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Liner Notes

I'm a musician and host of The Unstarving Musician podcast. Liner Notes is my biweekly newsletter that shares some of the best insights garnered from the many conversations featured on the Unstarving Musician. Topics covered include, songwriting, touring, sync licensing, recording, house concerts, marketing, and more.

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Featured Post

Unstarving Musician | Six strategic lessons from 300+ podcast episodes

Happy Friday and welcome to 2026! If you're in that weird space between "I should probably plan something" and "I'd really just like another week off," same. But here we are, and I want to share what I learned in 2025—the strategic lessons that changed how I work. I hope they'll get you thinking about the way you work. Image by @jddartphotographer on unsplash.com Three Lessons from 2025 Newsletter-first architecture actually works (but it's slow) – AI is disrupting search traffic, forcing the...

Many of us write about gratitude this time of year. This year's list came relatively easily for me. Still, it’s mixed with some difficult questions I’m sitting with about work, health, and what success actually means. Before the holiday break, I wanted to share both what I’m grateful for and what I’m learning. Some of it’s uncomfortable. Some of it might resonate if you’re dealing with similar tensions. Three things on my mind 1. Day jobs might be the smartest path After conducting over 300...

What if thousands of dollars from your music are sitting unclaimed right now—not in some future revenue stream, but from songs you’ve already released? For most independent artists, this isn’t hypothetical. It’s reality. A couple of weeks ago, music business educator Amani Roberts shared insights about the money musicians consistently leave on the table. Not because they don’t work hard. Not because their music isn’t good enough. But because they don’t know about the four separate royalty...

You probably spent more time planning your next release than planning your finances this year. I know I did. Here's the problem: January hits, gig bookings dry up, and suddenly you're scrambling to figure out how to cover obligations like rent while your streaming royalties trickle in at $0.003 per play. The musicians who thrive financially aren't necessarily the most talented—they're the ones who figured out the money side before it became a crisis. With four weeks until 2026, here are the...