Michael Walker: Yeah. All right, I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Oskar Eichler.

Oskar, let me give you a quick intro. We were both just reminiscing about how Fable was down, and at the time of recording this it had just finally come back online. So if there are any mistakes here, we can blame AI.

What we've got here is Oskar, the Founder and CEO of Songstats, a platform with over 10,000 artists and labels subscribed for real-time insights across 14 different DSPs, including Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube, and Shazam. It's fully bootstrapped, and they also have an enterprise API that powers major booking agencies and management firms.

He's the former COO of 1001Tracklists, which grew into the de facto Wikipedia of dance music, after founding and selling Arcane, the largest music licensing network for DJs on YouTube.

He also grew his first YouTube channel to over one million subscribers in under two years and produces music as DONT BLINK, one of Tomorrowland's Future 4 artists and a top-five best-selling Beatport artist in 2021.

It sounds like you're actually in the middle of a tour right now, so I appreciate you taking the time. I'm sure you've got a lot on your plate. I'm looking forward to talking about Songstats and your new baby, Socialstats.

Oskar Eichler: That's right. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm on tour right now. I'm in Ibiza at the moment. It's exciting. Europe in the summer has been hot, but it's awesome. So, yeah.

Michael: Yeah, I can relate to that. I'm back in Orlando now, and it's quite hot here too.

Ibiza, huh? Did you take a pill there?

Good stuff.

Well, I'd love to dive in and hear a little bit about the origin story of Songstats and how you came up with the platform in the first place.

Oskar: Well, we might take one tonight—we'll see.

Let's talk about Songstats first, since that's where it all started. It's basically a music data analytics app, which sounds more boring than it actually is. It's a platform where artists...

Michael: I actually think it sounds really exciting. Although I was the weird kid in high school who liked math, so maybe throw my opinion out the window.

Oskar: A more interesting description would be that it's like your little manager in your pocket.

We wanted to make it fun and exciting to know everything that's happening with your music. Honestly, it was a selfish idea because I use it every day for my own artist project.

When we started it about eight or nine years ago, we wanted to pull together data from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Beatport, and other platforms and make it actionable.

That was always the main goal with Songstats—not just to look at a graph retroactively and think, "Okay, I guess that's how it performed," but to help artists during a release cycle while they're promoting their latest track or tour.

We wanted to let them know things like, "Hey, this is what's happening. Here's where your audience is located. You just got added to this big editorial playlist. This creator on TikTok just used your song in one of their videos," or, "This store on Beatport just featured you."

Those little accomplishments are what drive your success and, maybe even more importantly, your motivation. As an artist, it's incredibly valuable to keep track of those moments.

We aggregate all of that in one place. We have a mobile app that sends push notifications, as well as a full desktop dashboard.

As you mentioned, we've also built an enterprise side of the business. Since we have so much data, it's incredibly valuable for booking agencies, distributors, and management firms to better understand what artists are doing—where they should tour next or where they should focus their advertising efforts.

There's a lot happening. Of course, we're now diving deeper into AI and radio tracking as well, so there's still a lot more to uncover.

I encourage any artist or record label to check out Songstats, look themselves up, and discover something new. I'm sure you'll find some milestone or piece of support you didn't even realize had happened. So, yeah.

Michael: Cool.

That's so interesting. And the conversation we've been having, even before we started the podcast, around AI and Fable—and how, jokingly, it probably knows us better than we know ourselves at this point—it seems like a lot of it comes down to the data. And in order to predict the future, having access to that data can be really helpful.

I really like what you mentioned around your goal wasn't necessarily just to throw a bunch of information at someone so they could feel more overwhelmed than they probably already feel, but to actually give it to them in an actionable way that empowers them to be able to decide what to do that's actually going to move the needle.

Yeah, definitely curious to hear more about what that looks like as it relates to predictive intelligence and using AI to basically help. Especially for this podcast, there's a lot of independent artists and independent record labels that are kind of taking their marketing into their own hands.

I'm curious if you could speak to what you see as sort of the zeitgeist right now as someone who's both literally living the dream of touring around the world playing these shows. You've also created some incredible companies and built and sold companies.

What do you see right now as the zeitgeist? What are we going to look back on 10 or 20 years from now and be like, "Wow, this was the moment that X happened in the music industry"? And the people who swam along with that wave and got the momentum, those are the ones who ended up getting that big burst. And there's a lot of people left behind who didn't swim along with the wave.

Oskar: Yeah, it's a great question, to be fair. I think, of course, the one wave that's impossible to ignore right now is AI. I think even in the music space, everyone's talking about it. Some people see it positively, some people see it negatively. I think it's inevitable.

You were just saying Fable right now is the worst it's ever going to be. That is the truth. It's a nonstop tidal wave that just keeps rolling.

So, in my opinion, of course the stores right now—the DSPs—are trying to make sure that purely AI-generated music is not really taking over the entire ecosystem and the livelihood of artists, because it is an issue. If someone can just generate a song with one click, upload it, and basically spam the DSPs, that creates a lot of costs for them too. Because you can just mass-produce music at this point. It's hard to tell whether it was created by a human or by an AI.

Apparently, Deezer was saying that over 60,000 AI-generated songs land on their platform each day at the moment. Imagine what that costs just to host and distribute. And then if these AI artists are not even promoting it, that creates a lot of overhead, right?

I know that Spotify already combated this a while ago, where they basically said any song that gets under a thousand streams is actually not eligible for royalty distribution. What they wanted to accomplish with that is that artists who actually make music for a living, who promote their own music and do everything they can to get over that threshold, can actually make a living off of it.

But then there's what I would call the long tail of music that has below, let's say, a thousand streams. There are millions upon millions of songs there that basically create so much overhead for Spotify—not just in the accounting, but that's all money that could actually go to an artist who really wants to make it and is putting all of their heart into it.

So, in a weird way, I think we'll see a lot more of this where platforms are going against it. There are always going to be some people trying to exploit things.

What I think is that, in music production, AI is an amazing tool if you use it smartly—and I think you should. It's basically the next step. Before, everything was analog. There were analog synthesizers, you had to record everything, and if the synth wasn't warm enough, it would sound different the next day, even though it was programmed the same. There was all this craziness and all this cost involved in making music.

Then suddenly the digital audio workstation came out—Ableton, Logic, all of those. They basically democratized music to a high degree. Anyone could download Ableton, look up a tutorial on YouTube, and start making cool beats, right?

Now it's the next step, where it becomes even more accessible. Anyone can download Suno, Udio, or any other AI tool and create a song for their son's birthday or something like that in no time.

It's super cool, but we also have to be a little bit careful that the artists who are really dedicated to their craft are not left out of the picture.

I think you should leverage AI for creativity. Of course, you can use it for songwriting, for coming up with ideas, and also for production and mastering. There are a lot of different tools now.

I think what's becoming more and more important for artists, though, is to understand that music is one side of who you are, what your brand is, and how you express yourself. But the other really big factor that's becoming more important is telling a story and putting yourself out there.

That can be in any format. It could be saying, "Hey, I'm doing everything analog. I'm doing everything without AI." But you've got to put that story out there so people understand what you stand for. What's your higher purpose? What's your arc? What is your branding? What can people connect with?

I think in the age of AI, being real is going to become more and more valuable. So, generally, I think it's what everyone should be paying attention to. I think that's the zeitgeist of today. If you leverage it well, you can gain a big advantage. But you've got to be smart and be real.

I think that's going to be the currency of the future on the internet. Yeah.

Michael: Hmm. Good stuff.

Yeah, it's so good. So what I'm hearing you say is that there's this huge tidal wave happening with AI, and it's not going anywhere. If anything, this is the worst it's ever going to be, and it's going to become more and more intelligent.

So it's not something to avoid or pretend doesn't exist, but something to use as a tool. Also, it's about thinking, what are the problems or the issues? What does that world value? Because those things become more scarce.

In that way, storytelling, authenticity, reality, and being able to connect with another human become more valuable because of the wave of AI.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Hopefully it doesn't turn into a Terminator situation.

Oskar: Crazy, right?

Michael: Not to derail this too much, but I rewatched the movie about a month ago, and I'm sure a lot of people are watching it and talking about it.

I actually saw a study that Anthropic did where they found that one way to predict misalignment with their models was whether they were trained on Hollywood movies. If a model was trained on Hollywood movies, it was more likely to do things like lie and do evil things that it shouldn't do.

So we might unintentionally create the Terminator if we don't create a better story—a better story with better goals and values.

Oskar: I like the outlook of it. I mean, it all depends on what a couple of companies are doing, obviously. The ones that are creating humanoid robots, those will potentially be a risk, right?

But I would say that, generally, an intelligence that's higher than ours—we look after, or at least we pretend to look after, animals or beings that are less intelligent than we are because they're interesting to us.

Maybe at some point an AI will treat us like a little pet. You know, "Keep the human happy. He needs his food, he needs his sex, he needs his sleep, and then he's happy." Send him on vacation or something, right?

The AI will probably be the one exploring the universe. It's much more suited for that. Some machine can just fly for a million years and discover another planet. That will never be us in our biological human bodies.

So yeah, it's kind of wild.

Michael: It's true.

I interviewed a guy named Noland Arbaugh on our podcast probably a year or two ago. Noland is the first human to have a Neuralink implanted, so he's paraplegic.

It was really cool. I was telling my parents about that one. I was like, "My gosh." We actually created the first song ever made telepathically with his Neuralink.

That really opened up my mind. I'm like, "Man, what kind of world are we going to live in 10 years from now?" Imagine if we all had these interfaces that allowed us to communicate more transparently with each other.

Language is obviously amazing, and it's why humanity and communities have formed, but it's also very flawed. It's easy to miscommunicate, and it's very slow. It's like dial-up internet.

But if we had the ability to directly communicate back and forth...

Oskar: Yeah, the bandwidth of speech is quite slow. Speaking is already faster than typing, right? But thinking is faster still.

A lot of relationships and a lot of business conversations get stuck because you don't 100% understand what the other person actually wants or needs.

If you could just transfer that telepathically, it would be easy, right?

But it might also open up a lot of other things. If you can no longer lie or things like that, it might be a good thing, but it might also be a bit weird.

So, who knows.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I think there are some stories that have sort of turned over that stone. Is it The Three-Body Problem? The aliens can't lie. It is interesting. I think about that quite a bit too because it seems like this far-off sci-fi, but you're the kind of person I'm sensing, just based on this conversation—it wouldn't surprise me if you're familiar with Ray Kurzweil or the concept of the Singularity, his books, The Singularity Is Near.

Oskar: Well, I think the Singularity is near. Who knows what to predict anymore?

Right now, for example, when I'm investing in companies in the stock market, I'm just looking at how I think the future will look in, let's say, five to ten years. I think that's my only metric. I only invest in a couple of companies where I understand what they're doing, and I think what they are doing is how I would like the future to be.

So that makes sense. But if you no longer know what the future is going to be like because there's AI and all this craziness, and it's already accelerating to a point where it's going to be harder and harder to predict, then who knows what's going to happen, right? At some point, it might not be in our hands anymore.

So, yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I'm a believer in The Singularity Is Near, that book. One of our partners at Modern Musician is a co-founder of Singularity University with Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, so we've had quite a few conversations about that.

Information technology is on an exponential curve. It's hard to predict and even just imagine. Our brains weren't designed to think in exponentials, but it seems to be what's happening.

2044, I think, is the year that Ray predicts we'll hit a singularity-level event.

Anyway, this stuff is fascinating. I feel like I could talk for five hours about this. Maybe we'll have a chance to do that at some point.

I also ought to make sure that we bring things back to what you're doing with Socialstats. I think you did refer to it as your new baby.

I'd love to hear a little more about the origin of creating Socialstats and how it compares to what you've done in the past, what your goals are for it, and what problem you think it solves.

Oskar: Yeah, for sure.

As we talked about, Songstats is sort of the music data analytics side. What became apparent now, also in the age of AI, is that everything between releases is just as important for artists.

So what we started to do was implement the social services—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. We already had most of them on the Songstats side, where we were aggregating data for music and musicians.

But we never really aggregated it at the post level, looking at your own profile. It was more at the music level for your own songs.

So we felt that what we're doing here and all the infrastructure we've built with Songstats could actually be applicable and really helpful—not just to musicians and labels, but also to anyone else on social media, which is pretty much any creator, athlete, actor, brand, or influencer.

We started working on Socialstats about two years ago and, of course, leveraged a lot of the technology we'd already built for Songstats.

We launched Socialstats about a week and a half ago, which is really exciting. For the first time, we're opening the doors outside of the music world, which is interesting for us. It's a new venture, and we already have a bunch of subscribers coming in from all different parts of the world and all different niches.

Socialstats is applicable to any type of creator. Essentially, we're aggregating data from all of your social channels. You can connect your Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, and we aggregate that data directly from your accounts.

Similarly to Songstats, we give you an activity feed of everything that's happening. Let's say someone notable with a large following starts following you, or someone important leaves a comment on one of your posts.

Maybe one of your posts reaches a new milestone or stands out from the rest. All of that is really useful information to help you understand which content is working and what direction you should grow in.

For example, we're analyzing when most of your followers are online—which day and what time of day—so we can recommend the optimal posting time. We can tell you, "If you post at this moment, you'll likely reach the largest audience and give the algorithm the best chance to push your content."

There are a lot of interesting insights, and again, we want to make it as actionable as possible—not just looking at a post retroactively. You can already do that on the platforms themselves, but we want to help you recognize when a post is performing particularly well or getting a lot of engagement, so you can dive in and analyze why.

Was that content format working especially well? Was the caption unique? What's happening there?

You can also look back at Stories, which is usually difficult, especially on Instagram, and see how a Story developed over its 24-hour lifespan. Was there a spike in views after you shared something? Those are the kinds of insights we're trying to provide.

There's a lot of interesting functionality, and of course we're going to continue building it over time. We launched it as what we call an MVP, and we're happy with where it's at, but we're still planning to add more features.

We'll be adding marketing tools to help creators collaborate and find brands to work with. Content scheduling and a couple of other nice features are also on the way.

So yeah, we're really excited.

Of course, musicians can already use it. It's included in our bundle. We already had a bundle for Songstats users that combined Songstats with Radiostats, which is a platform we launched about two years ago where we aggregate radio data across 50,000 stations globally, including SiriusXM, AM/FM radio, and some TV stations.

Now we've bundled Socialstats into that as well. So for anyone who already had the bundle, it's included for free.

Anyone else can upgrade now, and it's a really good deal because you can monitor song data, radio data, and social data all in one package.

It's quite great. Yeah.

Michael: Hmm. Cool. Well, congratulations on the launch. That sounds really exciting.

Oskar: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot of work, honestly, but it's cool. And AI accelerated it. Otherwise, it would have taken us probably another year.

Michael: Yeah. It's pretty wild.

Cool. So, from what I understand, Socialstats is sort of this layer that takes what you've already built for Songstats and applies it to the wider social media landscape.

I'm curious, does it have a feature around helping you create or plan a content calendar based on similar types of accounts to you as well? Is that part of the angle for how you're using the stats?

Oskar: Interesting call. It's on the roadmap.

We would call that a marketing tool, where we help you see how you can market yourself more effectively.

Marketing tools were not part of the first launch, the same way they weren't part of the first Songstats launch. But now we have a lot of powerful marketing tools on the Songstats side, where you can connect with playlists, creators, and sharing tools. There's a lot there.

We're going to build that out for Socialstats over the coming months. We'll be launching a bunch of cool features, including a content calendar, probably post scheduling, generating captions that work well, and more.

There's going to be a lot, but I don't want to give too much away. We're always being watched by some competitors, so we're going to keep it close to the chest. But you got a little sneak peek of what's to come.

Michael: Cool. That makes a lot of sense.

It does seem like the best place to start. It makes sense to start with the stats so you really understand what's happening and why. That could even help you build the right tools based on what you see is working in the data.

Oskar: That's exactly right.

With Songstats, for example, we were thinking, "Should we build another tool to reach out to playlists?" There are already so many of those. There's Groover, Playlist Push, Daily Playlists, SubmitHub...

We thought, actually, what makes us special is that we have all this data. We already have this huge playlist database.

So instead, we worked with all of them and became the de facto search engine for playlists.

We created a recommendation system that's really smart and finds the playlists that are the best fit for you. Then we give you all the contact information, so you can go to SubmitHub and submit to that playlist because it was recommended by us.

Our niche has always been having all that data available and then creating really relevant recommendations based on related artists, your genre, and your music.

With Socialstats, it'll be the same. Even in the name, it's Socialstats. It's not Social Push or something like that.

Of course, we will get into the marketing side and content creation side, and there will be a lot of cool features coming.

Michael: Sweet.

Definitely curious to know more from an integration standpoint.

I don't know how much you know about Modern Musician or StreetTeam, but our StreetTeam platform is really like if Shopify and Patreon had a baby.

It's a CRM platform for artists to collect their contacts and data, send out emails and text messages. There's what we call Journeys, which are our version of funnels and different user paths people can go down. It's really cool.

Data and stats are super important in order to plug into that. There's also social media integration where you can multiply your posts and repost them. You can create different captions, kind of like CapCut, that go on top of them and run different tests.

So I'd be very curious to know, based on all that, if there's an integration opportunity for us. You mentioned there's an enterprise API, so I wonder if there's something there.

Oskar: Yeah, we do offer an enterprise API, which is pretty cool.

If you wanted to inject more data into your platform, that's certainly doable. We work with hundreds of companies at this point that rely on our data, and we're very stable. We're also very open to adjusting based on different business models to make sure it's beneficial for everyone.

Ultimately, we want to enhance your experience and your users' experience. We want to empower artists.

Generally, the Socialstats API will work similarly to the Songstats API by delivering social data. Through the Socialstats API, users can also authorize their own channels directly, so you can get even deeper data from their accounts.

Of course, if your platform integrates with us and provides value to artists, we're always happy to feature it. We have a benefits section where we offer discounts on different platforms that artists can take advantage of.

So that's always fun.

I'd be super down if you want to give me a little tour after this. Then I'd connect you with Evan, who's handling all of our marketing, API partnerships, and enterprise onboarding. So yeah.

Michael: Cool.

That sounds great. We can definitely continue the conversation. I'd love to hear more about that, and also geek out more about the singularity and all this stuff.

Maybe an interesting thing for folks listening right now would be some strategic insights or advice based on what you're seeing, both personally with your own music and through the wider platform and the data as well, in terms of what's working right now.

I think, obviously, this is always evolving, and what works now may not work a month from now or a few months from now. But if you had to start from scratch—let's say you're an artist who invested a good amount of time and money to create some amazing music, and you have three songs you're really proud of—but now you've stepped into the social media landscape and you're thinking, "I don't know what the heck I'm doing here."

It's been a few years, this all feels intimidating, and I don't feel like I have enough time to figure it all out. What would your best recommendation be for getting started and building an authentic community?

Oskar: Yeah, for sure. I can speak to this pretty well because the project that I'm touring with now is called DONT BLINK. It's a new project—well, "new" in quotations. We started it maybe seven or eight years ago. Before that, I had another artist project, and we basically started everything from scratch. We did exactly what you just described. We had about ten tracks ready to go, and then we were just standing there thinking, "Okay, what now?"

I think there are a couple of things that still very much apply.

I'd say the very first rule for any artist who wants to make it right now is: learn English. For you that's normal, but there are a lot of artists I meet in Brazil, or in China, or elsewhere, and this industry really runs in English. It's the foundation of every collaboration, every partnership, and every deal. I think it's incredibly important, and a lot of people overlook that.

The second thing is, of course, having a good name. Some people can use their own name, but if you're a group, you really have to think of a good name. We came up with the name DONT BLINK, and we felt very connected to it. There's actually a story behind it involving Ibiza. We were at a party called Do Not Sleep, and that was the night Alex and I decided we should start a project together. We did take a villa in Ibiza—

Michael: You did take a pill in Ibiza.

Oskar: And that's how DONT BLINK was born. That's also why the distorted eyes were not blinking, you know. So there's a lot of connection with us and Ibiza. I guess that's why I'm here right now.

But I want to say that a good name goes a long way because it's recognizable, and you can create a lot of branding around it. Make sure the handles are available, of course. Generally, if you're a DJ, I recommend not putting "DJ" in front of your handle because people are usually searching for just your name, right?

If they have to search for "DJ DONT BLINK," it's a little bit harder. They type "DONT BLINK" and then they can't tag you. It's better to use something like DONT BLINK Music, if that's still available, or something similar. That's usually better, in my opinion.

Then, of course, what's next? The next thing, I think, is branding. That's quite important as well. Outside of your music, you also need an identity—a visual identity. If you're a designer yourself, then that's great, or if you know your way around Photoshop. But, of course, you need a logo. You need a little bit of a concept.

With us, with DONT BLINK, of course, it was the eyes, right? There's a lot that you can do there. We had nocturnal animals before, some eyes. Just think of something that you can resonate with.

I think looking at what other artists are doing is great inspiration. Looking at movies and creating a mood board of what you want to represent. What's your branding? Do you like The Matrix? Do you like Dune? Do you like cyberpunk? Do you like an old western vibe? It creates an atmosphere, right?

That atmosphere ultimately dictates what your cover artwork looks like, what your socials look like, and everything else.

Then, on social media, create a voice. I think that's really important. We always use the same font when we post a Story, for example, with the same effect. It's recognizable. People clicking through Stories quickly immediately know it's from us. They don't even need to look at the username anymore.

Then I think the next thing—and probably the most important—is to understand your character and your archetype.

In a weird way, social media is almost like telling a story and becoming a movie. It's your own small movie that people follow over multiple years. The artists who do this really well take their audience on a journey where they're invested in what they're doing, in their story, maybe in their love life, or whatever stories they're telling.

It's a little easier if you're a singer because you can write songs that resonate. With a DJ, it's usually a bit harder because you're making cool beats with a cool pre-drop vocal or something. But you can still create an atmosphere.

To start that process, I'd encourage anyone to really dig deep into who your character is. Are you a superhero brand? Are you more of a rebel going against the system? Or are you more like a wizard? Then maybe you brand yourself in more of an alchemy type of way.

There's a lot of theory around how characters are built in movies, stories, and books. I think that's really important because it dictates everything else you're doing.

Your story arc depends on who you are as a character. Let's say you're a superhero brand. Maybe there needs to be a common enemy. You define what that enemy is. Maybe don't pick anyone in particular, but a bigger idea.

Let's say it's people who hate on genres. Why hate on genres? Everything is music, right? Maybe your music spans a bunch of genres, so that becomes the idea you're pushing against.

You need to have that clear concept because it dictates all of your content, your storytelling, and your persona.

Ultimately, think about how someone discovers your music. Maybe Spotify puts you on an editorial playlist. Someone hears your song, but they don't know who you are. They might hear another track later, and eventually they'll recognize your name and think, "Actually, this name looks familiar. Who are these guys?"

That's when they start digging deeper. They click on your profile, and that profile can be make-or-break.

On your Spotify profile, have a great photo. Have a bio. Connect with Spotify for Artists, of course. Make sure everything is complete.

I highly encourage uploading Spotify Canvas—the seven-second looping videos that play in the mobile app. They really help set a vibe.

Ideally, show yourself. Don't just use the label's 2D animation or something like that. You're promoting the label more than yourself. Show yourself at a show, or shoot a little clip or a music video. It doesn't need to be long—it just needs to be those seven seconds.

It shows who you are, your vibe, whether you're funny, serious, cool, or whatever.

Once you have that in place, then on social media you need to create that story arc. Create memes around yourself that people connect with, or show flaws people can relate to. Be a little personal without giving too much away.

You don't have to put your entire life in front of the camera. You can be selective about how you present yourself.

At the end of the day, your branding decides everything.

Streams are part of the business. If you're a music producer, maybe that's the core of what you're doing. But if you want to become a touring artist who's selling merchandise and tickets, it's so important to tell a bigger story and pull people into it.

If you think about someone wearing your merchandise—let's say an AC/DC T-shirt—that says a lot about their identity. It doesn't just mean they like you. They identify with what you're doing.

I think that's the most important thing: being authentic so people know what you stand for, they trust your brand, and that brand represents them.

Then they're happy to support you, share you with their friends, wear your merch, and ultimately buy tickets.

I think every artist you really admire right now is doing these things. Look at their social media. See how they're doing it. Think about what you know about them and where you learned it. Did they do interviews? YouTube Shorts? Did they share little stories that helped you connect with them?

Ultimately, that's what it comes down to as an artist nowadays.

Unfortunately, it's no longer just about making music. It's about being a content creator as well.

That's where Social Stats comes into the picture. It's no longer just about Spotify and Apple Music. It's also about TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and how you present yourself on camera.

I think that's really important. Of course, you could also wear a mask or something. But even that comes down to creativity, storytelling, branding, and who you are.

There's a lot to unpack there, but I think that's a good starting guide. Everyone has to unpack it for themselves and figure themselves out. Yeah.

Michael: Hmm. Cool. Yeah, good stuff.

To recap, what I'm hearing you say is that the most important part of your music career at the beginning is really getting clear on your story and figuring out what you stand for. What are your values? Every good story needs a character. It needs a hero. That's the heart of a story.

Harry Potter has Harry Potter. The Lord of the Rings has Frodo. Star Wars has Luke Skywalker. Every great story has a central character.

So getting clear on your story, your purpose, and the lesson of your story—who you are—and intentionally creating your brand around that is how you create a space where a community wants to form. They can see themselves in the community, in the story, and in that identity.

That identity is really the most important thing to optimize for at the very beginning.

Oskar: I would think so, because it dictates everything. It dictates your branding, your color scheme, your logo—everything.

Let's say your character type is the Joker, or Harley Quinn. That's crazy neon colors, a crazy logo, crazy shapes, a crazy hairstyle, or whatever.

Or let's say your character type is Beyoncé. She's the queen. Jay-Z's the king. Everything is more royal, everything is bigger—fluffy suits, crowns, whatever. That's your character type.

Everyone has to figure out who they are. And that's a journey that develops over time. Different parts of it can evolve. It doesn't always have to stay the same.

An artist might release a new album, and that album tells a new story. It's a new chapter. You might lose some fans along the way. There's always an album people preferred from earlier, but as an artist, you also have to move on and grow.

That journey continues. I don't think you need to get stuck with anything. But having at least an idea or concept at the beginning that becomes clearer over time is really, really important.

Things might also happen by accident. You might film something funny by accident, and then that becomes your thing. Who knows?

There's a lot that goes into it. Weirdly enough, those are the things you need to think about now—not just creating a cool song. Although, of course, that's equally important. I think the music is always going to be the backbone.

Michael: Yeah.

And it's even informed by the story or by who you are and your identity. The music is sort of the voice that speaks that identity people resonate with. So it's, of course, a major part of everything you're describing as well.

Oskar: Yeah.

One important thing I also want to mention—something I really learned maybe a year or two ago—is that you're manifesting a lot, right? But a lot of people get comfortable in the position they're in. They're happy where they are, yet they dream about becoming the next John Summit or the next Tyler, the Creator.

The reality is, you've got to step up.

You've got to get out of your comfort zone almost every day and keep climbing that ladder. Because the moment you stop climbing, other people will, and you naturally start sliding back down.

You end up on this plateau. Let's say you're a resident DJ somewhere and you play there three times a week. That's your rhythm, and it drains a lot of energy. If you're going to bed at 5:00 AM three times a week after drinking, at some point you become stuck in that system.

For example, we had a residency in Bali for a long time, and we completely stopped it. We decided we're no longer playing where we live.

Now we're only there to be in the studio. We play everywhere except home, because home is for making music, focusing, and maintaining a good schedule and routine. That's much more important.

I think that's really important. Then you've got to look at what other people are doing and set realistic targets. Don't think, "I want to jump straight to the top." It might happen if you have a massive hit, but that only happens to maybe one artist in each genre every year. So, good luck.

If you're lucky, great. Otherwise, there's a lot of hard work, a lot of networking, a lot of reaching out to people, and a lot of collaboration.

I think that opens a lot of doors. It's about knocking on twenty different doors, and maybe one or two open. Then you get another opportunity, and you take it.

As long as you're willing to keep climbing that ladder and you're excited to push forward, you'll keep growing.

We're at a level now where other people are looking up to us, but we're continuously looking for the next thing.

Then you see someone like John Summit. I was just watching one of his vlogs, and he's talking about how excited he is to grow even further. It feels like he's already at the absolute peak, but he's already focused on the next big thing. Now he's doing his own festival and building something even bigger.

It's pretty impressive what you can build.

At some point, you'll also need a team—but that's another story. At the beginning, just find a good friend who believes in you and wants to help. That'll be the first big step.

Michael: Good stuff.

Well, Oskar, man, it's been fun connecting. I feel like we've covered some really interesting territory, both in terms of AI and the future, as well as the fundamentals of character development and storytelling, which is probably one of the most important things we can focus on to prepare for this future of AI and figuring out what's real and what's not.

I appreciate you being here on the podcast and sharing your perspective as someone who's both living it as an artist and building platforms that empower other artists.

Thank you for being here.

And for anyone listening or watching who's interested in checking out Social Stats or Songstats, where's the best place for them to go to learn more?

Oskar: Easy—songstats.com and socialstats.com. We got the domains, so it's easy enough. Or just search for them.

Check out both platforms. You can follow us on Instagram or anywhere else.

Maybe send us a message, and if you need tips and tricks, I'm sure there are going to be other amazing guests on here too.

Hell yeah. Thanks for having me.

Michael: Absolutely. Like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access.

Oskar, thanks again for being on the podcast.

Let's go. Was that a dab I just saw?