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Liner Notes

by Robonzo

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 | Why sync licensing is a relationship business (and what that means for your music)

Happy Friday! If you’ve thought about sync licensing as an income stream, there’s a good chance you’re focused on the wrong problem. Chris SD, founder of Sync Songwriter, has spent years building direct relationships with music supervisors — the gatekeepers who decide what music goes into film, TV, and advertising. Two of his students recently had five songs placed in Anora, the film that won multiple Oscars in 2025. Chris SD of Sync Songwriter Three insights from our conversation 1. Sync...

14 days ago • 2 min read
Weathered stone wall with a red metal post box, bathed in warm sunset light

There’s a question music educator and DJ Amani Roberts asks his students on the first day of class. He asks them to choose: which is more valuable — a large social media following, or a large email list? Every time, they walk to the side of the room labeled social media. Every time, he has to explain why they’re wrong. It’s not a knock on social media. It’s a math problem. Say you have 20,000 Instagram followers. On average (in 2026), only about 3% of them will see any given post organically....

21 days ago • 3 min read

What if the best business decision you could make is accepting that your music is unmarketable? Not unmarketable like nobody wants it. Unmarketable in the sense that it’s never going to compete for Taylor Swift’s playlist spots. It won’t rack up millions of streams. It doesn’t fit what Spotify’s algorithm thinks people want. Last year, I spoke with Abe Partridge—multi-instrumentalist who’s been making a living in music for years. He said something that stopped me: “I exist in a niche… why do...

about 2 months ago • 5 min read