artists can generate revenue and income with their music so they can afford to spend more time doing it and reaching more people.

Jay: Yeah. It's a music business, right? It's a business, but it's also got a 93% failure rate if you're just looking at ROI. I had an artist manager tell me one time, "Music isn't what you do, it's who you are." You didn't have a choice. I used to tour as a musician. You used to tour as a musician. I would bet you my car that you still play, and maybe it's for your dog, maybe it's for your kids, but you're not gonna stop playing. It's who you are, right?

But it's a business. So how do you make money in music? Well, today the top two: touring and merch. It used to be recorded music. People will get down on Spotify and DSPs and YouTube—"they don't pay artists enough." They don't pay artists—never have. They pay rights holders, right?

So if you look at the amount of music that's out there, according to Luminate, there's a little over 200 million ISRCs. Those aren't necessarily individual tracks, but for the sake of this exercise, let's just say that there's 200 million tracks out there. Eighty-seven percent of them have been streamed 1,000 or fewer times. Okay.

Now, Spotify passed a thing a couple years ago—or 18 months ago, whatever it was—where if you're streaming 1,000 or fewer in the last 12 months, you're not getting paid out. So there's a ton of music out there. Very little of it is rising to the top. Streaming can be very lucrative if you're Bad Bunny, if you are BTS.

But streaming pays out roughly $3,000 to $5,000 for every million streams. People think that there's a per-stream rate. There's not. There's a pool of money every month. We use this thing called the pro rata model versus user-centric. And with pro rata, you've got a pool of money, and then it's broken up. Let's say you are Republic, and you're 6% of the streams that month—you get 6% of the pool.

So it'd be great if I listened to Michael Walker all month—that's all I listened to. Well, your rights holder, whether it's DistroKid, CD Baby, TuneCore, or Atlantic Records—the rights holder—should benefit from that. You should get 70% of that $9.99 or $10.99—whatever—but that's not the way it works today.

So, to get back to your question on revenue: you're gonna make your most money from playing live and selling merch. So you should make sure that you have a compelling offer on both of those things. I consider vinyl a merch item. We've gone from ownership to access, but for some of us, we're slipping back into ownership again. I love vinyl. I have a turntable sitting right here.

You've read the stat that half the people that buy vinyl don't own a turntable, and that's not really accurate. If you look at the Luminate report, they break it down by age group. For millennials, it's close to being true, but if you're a little bit older, no, that's not really the case.

So you can make money on premium vinyl. I had one of my artists sell a double album for $100, and they sold out. The reason for it was: it was a beautiful package with a couple of posters. It was on orange vinyl. I couldn't wait to get it. I had to have that thing. So I see that as a merch item.

But there are other ways of monetizing, and that's probably for another show. The Brabec Brothers have a really great book on all the different ways that you monetize music. But I'll tell you some obvious ones: sync licensing—getting your music placed in film, TV, games. The average one's around $7,500. You're not gonna retire from it, but I have one client who bought his condo with one sync. So if you have a song that's in demand, you can make some serious money on sync licensing.

And then you have brand partnerships, and it goes all the way down to people who sell loops and beats. We could go on for hours and hours, but really the ones you want to focus on: touring and merch. That's where you're gonna make a majority of the money that you make.

And hopefully you have some really great music that people will stream, but don't get down on the streaming services, because I don't subscribe to that. Let's use Spotify, because people pick on Spotify—they pay out nearly 70% of the revenue they take in. And again, that goes to the rights holders. But a stream is not worth a download. A download isn't worth a CD, and a CD is not worth premium vinyl. All of these configurations have different values, in my humble opinion.

And I believe that you go to where the party is. Don't try to build your own party. Look and see: what are those artists that we talked about earlier that you want to open for, or have open for you, or collaborate with, write with—what are they doing? What's working? What's not working? Are there certain merch items that people are selling that seem to be doing really well?

I remember when PledgeMusic was around. I used to see these reports on what people were buying, and socks were really high on the list. I bought a pair of Cheap Trick socks, and I was like, "Wow." You wouldn't really think to make socks for your merch table, but it's things like that.

There are a lot of ways to monetize your music and exploit it—and I mean that in the best possible way—but it brings me to that final point, which is: you just have to educate yourself on all the different options. Look online at all of your favorite artists. What are they doing to monetize? Is it experiences?

Can you go to the show and do a paid meet-and-greet, or get your picture taken with a band? There are some experiences that you buy on people's websites where they'll write a song with you, or they'll write a song with your lyrics, or they'll give you handwritten song sheets and stuff. It's only limited by your imagination and what you're willing to work to do.

Michael: Awesome. Good, good stuff. So what I'm hearing you say is that most of the different monetization options really stem from that second point that we talked about around that connection with the community—100%. If you have that audience, if you have that community, then you can perform live and go play shows, and those live shows—those live experiences—are something that people are willing to pay a premium for—100%.

Collectibles and merch items, whether that's vinyl or T-shirts, other things that help those fans who identify and connect with the community express themselves and express that identity, is a great way to generate revenue for the music business as well.

Yeah. Experiences—that's one that a lot of our artists are finding the most benefit from right now—is what you described around those custom songs and doing things like retreats, fan retreats, and private shows—things that are really at a premium unique value. Sync licensing—yeah—it's great. It's like a masterclass.

Jay: There are some artists out there that are doing some really creative things. We were working with some of the members of Jellyfish a few years ago. They had a side project, and you could not only have them write a song with you, but they'd go record shopping with you. They'd have dinner with you. They'd give you a piano lesson. There were all sorts of these—

They'd do an outgoing phone message for you. There were all sorts of those things, but it even gets better than that. There are so many more things. I'll give you an example. Walden—the band Walden—did a 50-state tour that was fan-funded. Fans even paid for their flights to go to Hawaii and to Alaska and everything. They stayed at fans' houses, and it was just so wonderful watching that sort of take place.

But one of the things that I loved about their website back in the day—and I've seen other artists do this—you go onto their merch page, and yeah, you can buy the T-shirt and the coffee mug, but then you could fill up their tank. You could buy them coffee. You could buy them lunch by clicking that thing.

And then in the mail, you'll get a Polaroid from them, signed, of them eating that meal that you just bought them. Again, you just have to open up your mind to the possibilities and look at what other people are doing and what you're willing to do. And one thing that, as you were saying that, it reminded me of: when I sit down with an artist or a manager initially, when I'm about to onboard them, I go through a few questions, and we've covered, I think, three of the top five, but one—that's number two—I'll just roll it over for you. Number one is goals.

What are your goals? Because we need to know if we're over-performing or under-performing. If you're a jazz artist, you might want accolades and to play the Village Vanguard and be on the cover of DownBeat, but if you're an EDM artist, it's about festivals and streaming and other—everybody has different goals.

So I start with the goals. Now we know what we're aiming for. But the second thing—and the one thing we haven't talked about yet, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this—is something that we find gets neglected but is super powerful. And remember, great music is number one. We've put that aside.

So then we go to goals. The next thing is the narrative. It's so important now that if you are putting a song into Spotify's submission tool, you have to have a narrative for each song now. Right. But we've been doing this for decades, and what that means is: why should anybody care?

Let's say you and I—we're a duo. We've got this great song out. We wouldn't put out a press release or a bio that says, "Oh, Jay and Michael have a new song out." Who cares? What's the narrative? What's it about? Did we overcome adversity? Is this something aspirational? Is it something that's near and dear to our hearts? Is it lyrically something that will bring you to your knees?

I'll give you one example. The Accidentals—one of their newest songs is "Someday We Won't Live Here Anymore," and you listen to the lyrics, and it will stop you dead in your tracks. It's basically saying: all this stuff we have—someday someone else is gonna live here.

Michael: Hmm.

Jay: Right? Someday you are not gonna be here, and someday we won't live here anymore. And they co-wrote that with Gary Burr and Georgia Middleman who—if you Google them—they're some of the most elite songwriters on the planet and have written so many hit songs, it's crazy.

But the point is: if you have a good narrative—like you and I, well, everybody—we're story listeners and we're storytellers. So if you have a powerful narrative, people are drawn to that. "Oh my God, Michael wrote this song, and it's about this thing." And I believe that's really powerful.

That narrative isn't just for the song—it can be for the album, EP—but it also can be you as an artist. Gay, straight, introvert, extrovert—whatever—you've got a narrative. And if you get on the same page with that narrative—let's say it's you and me and our street team—then if somebody's in an elevator, somebody goes, "Oh yeah, I book that festival," or "I work at Good Morning America or NPR." You've got 30 seconds in that elevator to give them a pitch: what are you working on? That's the narrative.

And if you do it and I do it, it amplifies it because we're all on the same page. So we started with great music. Then we go to goals. We go to narrative. You and I have already talked about the monetization part of it, but when we talk about audience, I feel there's some misconceptions about audience, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that, because you deal in this stuff too.

I look at it like there are three audiences. There's the butts in the seats, as you mentioned. So you and I are standing on stage, and we look out, and there's a certain gender mix, age mix, whatever—geo. We get a sense of who's coming to the shows night after night. Okay, we think that's our audience.

There are two other buckets that are crucial. One is obvious, and that's the social media: TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—X—all that stuff. That may not be the same as the butts in the seats. Some of those people may be not as committed. Maybe they just click the like. Maybe they like that one song. Maybe they're not gonna go pay for a ticket to see you play live. But that's another bucket, and you can look at that data easily. There are tons of platforms out there, or you can go individually and look at the insights.

So now we've got the insights of social media and YouTube platforms. Now we have a sense of who that main bucket is of seeing live. The other one is commerce. Who's buying the shirts, the experiences, and the Patreon, and all of these things? And I think if you take those three buckets, they're gonna overlap, but not entirely, and there's always things to learn.

And the last thing I'll say on it is: I had an artist who was shocked when we did an audit and went through and showed her who her audience was. She was blown away. "That's not who I thought my audience was."

And the other thing that might surprise you is when you go into maybe a DSP, and you see, "Oh my gosh, people from Taiwan or people from Zimbabwe—what the hell?" Maybe it's just a trigger city. Maybe it's just somebody's playing your music in a local coffee shop.

That's why you look at Shazam data. If you go to Apple—Apple bought Shazam—so if you go into Apple Music for Artists, you can look at Shazam data and go, "Oh, Michael's and Jay's song is being played in these cities." People are Shazaming it—what the hell? They won't tell you it's Joe's Bar and Grill on the corner, but you can get a sense, and maybe we should play some live dates in some of those places.

So data and analytics are near and dear to my heart. But to sort of land the plane, I think you really need to look at who your audience is, because then—if you have your goals, you have your narrative, you have great music—you're like, "Okay, here's who we think our audience is and who we're gonna target."

And then a sidebar to that is: who would we like our audience to be? Maybe our audience is a little young right now. Maybe we'd like to have a little bit older audience, or vice versa. How do we go about doing that with our marketing tools?

Michael: Hmm. So good. There are a few gems to unpack there. The first one you brought up that kind of filled in the gaps of our conversation so far was around narrative and purpose and the why—exactly—the storytelling and getting clear on what drives you and why it matters and why it matters for you and why it matters for them, and having that as a core pillar of how you show up to connect with that.

Awesome. And audience—I think, Jay, you'll probably be happy to hear that the way that Street Team is set up is that the artists own their fan data in terms of their email list—that's amazing—and their phone numbers. It's crucial. And when you're talking about building audiences, that makes a lot of sense in terms of the different types of audiences and thinking through the folks that actually show up live in person versus folks who are following you on socials versus the customers, and having clarity about who those people are.

I also really liked what you mentioned about the intentionality—maybe this is who your audience is right now, but asking: who do we want our audience to be, and where do those people congregate? Where do they hang out, and how do we build that initial connection with those people?

Super smart. Jay, man, it's been great connecting, and thank you for sharing these principles that I feel like have been true when you started out and also are true today and probably are gonna be true many years to come.

Regardless of how technology changes and we evolve, as long as humans are here for the ride, it seems like these things are still gonna be true and maybe more important than ever in the age of AI and technology—exponential increases. So thank you for being here and for sharing these lessons.

I would love to hear—for anyone that's listening or watching this right now who has resonated with this and wants to reach out and connect, or follow you on—I know you have a podcast and platforms, and you have the consulting services that you offer—where's the best place for people to go to dive deeper?

Jay: Thanks. As I tell you this, I'll leave you and your listeners with one thought, and that is: the music industry has changed while you and I have been having this conversation. So it's evolving quickly. I love following it. I have a weekly newsletter called Your Morning Coffee. It's free. It drops every Friday, and I've been doing that for about 11 years.

And then I have three podcasts, and one is Your Morning Coffee: The Podcast, where Mike Etchart and I break down key stories from the newsletter every week, and that drops on Monday mornings. We have a lot of really interesting guests. We have a couple that are coming up in the next week. You're gonna see Dan Gi, the SVP from BMG, and you're gonna see David Israelite, the head of the NMPA.

So we're lifelong learners and teachers. Your Morning Coffee is free—I would recommend that you get that. And just really quickly, I do a podcast with Billboard magazine called Behind the Setlist, and it's a joy, and you would be shocked at how many artists have never been asked about the songs they play live. We're having some of the top artists in the business on that podcast, and we ask them—we do extensive research on the songs they perform live—and that's been a lot of fun.

And then I do one with Michael Brandvold called Music Biz Weekly. We just passed a million downloads—600 episodes—and that's really for DIY artists. It's really: what is sync licensing, and why should you care? Who are some people who are doing interesting things in different spaces?

You can reach out to me either via social media or go to the Your Morning Coffee website. It's super easy—it's just Your Morning Coffee—easiest thing in the world to remember.

But I'll leave you with this thought. My grandfather used to tell me that an idiot is someone who doesn't know what you just found out. That's the music industry. Don't feel stupid that you don't know something or understand something in the industry. Watch and listen to podcasts like this. Reach out to people. Ask them for advice. Educate yourself, because anybody who tells you they understand all of this stuff is either lying or naive—because, again, it's changed while we've been having this conversation.

Michael: So good. Honestly, what you just shared and your overall mindset—I could just sense. What is that quote, "Who you are speaks louder than what you say"?

But the fact that you're approaching this as a lifelong learner and that it's continuing to evolve and grow—and some of the surface-level things change, but you've—yes—clearly been able to communicate the undercurrents or the foundations of everything is a great model. Great. It's something I admire. So thank you for taking the space.

Jay: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.

Michael: Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time and the space to be here live, and like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access, and we'll look forward to talking again sometime soon, Jay.

All right. Cheers. Yeah.