Hey there, In 2017, I published a blog post asking, "Is indie radio still relevant?" It was a terrible post. I was preparing to interview D. Grant Smith, who ran the indie radio show Appetizer Radio and wrote “The DIY Musician’s Radio Handbook." Not much was being written about the indie radio's relevance, or lack thereof, at that time. I basically just asked the question and moved on. That was almost ten years ago. The music industry has been turned upside down several times since then....
11 days ago • 2 min read
Happy Friday! Here's another new episode for your listening pleasure. My guest, Janette Berrios, almost went into medicine, studied business and finance instead, and eventually ended up at Citigroup, where she met Symphonic founder Jorge Brea. Symphonic is a music distribution and promotion company with markets across the U.S. and around the world. Janette Berrios, SVP of Corporate Marketing at Symphonic This conversation matters because most advice on building an audience in a new market...
29 days ago • 1 min read
Happy Thursday! My guest for this new episode is George Macias, co-founder of Lumoza, a free music rights-registration platform for independent artists, where you upload your song, and it’s registered where it needs to be so you actually get paid. Lumoza creates a Digital Birth Certificate for every song, which is a permanent record of who created it and when, and that helps take care of registering your work with the organizations that pay out royalties. George Macias of Lumoza George and I...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello and happy Friday! Here's another new episode for your listening pleasure. My guest Dan Scott lives at the intersection of creativity, law, and financial freedom. Equal parts artist, strategist, and advisor, he has spent his career helping creatives build lives where their work, money, and purpose actually align. He works with musicians, artists, actors, founders, and independent creators to help them build sustainable careers through ownership, financial systems, brand strategy,...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello and happy Friday! Here’s something most independent artists don’t think about: when someone buys a ticket through the venue’s platform, that person’s contact information belongs to the platform (not you). They come to your show, they leave, and you have no way to reach them again. Cody DeLong has spent more than a decade helping artists close that gap. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Sound Rink, a live-music technology company built around VIP experiences, artist pre-sales, and...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Happy Friday! What if the reason you’re ready to quit music has nothing to do with the music? Lynz Crichton joins me for the fourth time on the show. She’s a singer-songwriter based in Nottingham, England, and the creator of Music Marketing Method. The conversation started with an email she sent about a working musician named Matt who’d begun drafting the goodbye message for his website. Here are three insights from our conversation. Weariness Is Not the Same as Failure Lynz drew a line in...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Happy Friday! After 35 years of evaluating artists at the highest levels of the major-label system, what does an A&R executive actually believe matters? Pete Ganbarg served as President of A&R at Atlantic Records from 2018 to 2024, capping nearly 16 years at the label. He now runs Pure Tone Music, sits on the Songwriters Hall of Fame board, and teaches at Berklee, NYU, Wesleyan, and the University of New Haven. He's seen what works, what doesn't, and what artists keep getting wrong. Insights...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Happy Friday! What do you do when a collaborator records a perfect guitar part for your album and then loses the files Terry Carleton found an answer in a Rick Beato video about the Beatles. Terry is a drummer, producer, and studio owner based in San Jose. He first joined me for a podcast episode in January 2024 to talk about his work remixing over 150 original Vince Guaraldi recordings from the Charlie Brown TV specials. He’s back because he just finished something he’d been building for...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Hello and happy Friday! How many times have you looked at a chord chart, seen something like a minor seven flat five, and just skipped it? Or been offered a gig — a theater pit, a last-minute sub call, a wedding band gig — and passed because you knew the charts would be sitting on the stand and you wouldn’t be able to read them? Photo by Sebastian Rivera on Pexels.com Most music theory education is built for nineteen-year-olds in conservatories with four years and nothing else to do. That’s...
4 months ago • 2 min read