From inside the music industry - writing and building in music, AI & the creator economy
NYC
Joined March 2011
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Brent Faiyaz's manager Ty Baisden has done a masterful job at guiding Brent's career and helping him become one of the biggest independent artists in the world.
Ty's interviews really resonate with me and are full of wisdom.
Here are 4 of my favorite takeaways:
Crazy that iTunes shut down because of the transition to streaming and years later, the general thesis of what iTunes offered might be part of the solution the music industry is looking for.
1. The ability to support artists by buying their music, giving them the ability to earn more music
2. That purchased music living in a library with the rest of that listener's music in one place, as opposed to a separate app or platform just for the songs they buy
If Apple wanted to relaunch iTunes with the ability for artists to offer tiers or packages of their releases and allowing fans to pay what they want, could it change the game?
Wild how cyclical music is.
Mike E retweeted
Artists/Managers: ask your distributor (or do it yourself if you can) for an export of your catalog metadata including your song ISRCs, UPCs, audio files, artwork, etc.
This information is massively important to your career and you never know when you'll need it.
The internet makes it easy to ridicule and forget that other people are human beings and that the music industry professionals who lost their jobs this week are dealing with real life.
Bills, families, uncertainty, stress, etc.
Everyone has an opinion but unless you work at a specific company, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and why things happen.
Super sad and unfortunate for those now trying to figure it out.
It's finally here - Spotify just introduced a new feature to helps protect Artist Profiles from being incorrectly tagged by other artists.
Their new Profile Protection feature notifies artists when another artist tags their profile for an upcoming release, giving them the option to decline and remove it.
I've dealt with this problem sooo many times, love to see a potential solution to help fix this.
Damn, that's a great point!
When you think about it, iTunes in a way had so much of what people are looking for with Direct to Consumer.
The ability to buy from the artist and purchase the music but also functionality to listen to the purchased music in the same place that you listen to your other songs.
They say music is cyclical...time for a comeback? lol
EVEN, Bandcamp, and Audiomack all have solutions to this.
They may not be as frictionless as streaming services but they do give you the ability to listen to the music you bought after you buy it.
I think the bigger issue is that the majority of music that people consume is on streaming services so there’s friction in changing platforms to buy directly from an artist which creates more steps in the process.
Like if I buy yo album from bandcamp , I gotta go into my files folder and either put that folder into an app like untitled which has limited storage or play the files using YouTube or Spotify playing local files. If I have to get on YouTube or Spotify to play the music I bought , why wouldn't I just stream it from there.
The DTC model doesnt address actually listening to the music in our everyday settings. It just addresses artists not getting paid lolll (capitalism) and people dont really give a fuck if the artist gets paid or not , they want an easy fluid way to listen to music.
This is super impressive and super smart. Selling out each venue by playing smaller capacities will build his touring history and create a more intimate show for fans.
We talk a lot about artists underselling tours and booking agents picking the wrong size venues. Today, I’d like to highlight an artist who took the opposite approach.
AZ Chike has sold out nearly HALF of his No Rest for the Wicked tour, electing for smaller venues (300-500 people) instead of overshooting the hype.
He & his team opted for many dates in secondary cities along the West Coast (no doubt his largest market) but still found success in markets like ATL and DC.
As someone who attends a ton of concerts, it makes me happy to see a tour hit its mark and now I can experience one of my favorite new artists in a packed venue (instead of a half empty larger venue) 🎯
Well said and great take! Artist #1 will build a community of fans more likely to want to support long term.
The music industry will continue to become more niche and will be about who can give value to and nurture their existing audience without solely being focused on growing it.
An independent artist who sells 5k first week with a core fanbase who’ll then sell 2,000 vinyls and go on tour is far more valuable and sustainable long term than an artist on a major label who sells 50k but is reliant on algorithms for people to hear their music
Artist #1 values art and community while artist #2 chases viral moments and fame.
I think the problem with a lot of this is that they make strategy sound binary...it's either THIS or THAT with no in between.
In reality, different strategies work for different people based on their unique circumstances (genre, financial situation, etc).
The internet can make people feel like there's only one way of doing things.
There’s definitely a balance here! If you can world build and do creative things around an album without making it too long, it can still be discovered.
Where it gets tricky is when an artist drops a 15 song album with no audience and then has 10 plays on each song.
MUSIC INDUSTRY PRO TIP - be nice to everyone!
You'll encounter a lot of different kind of people at different levels in your career.
Some will be junior.
Some will be more senior.
Some in the middle.
Don't just be nice to those in positions of power...
Be nice to the interns, entry level team members, etc.
Don't just be nice to the director...
Be nice to the PA, sound person, lighting person, etc.
Being a genuinely nice and good person is underrated and can take you far.
We are all so overstimulated and tricked to believe we must be busy, hustling, and optimizing all the time.
Especially in the age of AI where productivity is a contest, sometimes the greatest gift of all is stillness.
Every AI company is racing to win the agent race and create the most widely adopted agent.
GrokBot
Dot
Muse
Who will win? Who will make it easy enough to use that the average non-technical person who is skeptical about AI uses it and falls in love with it?
I personally use GrokBot and love it but will be interesting to see where all of this goes.