Michael Walker: Yeah. Hm. All right. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Andreea Magdalina. So, Andreea is the founder of shesaid.so, which spans 18 global chapters and has over 12,000 members in the music industry. She's partnered with folks like Microsoft, Mixcloud, Google, Spotify, and TikTok, and she's also part of some very cool different teams, different projects. She's on Coachella's innovation team. She works with artist relations and community activation. So I'm excited to have her on the podcast today to talk a little bit about how you, as an artist, really build authentic relationships with your fans, and how you can do that even if you don't necessarily have access to the same resources as a major record label, and you're someone that's starting completely from scratch. And so, Andreea, thank you so much for being here today.

Andreea Magdalina: Michael, thank you for having me. And hey, everybody.

Michael: Awesome. So, to kick things off, would love to hear a little bit about your background and how you got started doing the work with shesaid.so, and, yeah, just a little bit about what drives you, like what's your mission?

Andreea: For sure, for sure. I think backstories are super important, so now it's just a case of deciding how far back do I want to go. Well, I'll start by saying…

Michael: The moment of birth. I want recollection of your first delight when you entered the universe.

Andreea: Well, I do, maybe not that far back, but I will mention that I am born and raised in Romania, Eastern Europe, and I moved to LA 11 years ago. Before that, I was based in London for six years, and London is where I got my start. It's where I went to university. It's where I got my first job. I was actually super passionate about tech and startups, and within my first year of graduating, I landed a job with this streaming service called Mixcloud, which at the time was pretty popular, I would say, especially in the UK, especially in Europe. And yeah, that kind of brought me more in the music industry space, and I've never really left it since then. I've always done stuff at the intersection of music or entertainment and technology pretty much since then.

And my passion for equity, for transparency, very much driven by my identity as an Eastern European woman in London, has also taken me on this path of creating shesaid.so, my own community of music industry professionals. And yeah, that's still happening today.

Michael: Hmm. Awesome. Well, thank you for the background. And even though we skipped the, you know, the genesis of the moment that you were born, that's helpful context.

So, yeah, I know that one of your major roles and focal points in these different organizations is about how to build authentic relationships and connections and activate the communities. And, I mean, that's such an essential part of an artist's role, I think, is building communities and bringing people together with their music.

Would love to hear from your perspective, having worked with so many artists and organizations now, what do you see as some of the biggest mistakes or challenges that artists make as it relates to building a community?

Andreea: Well, firstly, I don't really believe in mistakes. I think every mistake is an opportunity to learn something, to test an idea out or a tactic, a method, whatever. So there's no such thing. Or if they do exist, embrace them. It's all good. It's better to make them than to be left wondering, I guess.

Michael: Absolutely.

Andreea: And today there are just so many opportunities to make mistakes, which I think is delightful really, because it gives us the opportunity to also learn a lot as a result of all that experimentation.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: So that's both a blessing and a curse, right? Speaking of challenges that modern artists face today. The fact that there is so much access is both a plus and a minus, depending on how you look at it. Access to your fan base, or direct access, to put it more simply.

And yeah, I guess one of the most common challenges is that it's not just about the music anymore when it comes to connecting with your fans. Maybe pre-internet, pre-streaming, your music was the strongest connector between you and your fan, and then they would show up at your show, at your concert, on tour, and that connection would be deepened even further.

Now some artists, including very established ones, can barely afford a tour. It's just economically, financially very challenging. So anyway, I think, yeah, going back to your original question, one of the most challenging things in terms of developing an authentic relationship with your fans or cultivating an authentic community around yourself as an artist is the fact that you feel overwhelmed by all of the options that are out there and that you feel that you probably have to spend more time on marketing the music versus making the music.

I do believe, however, if you, through experimentation, like I said, figure out the most authentic way for yourself to leverage these new tools, and primarily social media is what I'm referring to here, because it's an absolute must, and especially in terms of connecting with young audiences, as long as you keep on experimenting, trying to find your voice, trying to feel that comfortable spot where, in your discomfort, you have to promote yourself and your music and your lifestyle so much, once you do find that comfortable spot, people will very much connect with that, will find themselves in you and your music.

And yeah, you'll be able to build a really strong fan base, especially at the beginning when quality matters more than quantity. Right? Everybody keeps saying that it's more important to focus on your first 100 real loyal fans and go from there as opposed to chasing followers on Instagram or views on TikTok, although the TikTok stuff does help.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: Covered a lot there.

Michael: Okay, got it. So what I'm hearing you say is that, especially at the beginning, one of the biggest challenges, because it's both a blessing and a curse that we have social media and we have this ability to reach people around the world in a way that just never would have been possible in the past, but also there's a lot of noise or a lot of people making content, kind of figuring out how do you do it in a way that doesn't overwhelm you or get burnt out, but it's authentic to your voice and your brand and focuses more on connection and quality of connection more than just vanity metrics and numbers, is really one of the most important things to figure out.

Curious for someone who maybe is like an artist that's watching this right now, who is really kind of at that initial stage where they… let's imagine they have three songs they feel really proud of. They're good quality songs. They're ready to start building a following, but they're not really sure, strategically, how, what do I post, how often do I post, what's right for me, and maybe they're, like you described, they're kind of feeling overwhelmed. They have like 10 different hats that they're wearing. They're like, I just don't know, like, what should I even post?

How do you recommend they get started with actually cultivating that audience and cutting through the noise?

Andreea: Well, I can think of two potential routes if you're truly at the beginning. You haven't tested anything out, right? You haven't put anything out. No music, no content. It's really your early days.

Michael: Or maybe they put out a few songs. They put out a few songs, but they don't have an audience. So like they've maybe had high hopes, high dreams, and they put it out and they're like, oh man. And maybe there's a little bit of doubt or discouragement because they put it out hoping something's going to happen, but nothing happened yet.

Andreea: Right. Okay, so I'm going to stick with the two options because I think it's still relevant. One is you go at it alone. You put stuff out, you try to figure out what's trending, what kind of content, and try to hop on the trend, or you decide to figure out your own kind of identity within this trend, because it's also trendy to be anti-trend. You can leverage it the other way.

So just experiment with different content formats. Put them everywhere, see what works, and then if something does stick, double down on that. Give up on what doesn't. Keep doing what does work.

And if you feel like that's not enough, that's still not working, then we go to the second route. You get someone to help you figure this whole marketing strategy out, because it is essentially different skill sets. One thing is to pour your energy into making music and you feel like that's you, but this other side of promoting it, you're not quite there yet, because you will have to face it at some point, but maybe it does feel scary and it feels very unknown at the beginning. You've tried different things, you've been disappointed, you feel a little let down.

Surround yourself with people who can uplift you either by supporting your marketing efforts. We all have a friend who's really good at social media. If you can't hire someone who is a proper expert, tap into your personal community to start with to help you figure this out. So one, you feel less alone on this journey, and two, indeed you can riff off with someone. You can get ideas. They can help you. And who knows what role these people might end up playing in the future as things pop off, which hopefully they will.

Michael: Hmm. Cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what I'm hearing you say is that there are a couple different paths you could take. You could just do it on your own where you figure it out through trial and error and you just pay attention to the trends and see what are people talking about right now, what are they sharing right now. Try to create content that speaks to those things that are being talked about, to share your opinion on it, whether it's with the trend or against the trend or finding your identity within that movement.

But then also the power of looking at your network of people you already know and seeing which of those people already have figured out a social media strategy that's working for them. So if you have any existing contacts, I really like that recommendation too, because I feel like it's common to try to look externally or look outside of us and try to figure out… we feel like the answer is outside of us when often it's already here, it's already inside of us, or it's already in our existing network. We just overlook it.

So your recommendation is to first start within and look and see, is there anyone that you know that you have a connection with that you could bounce ideas off of, and then exploring those relationships and then potentially finding help from folks that have figured that skill set out so you can learn faster.

Andreea: Pretty much. Yeah. Thank you for the summary.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Okay. Awesome. So let's say that someone is starting to put this plan into action and they've, both from testing internally and from paying attention to what's working on the platforms, they're starting to find their groove. They're starting to build an audience and they get their first 5,000 followers or 10,000 followers, and they're starting to gain a little bit of traction, but they're still at a point where they are struggling to monetize their platform, monetize their music, and they're trying to figure out how do I take these people from followers into more engaged fans and actually support myself and make an income with it.

What would be your advice there?

Andreea: Well, I think first off, you also have to make a decision as an artist where you want most of your income to come from. Some people are way more comfortable in the studio, just making beats, recording, in which case you might think of the publishing route more so than the touring route as an option for you. You could focus on sync opportunities. You could focus on making music with other people, for other people, writing for others or producing for others. There's so many options as an artist.

I think just the concept of artist has such a wide spectrum. So first, figure out what makes you happy, what you enjoy doing the most from this beautiful, chaotic process of music creation. And then, yeah, you'll have to employ different strategies, because being successful on the publishing side is very different from being successful as a front artist who's much more focused, I would say, on doubling down on the social media lifestyle kind of content and building a relationship with fans in that way. It's more B2C, I guess.

Or you might want to chase a deal. I know independence is one of the better routes nowadays to take as an artist, but there are labels, there are distribution deals out there that could support you as an artist and launch you to that next level, because let's face it, indeed, just thinking of what I said earlier, indeed it starts with you and you can find that confidence and that voice within yourself.

However, it also takes a village for you to be successful as an artist, especially once you've had your initial traction and you want to go to that next level. You will quickly realize, even if you decide not to be a touring artist, to be someone who's a bit more in the background, that you will need collaborators around you. You need people you trust, whether it's your lawyer, whether it's a manager, whether it's a sync agent or your publisher, whoever that is, or someone who's doing your creative.

You'll find more success more quickly if you collaborate with your peers, people who are on the same level as you, or even just getting started and you can grow together. So I guess, yeah, whichever option you go for, focus on collaboration because you never know what kind of doors that's going to open for you further down the line. And like I said earlier, you'll feel less alone along the way as well.

Michael: Hmm. Good stuff. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that it depends on your goals and what you actually enjoy. And so there are different paths you could take: sync licensing, being a full-time touring artist, being a songwriter, but really getting clear on you internally, what you enjoy, is the first step.

And one tip across every different path is, no matter what you're doing, collaborating with other people and finding partners and working together is going to be a way to create momentum, create movement, regardless of what path that you're going in.

Awesome. So let's say that someone here is… I think the majority of people who are listening to this, not everybody, but the majority are kind of in the camp that they are trying to pursue their music career as an original artist and they want to build a community around their music and they want to monetize that community. They don't want to write songs for other people. They want to write songs for themselves.

They still have the same tensions as everyone has with social media, feeling mixed feelings about it, but knowing it's important. What would you recommend in terms of general trends that… where do you think that things are going in terms of, for an artist like that?

Yeah, I would love to hear you kind of cast a vision for the next three to five years. Like what doesn't really exist right now or what's just emerging that you'd recommend that they start thinking about and swimming along with if they want to not chase current trends, but actually help be a part of this next generation.

Andreea: I mean, it might be an obvious answer, but figuring out how to work with AI, or how you can make AI work for you rather.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: Whether it's in the backend or the frontend, and by backend I mean leveraging tools to write emails, to create scripts for social media, to develop social media content, to maybe develop music, or give you ideas to make music. There's just so many different ways in which you can leverage AI in the backend to speed up some things that probably used to take a lot more time in the past.

And that also includes figuring out your community strategy and setting up some tooling that will improve the metrics or improve that backend kind of thing, figure out how to use that algorithm in your favor as opposed to you having to kind of guess it only through trial and error. That's one thing.

You could also incorporate it in a much more front-facing way. Maybe you create an AI avatar of yourself that you sing with or make music with, some sort of alter ego. I don't know. That's just pushing things a little bit further, and that's still a very kind of junior idea. It's been tried.

But yeah, thinking about incorporating technology could be some sort of variation of AI or visual tools or even gaming, which as a business has more of a market than music, film, TV combined. So that's a potential interesting piece of technology that you can leverage as part of your development as an original artist, like you said.

In general, yeah, looking at technology as a friend and as a tool to augment what you are already doing, instead of fearing that it will replace what you are doing or it will replace you, is a much healthier way to look at the future, which, to be honest, I have no idea what's going to happen in the next five years. Things are going to change a lot. I'm trying to stay ahead of it. I also work in the innovation space, so I kind of am aware of the latest tech out there that could be incorporated in an ethical way, very important, in entertainment.

But yeah, so much of it is unpredictable because it's moving so fast. And so trying to stay ahead of that as much as possible, and again, finding what you enjoy within that tech space, will definitely help you out in the long term and probably in the short term too.

Michael: Cool. Super interesting. Hopefully it's okay with you, the way that I'm kind of summarizing what you're saying. This is kind of how I process and digest things.

Andreea: Yeah, no, I love it. It's helpful to me too.

Michael: Great. So good. So what I'm hearing you say is that one kind of clear thing that you would recommend focusing on for artists is to not be afraid of these tools that are coming out in technology, but to figure out how to use them in an ethical way to augment their creativity. And so one of the clear ones at the time of recording this is AI. AI is changing everything, and so you would encourage artists to be on the edge of that and be exploring these tools that are still being developed and still being used.

It reminds me of the Beatles. I know the Beatles at the time, it's kind of funny looking back now because we're like, they were so primitive in terms of the recording techniques, but back then, that was really the cutting edge of the things they were exploring with panning and how they were using the tools that were available at the time. They were on that edge.

And so it sounds like what you're recommending artists who are listening to this right now lean into is those tools as a tool, as a way that… not being afraid it's going to replace them, but actually using them to augment their creativity.

Also an interesting point you made around the gaming space. It does feel like that space in general, like you mentioned, business-wise, it's a much more engaged kind of active space. It's so much more interactive because you're gaming. It's like, when my kids are using technology, I feel much better about them playing an educational video game than them veg out watching a TV show or vegging out watching something that's not interactive.

So it does seem like there's something in that interactivity space or blending that with music and communities is an interesting direction that things are almost definitely going to move towards.

I'm curious if you see any interesting examples of artists using these tools right now as it relates to blending together the world of gaming meets music and VR and AI. Do you see any interesting examples in the work that you're doing right now?

Andreea: Yes. Which examples should I give? I mean, I worked on a couple of these myself. As part of the Coachella innovation team, we have a partnership with Epic Games, with Fortnite. So we developed the Coachella Island inside of Fortnite. Part of that was to be able to tap into this younger demographic that might not be attending festivals today, but in the next three to five years.

And that's another way for you as an artist, if you really enjoy gaming, if that's just something that you could potentially enjoy, give it a try if you haven't yet, because you'll find such an engaged community there of young people with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of focus. They're giving themselves to this online gaming experience so much.

They are paying attention. They're paying attention to what music is playing in GTA in the background. They're paying attention to what music their peers are listening to as they're playing Fortnite or whatever. You'll find a very young and engaged demographic there, period. And if you develop that relationship with them early at a young age, they will be more likely to stay loyal fans in the long term.

Right now, the most traditional way in which music and gaming come together: you get an established artist, they'll throw a concert inside of a virtual game, or the game licenses their music because it's recognizable and so on. But I do think that there are some… so we've kind of done that with Anyma, for example, who is this big… I guess he's made a name for himself as an electronic music producer/DJ who has the best visuals in the game.

And some of those visuals are developed with the same software, it's called Unreal Engine, that they develop games with, including Fortnite. So if you learn how to use that tool for your visual direction, it doesn't have to be you directly. Maybe it's you playing around with it, always helps for you as an artist to have an idea of the technology, but you don't have to do it all yourself again.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: Maybe you build a team around you. You find someone who's a fan of your music and kind of dabbles in this space.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: And you start collaborating.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: But there's a ton more options, especially in the blockchain space. A lot more features and ideas that are being experimented with. Super new at the moment. The tech is not there yet, so I wouldn't recommend one or the other. But I know people, peers of mine, who are trying to figure out ways to gamify either music creation or music consumption, and to blend more elements from the gaming world into what we call the music industry, the traditional music ecosystem, I guess.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Andreea: So yeah, again, I would pay attention to… I would subscribe maybe to some tech podcasts or newsletters or however you consume your media nowadays to try and keep an eye on that kind of thing and see if anything pops up that is to your liking. And it is something that you could potentially feel affiliated with.

Michael: Hmm. Cool. Yeah. Whatever you do though, just make sure that you steer clear of this Modern Musician podcast. I feel like it's this weird guy here the whole time.

Andreea: I mean, you found me here, so highly recommend it.

Michael: Um, cool. I love this world that you're touching on right now, sort of like the cross-section of technology and these digital spaces and how they're being used to create community and how music connects with that.

It's funny, actually, that you bring up Unreal Engine. We had a family exercise a couple weekends ago where we created vision maps with… we've got a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 3-year-old, and my wife and I basically just asked them what do they want to dream up in their world. And we created these printouts and they hung… they were very excited about it. They hung it up next to their bed.

But my son, Xander, is seven years old and he's getting really into Roblox, and one of his dreams was he's like, I want to create video games. Like, I want to build video games. I'm like, that sounds like a lot of fun. That was something I personally would love to connect with him on and use some of these software developer skills to connect with him and create these kinds of worlds.

Anyway, this is probably too long-winded of a way of explaining this, but I downloaded Unreal Engine just this last weekend and we're planning on building worlds, and I think it'd be fun to explore that as a tool as it relates to all this stuff that we're doing.

Cool. So Unreal Engine is a great one where people can start to explore. I mean, it does seem like AI plus "vibe coding" is becoming more and more accessible as well. So that seems like that's just going to make it easy for anyone to build these kinds of worlds, even if they're not coders, soon.

I love your suggestion of building your team based on your community and your fans and saying, maybe you're not the weird kid like me that liked math in high school and coding and that stuff, but you probably have people in your community, once you start growing your following, that do love those things. And connecting with them and empowering them to be a part of your team, that seems like a huge opportunity, especially because most people aren't geeks who like to write code and whatnot. But you can find those people and collaborate with them.

Andreea: Exactly. Exactly. And I was also going to add, if you find all of these concepts and ideas a little bit too far for you, you're a bit more of an analog kind of person, which is totally cool too. Soon enough analog will be the premium experience. I mean, in some cases it already is.

And, you know, yeah, live shows, we'll look back at it with nostalgia, but for now you do have a lot of these options. You can look at something that's a little less intimidating. For example, my business partner, he's an artist manager, and he works with this artist called Cruel Santino, who, for a few good months, started doing sessions on Twitch. Nothing new there. I mean, Twitch is nothing new, live streaming yourself.

But not a lot of music artists do that. I would say there's still a ton of space there. And it doesn't require a huge amount of tech. And it's literally just him broadcasting himself with his friends. Sometimes some of those friends are super famous artists that come by, and so they're just hanging out, talking on camera as if that camera wasn't even there.

Sometimes engaging with… if you want to take the step further, you can engage with the community. You can ask them to send you music from artists they like. You can ask them to be a part of your creative process or just hang out with you, listen to music together. You don't need to do anything complicated on that Twitch stream, but it's such an amazing way to develop that community around you, find it in a place where not a lot of music artists spend time, which is Twitch, which is mostly associated with gaming.

Same with Discord, where you can build your community. If live streaming video isn't your thing, do that on Discord instead, where it's all about typing and it's a lot more comfortable and it's not so face-to-face literally, but it's still a technology tool that's relatively easy to use that will enable you to tap into a new community that's not saturated, I guess, versus Instagram or TikTok.

If you feel like that's not working for you, you can find an audience that's super engaged and willing to spend that time with you in an easy way.

Michael: Mm. Cool. I love what you're sharing right now in terms of live streaming plus building your own platform or building your own connection with the community through those live experiences.

We just had an annual event where we interviewed one of our artists. Her name's Janelle Ong, and she was one of the top music streamers on Twitch. And she shared a deep dive into her live streaming process, and she has built a six-figure career streaming twice a week on Twitch as a musician.

And it was really mind-blowing, just hearing her experience and how that happened. She shared the story of a $15,000 contribution that someone made on one of her streams out of nowhere.

And for a little bit of background, Andreea, everything that you're sharing is perfectly aligned with what we do and what we focus on with Modern Musician. Why we exist is because of the need for artists to connect and build communities with their fans. And so we actually have a software as a service that we just released about a month ago. It's in beta. It's called StreetTeam.

But it's… my elevator pitch for it is that it's like if Patreon and Discord and Facebook groups had a baby, but instead of Mark Zuckerberg owning your baby, you as the artist own the fan data and the relationships that you're building. And so it's very similar to Discord in that you can have private groups and channels and communities. Like Patreon, you have membership tiers and access.

But live streaming is something that is currently a top priority on our roadmap. Right now we have external live stream integrations, but I just so strongly agree with what you're sharing now in terms of the power of streaming and connection and live community. There's something sacred about the present moment.

And so I think the more we can bring people together through those types of experiences, the more powerful our relationships are going to be and connections. So it's really cool to hear you sharing that as well as a strong recommendation for artists to connect with their communities.

Andreea: I love that, and I'm going to have to really check out your SaaS product. Sounds amazing, right? Because what we need is for tools to help us connect all of these options and just make it as easy as possible for someone who's non-technological by default to benefit from the power of technology. So yeah, we'll check that out. That's awesome.

Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm happy to give you a private demo for it, so you can explore it. I mean, especially with the work that you're doing, I think that you probably really enjoy some of the stuff that we've been working on.

Cool. Well, Andreea, it's been great connecting. I appreciate you taking the space to be here. I know that for you right now, overseas, it's a bit later in the day, so maybe you're getting ready to kind of wind down for the day. So you being here and sharing some of your lessons and insights is very appreciated.

And for anyone that's listening or watching this right now who is interested in connecting more with you and/or the organizations that you've built and they'd like to take a step deeper, where can they go to connect more?

Andreea: You can pretty much find me anywhere really, but you'll have better chances if you reach out to me either on LinkedIn or probably Instagram. I think LinkedIn is your best shot. Try everywhere, wherever you're at. Just try me on all the platforms.

Michael: Awesome. Cool. And in terms of artists that should reach out to you, would you say just anyone that's listening to this, if they feel inspired to connect, reach out? Or is there a particular type of artist that you think would be really well suited to collaborate on something with you?

Andreea: So, to be honest, I'm all over the place with my work, not so much in the country music space, although I'm probably a couple of people away from somebody in that space. I would say anyone is more than welcome to reach out at any stage of their career. I do a lot of mentoring both through my shesaid.so community as well as outside of it.

So, yeah, I just recommend whenever you reach out, not just to me, but to anyone in the industry that you're trying to get their attention. We're also pretty busy people. We probably all have a lot of these kind of requests coming our way in some shape or form. Be very clear with who you are, short couple of sentences, who you are, what you do, and what you want from us, as opposed to a general "let me pick your brain" kind of thing.

Be very clear with where you're at and where you want to be and how we could potentially help you. And that's just a side-note piece of advice, basically, because I've had a lot more success in my career once I started doing that with people I didn't know very well or had a connection to and I was cold calling or cold emailing or cold DMing.

Michael: Oh, that's super helpful. Yeah. I think that's advice that's going to benefit them regardless of what they're trying to do, because it's kind of similar to that collaboration advice that you shared where it's like, yeah, how do you collaborate and you get some clarity on being able to communicate briefly who you are, why you're reaching out, what you're looking for.

Awesome. Well, like always, Andreea, we'll put the links in the show notes for easy access. Sounds like the shesaid.so community is also a great place to start in terms of connecting with you and the community.

So, thank you again for taking the time to be here on the podcast and I look forward to talking sometime soon.

Andreea: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Michael: Yeah.