ill. Gates:
What makes people want to form a community around something is when you give public voice just to a private inner thought that they have had, that they have not shared with anyone. And when you can give public voice to that private thought that they have not shared, they'll be like, "Oh my god, this music is me."

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.
I'm really excited to be here today with my good friend, Ill Gates. Ill Gates is a bass dropping, educating oscillator, modulating space genius from the future. So for anyone who hasn't connected with Ill Gates yet, he has generated over 58 million plays on over 275 tracks. He's played over a thousand live shows across five continents, so he's an amazing musician, DJ, prolific creator himself. He's collaborated with the winners of nine Grammys and still slaying that on the daily. He's worked on Star Wars, Grand Theft Auto V, Gucci Mane, many more. And today, as a part of day two of the event, we're really focusing on creating a community and creating an audience and building a tribe. And Ill Gates is someone who has a ton of expertise when it comes to building a community and building relationships. I'm really excited to talk with him today.

ill. Gates:
Yeah, my pleasure. I'm really excited to share what I can and I'm really excited for the rest of SWM. I learned so much last year, really just game changers all day. You've put together a heck of a lineup and this is the event. This is the event to be at. This is the place to be. I'm thrilled as a participant, as well as a presenter.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing and thanks for being part of the event. Yeah. The only reason that the event is awesome is because if people like you coming together to share ...

ill. Gates:
The only reason, come on.

Michael Walker:
... insights. There's something beautiful about being together in a space and just, yeah, to be grateful for the world of the internet and the ability for us to be able to share lessons and things that we didn't necessarily have access to when we are just getting started. So appreciate you, appreciate what you bring into your community, and to this community is so critical to being a musician and building audiences around the networking or being a good facilitator to bring people in your community together with each other. So I'm excited to dive deeper through this conversation.
To start with, having been in the industry for decades now and having built some pretty amazing communities for your own music and helping other artists as well, and creating your producer dojo, which is an amazing community of artists, what are some of the biggest patterns that you see coming up or the biggest common challenges or mistakes that artists are struggling with as it relates to building community when they first come to you?

ill. Gates:
I think that the biggest problem that I see is that artists are making and presenting art that is all about themselves. And when you do that, it is not that exciting to people, to other people. Fans don't hear music and they don't resonate with music in the same way that a creator does. And the biggest problem that I see is that a lot of the time when people are first getting into music, they're approaching it as though it were a personal challenge, which in many ways it is. And, typically, you'll see someone on stage doing something that you find impressive and you'll be reflecting on your life and the audience or perhaps shortly thereafter and you'll be like, "You know what, I want to see if I can do that thing that affected me so much." And so you go out and you get some gear and you start studying and practicing, and it's really all about you proving to yourself that you can do this thing that this other person impressed you with.
And that's great because to learn your skills and to become capable of making music, you must learn to accomplish various creative feats and various technical feats and you must learn to be disciplined and to put the time into actually creating music that you feel confident in. But when you are approaching it like that and then you present it as such to the world, it's like when people are showing you videos of them on the treadmill at the gym, you're like, "Cool, that's great, but what does that have to do with me?" Tie a ribbon around you. You showed up at the gym every day this week. What do you want a cookie? What am I supposed to do here? That's not a conversation, that's not something that involves me. I don't care how much you can bench press, I don't. If you can bench press a lot, great, good, congratulations.
But how does that affect my life? How does that make my life better? Am I supposed to spend my entire day admiring the fact that you can bench press your own weight? Am I supposed to stop what I'm doing and be like, "Whoa, the weights sure are heavy?" It's not interesting to other people. So when fans are listening to music, they're listening to music for themselves. How does that music serve the fan? How does it make the fan's life better? And as I see it, there are two main ways that you can serve and thus make an impact on the life of fans.
The first way and the easiest way to break into a fan's heart is through what I call purpose playlists. And these are playlists that people will listen to enhance various activities in their life. Maybe you have a workout playlist, maybe you have a road trip playlist, maybe you have a sexy time playlist, maybe you have a playlist for studying. And you just like ... I consume a very large amount of ambient and drone music from these playlists.
I have been responsible for probably hundreds of thousands of plays on a lot of these drone artists because I used to have a old phone that was hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker in my bathroom that was constantly playing Drone Zone, which is a SomaFM radio station that had all kinds of really cool drone music. Now, despite the fact that I listened to Drone Zone all day every day, accounting for hundreds of thousands probably of plays on these drone tracks, did I buy concert tickets to go see drone artists? I've been to maybe five to 10 drone/noise concerts in my life. Not a lot, not a lot. Could I list a hundred drone artists that have blown my mind over the year? Probably not, probably not. Same thing with those like lo-fi hip hop beats to study and chill out to. There's this channel called ChilledCow that is very famous.
They have this anime girl picture on their YouTube where this anime girl and her cat are studying and they play awesome lo-fi hip hop all day. I listen to that all the time, too. But am I buying tickets? Am I following those artists with bated breaths on their mailing list just waiting for the next very similar lo-fi hip hop track drop? No, I'm not, right? I love that music. I listen to a lot of that music. I'm responsible for tons of plays, but am I really connecting with those artists at the ultimate deep level? No, because at the top of people's artistic needs hierarchy, there's the functional needs of these purpose playlists, but then above that is identity, self-actualization, and expression just like Maslow's needs hierarchy for human beings. The music that people use to express who they are for listening to it serves an identity need in the fan.
And this is the highest level of service that you can provide. And there are certain bands and musicians and whatnot that a fan can list the fact that they are devoted to that artist in place of a personality on their Twitter bio. And you will know a whole lot about that person from the fact that they have made that choice. If someone says that they listen to Rancid all day, I know a lot about that person already just from that choice. If they listen to Pretty Lights all day, I know a lot about that person from that choice. If they listen to Celine Dion all day, I know a lot about that person from that choice. And the artists that can serve the needs for self-expression and identity in their fans, those artists are operating at another level. Not everybody wants to do that, but if you do want to actually be properly famous household name, you need to be operating at that level, and to get people to feel that your art is who they are, you need to focus on things other than, "Look what I can do."
You need to focus on things like giving rise to the private inner thoughts of your audience. When you write a breakup song, yeah, you could be talking about that time you had a bad breakup with Jonathan and you set his car on fire on Tuesday in September. But a fan is going to listen to that and they're going to hear ... If you've written your lyrics, they're going to hear their own life, their own breakup, in that song if you've written it. And it's the same thing when you have samples in your songs, the lyrical concepts, the style of the song, those are really important for people who are listening at that level because style is how you say who you are without using words. Style is what you use to distinguish yourself as a human being and as a musician. And when you're approaching music in this look what I can do personal challenge way and you are approaching it as though you are trying to be same but different with one of your heroes, that even if you do a perfect job of that, you can still only be at best second place on the hierarchy of that individual style of art.
So there's a very cool book called Positioning that talks about this, but basically the biggest mistake that I see a lot of people making the beginning is they're approaching their music in this look what I can do personal challenge sort of a way, and they are focusing on doing their version of what has already been done because they want to do something that they "know will work". And when they're doing that, they're positioning themselves typically in direct head-to-head competition with hundreds of artists, if not thousands that are better than them at doing that particular thing. And let's say you love Motley Crew and your band is trying their best to be Motley Crew, they're still never going to be ... Because Steel Panther, they're basically doing just that and they've had to be like, "Okay, we can't be Motley Crew so we're going to be funny."
And they're like the comedy version of Motley Crew. And so they've been able to find success by distinguishing themselves as such. But there are many other Motley Crew bands that don't have any kind of a twist on it that is making it fresh and original and they're forever going to be somewhere down the ladder from Motley Crew. Like Motley Crew but funny is a new category, not that Motley Crew aren't funny, but like Motley Crew but funny is a new category, but like Motley Crew is not. So when you are conceiving of your project, you need to focus on doing things that have not necessarily been done before. The best thing that you can do is to create your own category and be the top of that category. And then if you can't be more than second to best, you need to figure out how you can be number two in that category.
Do not go for the number three spot. Do not go for the number four spot. Do not go for the number 100 spot in a category because you can't lead by doing that. And if ... You got to ask yourself, when is the most appropriate time to listen to this music? Is there other music that may be more appropriate in that moment? All right. And you need to engineer what you're doing such that there are times when your music is the most appropriate possible thing to put on. And that means defining your own category. And it took me a long time to realize this, but there's a few of my tracks that have increased their plays over time. When they came out ... Normally, you release a track and it's a big peak of plays and then it goes slowly down and then just tapers out in this long tail.
There's a couple of my tracks that did that and then started to rise again. They have organic growth. And every one of those tracks is very unique in its way. There's something that track does that no other track does quite as well. And one of the best examples is this track that I made called More Tea. And I had some fans who reached out to me complimenting my music and they were in Taiwan and they were tea travelers. They would go all around Asia and meet with tea farmers and just bring backpacks full of tea and stuff and started this import business that went on to become Austin's famous West China Tea company. But before this point, they were not known for that and they reached out and they were like, "Hey, love your music, we want to send you some tea."
And I was like, "Hey, I drink the hell out of tea, send me some tea." So they sent me some tea, it was delicious. I wrote them back, I was like, "Thanks, that was awesome. I love this stuff." And they were like, "Hey, you should come do a tour of Taiwan sometime." And we did it and I brought my wife out and we hung out in Taiwan and played some shows and it was just fantastic. It was a really cool experience. And then during that trip, these fans who've become my friends let me know that they had this archive of all of these recordings from a Taiwanese producer named Alex Peng. He had all these recordings that were of historical significance and he was like, "Look, I'm getting older. I'm not going to be able to do anything with all these. Why don't you hold onto these and see if you can give them their day in the sun. You just have to make sure that they're given the right shout-outs and that they're used to promote Taiwan and tea drinking."
So I was like, "Challenge accepted." Basically, one afternoon, I went down to Austin to go visit and I got out my machine and started chopping and pitching and processing the samples. And basically in the afternoon, I made this light, it's almost like down tempo, but you could still dance to it song where we sampled a bunch of teacups and we sampled So Han speaking in Chinese and then we sampled Bruce Lee's be water quote.

Michael Walker:
I was trying to remember that tea song. I remember specifically hearing Alan Watts on that and being like, "Oh, that's so cool."

ill. Gates:
Mind you, that was many years ago before. But anyway. So I didn't really think this track was that special when I made it, but because the song was about tea drinking, it has a life of its own and it's like one of my most popular tracks that's coming up on a million plays really soon. And there are loads of people who are obsessed with this song because they drink tea and not coffee and they're into specifically gong fu cha, Asian style tea and that is given shout-outs in the song. And my friend, So Han, he runs this West China Tea company, and people always come in and they're like, "Have you heard this song More Tea?" And he says, "Yeah, I'm in that song at the end speaking Chinese because we made that song up," and it's a whole thing.
And for the tea drinking community out there, that song is a real big deal. It's took off, it has a life of its own, and it's because it's serving the identity needs of those fans. That song is not about me, it's not about my technical chops, it's not about what I want to play in a live set, but it serves the needs of the people who listen to it and the people who feel like that song expresses who they are. And so they share it and they tell people about it and the community that has come up around that song made itself. So when you are making music and you're trying to figure out what your style is and what your identity is and how you can serve those higher level identity needs.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you about a free special offer that we're doing right now exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast, or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. So right now, we're offering a free two-week trial to our music mentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're going to get access to our entire music mentor content vault for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars, the first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and the last but not least the business.
When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth masterclasses from a network of world-class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting-edge strategies right now for growing your music business. On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds where our highest level of modern musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our Music Mentor Spotlight series and that's where we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches, and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top-level music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly.
On top of all that, you'll get access to our private music mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of music mentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up, collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now. You can sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community, and sign up for the live masterclasses that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show. So don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now and let's get back to our interview.
It seems ... First of all, this is so awesome. There's so many gold nuggets that they're dropping right now. To reiterate, it seems like really the core of your message right now, which is really a pretty earth-shattering thing for a lot of people, I think, is around your music, which generally it is a tool of self-expression, it's a tool about being able to express yourself. It's literally what it is. If that's all you're doing and you're not serving the needs of your community, then you're not going to have a community. So you described around having an identity, serving the identity needs of your community. And in just one note that I want to share related to that is that ... And I think that you'd probably agree with this and I would love to hear your thoughts on it. When you're serving the identity needs of your community, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not an identity that you also resonate with or that it's a part of your identity as well.

ill. Gates:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Probably the alignment is what it is your identity, but you're also very clear on this isn't just about you, it's about the identity of others in the community as well that you're a part of.

ill. Gates:
Yeah, definitely. And I'm not encouraging anyone to put themselves last in any way or to stifle their own self-expression by no means. But when you are expressing yourself, I think you should just let it come out. And it really comes into when you're deciding what to release, how to release it, how to create the story for the release, what is the narrative that we're creating here, how is that narrative inviting to the audience, how is it their narrative, et cetera. Then you consider these things. When you're trying too hard to do the trick, people can see through it. Flow and fun, those are the most important things and whatever makes the music come easy is the right way to do it. It's just when you're deciding what and how to present it to the public that these things are worth taking into consideration and learn and discover new things about yourself in a new environment when you're in the same place all the time. I love this room, but I spend 12 hours a day in this room every day.
Sometimes I don't even know whether it's day or night outside. So you got to get out sometimes. And it's important to consider this stuff then, but however you do develop your style, like style and the message of your music, it's got to be something that you care about as much. It's got to be something that expresses your identity just as much as it does express the fan's identity. And for that to work, it has to be something that you legitimately feel, legitimately care about, and legitimately want to represent. You can definitely make things like ... There are masks that conceal and there are masks that reveal, and some people take some degree of artifice to become more authentic version of themself. Is Clark Kent the more authentic version or is Superman the more authentic version? Is Bruce Wayne more authentic than Batman?
So there are times when the mask reveals truer level of self rather than being a disguise. It is a tool of self-expression, right? So when you're creating your stage persona or what have you, keep that in mind. You want to ... Yeah, it's a good idea to let people know that we've left normal reality and the humdrum, weird, passive-aggressive formality and politeness that you get at the water cooler at work is no longer necessary. It's important to convey that, that this is special time, but at the same time, you're not hiding your true self. You're not repressing your true self. You're not cutting off your square corners to fit in a round hole.
This stuff needs to be authentic and it needs to come from the depths of your soul. Because what makes people want to form a community around something is when you give public voice just to a private inner thought that they have had, that they have not shared with anyone. And when you can give public voice to that private thought that they have not shared, they'll be like, "Oh my god, this music is me." They'll think carefully about who is your audience, think carefully about what they feel, who they are, and think about what they're shoving away under the rug when they go to work. What are they repressing? What are they keeping to themselves? What magic did the adult world beat out of their inner child? Think about that stuff and put that stuff into your music because they're probably a lot like you.
And if there's things ... Especially if you have a day job, if there's things that drive you nuts about that day job, guess what, you're not alone. So figure it out, write it down, get specific. What would you rather be doing than working at this day job? What feeling would you rather be having than working at this day job? What can you never express working at your day job? What would you do if there were no rules? What would you do if you had all the money in the world? What would you do if you could turn back time? What would you do if you could go anywhere? These sorts of things. A lot of adults put in a drawer for later. And music is our escape. It's our magical spaceship that takes us to wonderland where we can get lost and forget the mask we wear at work because we're superheroes now.
And that is the door you need to unlock. Give us that escape. Show us wonderland. Not just one song, but a style that implies it could go on forever. Make it feel effortless because anyone can take something hard and make it seem hard. That's not magic. When you take something hard and make it look easy, then we say, "This person is a magician. I need to follow them." And then we become your fans. So focus on giving voice to the private inner life of your fans. Focus on giving them an escape. Make it feel easy. Make it feel like it goes on forever. Make it feel like the place they didn't know they were waiting for their entire life. And when you give us a taste of that, we're yours. We will follow you anywhere if you can give us that. Okay. So that's why people are not creating communities is because they're rocking up with their palms out. And like, "I did the thing that my hero did. It's almost as good. Give me money, follow me, be my fan, buy my record, buy my T-shirt,  me, look what I can do,  me." Ain't nobody got time for that. So don't do that. Don't do that. Do what I've described and we will follow you anywhere.

Michael Walker:
Dang, dude, that was awesome. I don't know where you channeled that from, but that was just beautiful. I feel like that's some of that poster stuff ... You see on the images on Google, there's a picture of someone's face and then it has some really meaningful quotes. But what you're describing around creating a space that gives people voice to things that they haven't expressed before. And what are those things in a lot of cases? A lot of cases, they tend to be some repressed something, like a repressed something, and be able to give voice to that. Super powerful.
It sounds like what you're saying, to encapsulate all of it and to distill it down into one key point, is that your music and your community is really about an expression of identity. And you clarifying both your own identity, also clarifying what is that, but also understanding there's a collective identity and honing in on how can you find alignment between your identity and the things that you care about, the things that maybe you're repressing, your own trauma, your own stuff, or just whatever it is that's true for you. But finding alignment between that and the identity of your listeners and creating something that they identify with is at the core of what a community is in the first place.

ill. Gates:
Yeah, definitely. We're led by visions for a better world, vision for a better self, vision for a better way of life. Those are the things that motivate humans because I think every one of us knows at some level that there's something wrong, there's been something lost in the world at large. No one looks at society as, perfect, wouldn't change a thing. No one feels that. No one. There's lots of things that could be better. There's lots of things that could be more honest. There's lots of things that could be more real and people are more alike than they are different. So when you're writing music, think of an audience of one. Write for one person. Maybe that's a real person. If it's an imaginary person, you need to be as detailed as possible about that person. And when you write for an audience of one, it's very obvious what to say and do and how to express yourself.
But when you're trying to write for the masses, that will mess you up. So just think of one person, think of one person, think of them in as much living detail as you can. And when you create for an audience of one, that will often help you to tap into that vision. And it could be yourself when you're younger, but it should not be yourself now and it should not be yourself in the future because that's when you get into the me show, right? But, yeah, definitely just think about what bothers you about the landscape of music, what's not being done. Don't be too satisfied with the way others have done it. Don't be too satisfied with the state of things. Because one thing ... Another thing that I would like to mention, too, is that when you're too happy with the way things are, you don't really want to change anything and you don't want to do anything new.
You're like, "Yeah, everything's great." And it's, "Why do we need your music then?" You got to have some kind of a bone to pick with the way everyone else is doing it. And a lot of the best artists I know have very strong opinions about music. Often opinions that are better kept to themselves, but they still exist. They're very strong opinions. It's important to focus on what's not being done. Focus on what the shortcomings are and the music that you hear, what is everybody else not doing, that you should have a list of those things. And when you're running for an audience of one and you are focusing on doing the things that the world is lacking, then it becomes very easy to do something simple that stands out. And when you can do something simple that is striking and unique, that is what's really powerful with audiences. Doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be different.

Michael Walker:
I love that exercise, thinking about one person. And in our world, this is called the customer avatar, and there's a bazillion exercises around this, but it's so true for businesses of all sorts. And the way you just expressed it for ... I don't know why it took me this long to think about it in this way, but it unlocked something which is if every single song that you write, you take that into account where you think, "Who's the one person?" If I could imagine a single person that I'm writing this song for and think about that one person as you're writing the song, I feel like that's a really powerful practice and something that could really allow you to focus in on that identity in a more really streamlined way.

ill. Gates:
Yeah, I find it really helpful because when I got signed right away when I was a kid, I think this label wanted the third track I ever made. I didn't even know what I was doing. They were like, "Yo, we want ." So I was like, "Uh-oh." Yeah. Then I just had all these people telling me about, "Oh, audiences are like this, demographics are like that. You need to be less creative and do stuff that's more like what these big artists are doing, and this is the way you got to just make music that's more palatable," whatever that is. And those people were a lot older than me and they ran record labels and stuff. So I was like, "Oh, I'm a spring chicken," not even 20. So I'm going to take all this advice into account and do my best to put my personality on the back burner and make something palatable.
And, man, it caused lasting psychological damage. So I do not recommend that. And if you just look at any decisions made by committee, are they better than decisions made by a leader? Usually not. No, I'm not ... That's not to say I'm anti 

Michael Walker:
That's on the leader.

ill. Gates:
When you look at things that are like ... When you look at films a director maybe made before they were famous, when the stakes were low, so they were calling the shots versus when they have a whole bunch of suits in a room with focus groups and charts, which one makes a better movie? Yeah. So be aware of that. Keep that in mind that when you're writing something for everybody, who is it really for? And the most popular music in the world is also the most hated. It's important to really think, who is this for? How does this serve this person? And just if you have one person in mind when you're making your decisions, it is so much easier to make decisions, and things come out a lot more real, a lot more resonant with your audience when you have one person in mind and not the masses or what sells.

Michael Walker:
So good. All right. That's probably a good place to wrap up the conversation. This is awesome. I feel like this has really gone to the roots of what is music for, what's the purpose that it serves, and what is your role as a musician nowadays, especially as it relates to new developments that are happening with AI and everything we've been talking about in this event of where humanity meets technology. Seems like the conversation that we just had and what you just shared is even more important than ever because that identity and that expression is one thing that AI can't replace. They can't replace identity.

ill. Gates:
And it can't replace good taste. That's one thing. People are all afraid about what AI is going to do in music. And I'll be like, "Have you seen the art people are making with AI?" If I get one more astronaut looking into a portal with two fingers on each hand, I can't handle it. There's some people ... Yeah, it's like they got all the skills of the world, but it still sucks because their ideas are dumb.

Michael Walker:
It's true. It's all about the thought and the intention.

ill. Gates:
Don't be afraid. Okay.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.