Chris Greenwood: Hey, there's a scene in The Social Network movie where Mark Zuckerberg says to Eduardo, he's like, "Give me those email addresses of your friends," because they're famous and he wants to tap into his email database. And he's like, "Oh, I don't know, man." He's like, "Dude, if you don't give me those, we're just going to send it to the only people we know and it's just going to bounce around doct'ed." And this is what's happening to artists is they're just releasing songs on Spotify, but they're not marketing.

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 our 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.

Michael Walker: We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker: All right. I'm here with my friends Manafest, Chris Greenwood and I'm super stoked because Chris, he runs a company called the Smart Music Business and he teaches from his own experience. So he's actually an example of a successful artist himself who he's called Manafest. He's been featured on Forbes, Billboard, MTV. He's won multiple awards for the Canada Covenant Awards, GMA Dove Awards, he's been nominated for several Juno Awards, which is like the Grammy's in Canada.

Michael Walker: He sold over 300,000 albums as Manafest. He gets millions of streams every month, and so in this interview specifically, we're going to focus on some strategies that he's found for increasing your Spotify presence and getting more streams on Spotify. Chris, dude, thanks for taking the time to be here today.

Chris Greenwood: Really honored to be here, man. Thanks for that amazing introduction. I didn't know I was so amazing. You made me sound really good.

Michael Walker: It's true, dude. I'll do the research, I find out and... Every time I do one of these interviews, we have some pretty amazing mentors and so many opportunities now with the state of like the internet and the ability for us to connect. It's so cool that we get to be a part of this age of knowledge and being able to so easily transfer what you've learned through hard work and probably your tens of years of struggle and figuring out what doesn't work. Not if I find out what does work and-

Chris Greenwood: Totally.

Michael Walker: ... to share that with the people that are watching now.

Chris Greenwood: Man, I wish there was stuff like this when I first started. All I remember growing up is reading Donald Passman's Music Business course, and it was just so advanced, so not applicable to anything I was doing. We're really blessed with YouTube and with online courses, and coaches, and all that stuff, man. So yeah, it's great to be able to give back now too for sure.

Michael Walker: For everyone that this is the first time hearing about you, could you share a little bit about your story and basically how you got started, and how you achieved that level of success with Manafest, and how you transitioned to creating Smart Music business?

Chris Greenwood: Yeah, absolutely. I released my first EP in 2001 and I got into music because I hurt myself skateboarding. I wanted to be a pro skater and I was starting to get free stuff. I was sponsored by some of the local skate shops in this company called C1rca that I really liked, the shoe company. But I got in an accident and couldn't skate, got dumped by a girl at the same time. And instead of taking my life, and getting really depressed, and discouraged, somehow I picked up a pen and started to write songs, rap songs, Hip Hop stuff, which led to rock stuff and went on this journey of songwriting and I was really terrible.

Chris Greenwood: But the one thing I'm thankful for I noticed is I could always pick out quality songs. I don't if you remember back in the day when you'd buy an album and there'd only be like maybe one or two good songs on it back then, and it's like you knew what it was. And I think that translated into when I was starting to write songs and I would just call myself out. I wasn't the type of guy that really thought his stuff was so amazing. I approached it through a humble thing like how can I make this better? How can I make this better?

Chris Greenwood: And after writing and working with a couple of different producers, I quickly located the guys that could make a great song and take my idea, whatever, and turn it into a great song. And I was like, "Okay, I'm latching on to that guy." And then I happened to be at a messenger who's got a song on Bieber's new album, is done stuff for Pitbull, Magic, so many, some of the biggest pop stars and really was blessed to work with him and to help with my song writing and making great songs.

Chris Greenwood: But that didn't mean I would have success right away. I ended up meeting a guy named Trevor from TFK, rock group called Thousand Foot Crutch and he helped me get signed to a label called Tooth & Nail Records out of Seattle, which is like a Christian rock label. And no advance, nothing like. No advance man, it was literally me and my wife who would make the records, do all the design, everything, and they just released it, and it didn't do very well. I was touring, went broke, struggled on the road, just touring, touring, touring, touring, touring.

Chris Greenwood: That was the only way I knew how to make money was touring because it's amazing. Right when I signed that deal, 75% of my income has gone from my music. Right? And the only way I could survive was touring. And after quitting my job, that was the only way I could figure this out. We had a little business success radio, but nothing that translated, we were making sales and so the label only kept me on and they literally said this, because my ANR said, "We were going through the different artists saying, 'Who should we let go? Who should we...'" What do they call it when you... drop? "Who are we going to drop?"

Chris Greenwood: And they came to Manafest and he goes, "Oh, Manafest, no, he makes me money. I'm going to keep him on." And I was just like, "Holy crap." You know what I mean? I was thankful in the sense, but like I had this twisted mentality, like, "Yeah, I'm working for the label, I don't want them to drop me," and all this stuff. It's like they convinced me, they're like, "Hustle for them." And the second record we released in the US, again, they're only going to fulfill my three-album deal and then let me go. I know that was the plan.

Chris Greenwood: But second record, because they had distribution with EMI, the record took off in Japan, some ANR at EMI Japan was like, "We like this." They compared me to like Linkin Park meets Eminem. And so we started selling thousands and thousands of albums in Japan and it just breathed new life into my career, brought some money in of course, brought the labels like, "Oh, well maybe we should market this." Still didn't do very great in the US, okay in Canada, but it just breathed new life and allowed me to, wow, somebody actually likes my art?

Chris Greenwood: I know you're an artist too and it wasn't the money as much as it was someone buying my new music across like the other planet. So we toured Japan, killed it, it was amazing time of my life. We did another record pretty quickly because the label wanted to make more money off of Japan, but then I was done my deal. And because I went to Japan, I met the labels there and I ended up cutting of Tooth & Nail and did a deal directly with EMI Japan, and that Tooth & Nail off big time.

Chris Greenwood: Because they were like, "We want to do a deal with you, but we only want to do it in Japan." I was like, "Oh, that's funny, because I did a deal directly with them and I only want to do a deal with you in the US." Anyways, they're ticked off. They did the deal with me in the US only and I renegotiated my contract and I kept the world to myself. One thing artists need to know is like, when you sign a deal with the label, they're going to want worldwide rights, but you need to ask the question, what are they doing for you in Germany? What are they doing for you in Japan?

Chris Greenwood: Do they have relationships, they have success there? Otherwise, why do they need the world? They only want the world because they want to take as much money from you as possible. So anyways, they did the deal in the US, did the deal in Japan. Japan did really well, but what we weren't expecting was the US took off. There was a song called Avalanche on that, and this was one of my best, ended up becoming one of my best selling records, but this song took off on radio in the US and we started selling thousands of albums.

Chris Greenwood: A different song took off on mainstream radio in Canada called Every Time You Run, selling crazy. And I was at this point where it's just like success, found some real success. And I just want everyone to listen, it wasn't my first EP, it wasn't my first independent album release. It wasn't the third album I released with the label. The second album did okay in Japan, wasn't the fifth one now, it was the sixth release that really took off.

Chris Greenwood: Anyways, long story short, that really propelled me a different level in the US doing 150, 200 shows a year, really learned the business, and that was 2010. And since then, I've released a new record every two years. And now I left the label in 2014, started doing thar on radio, doing kick starters, got all my records back, which I really want to make clear, all the deals I signed were licensing deals so that the label only had rights to them for... First deal, it was six years or seven years, which is way too long.

Chris Greenwood: Any artists listening to this, you only want to sign three, four years and you want to get your baby back. But that's how I've been able to survive is because I got all my records back and I have them, and so I'm making income on those, specifically on Spotify and that's how I'm continuing to make a great living because I learned the music marketing, been in this business for a long time and got my frickin records back. That was probably a longer story than you wanted.

Michael Walker: It's fantastic. And what a great example of persistence. And like you said, the sixth album was really the one where it broke through. One analogy that comes to mind is, especially with musicians who were trying to be successful, the first five albums not quite having that breakthrough, it's like the bamboo plant, the way that it grows is, at the beginning, you don't really see a whole lot of growth, so it's growing under the surface, it has those roots and it's starting to grow.

Michael Walker: Now, at a certain point, the bamboo just shoots up, and I forget-

Chris Greenwood: That's right.

Michael Walker: ... exactly how much, but it just shoots up really quickly. But it feels like, wow, it just all of a sudden it happened, but it was really because you're building those roots at the beginning. One question I have for you is, because I know now one of the things that you focus on really is this digital or this online opportunity for people because of the internet and that really you've transitioned rather than touring. A lot of it's coming from just online. How did that transition take place?

Chris Greenwood: And I'm really glad it did with the coronavirus going on right now as we're recording this. Because my whole life was touring for so long and my income was based on touring. But again, around 2014 is when my wife got pregnant and we had our daughter in 2015, and I went through a lot of change, and honestly went through some really tough; times identity crisis stuff. I was in my later 30s, had a daughter, left California, which was my dream place, back to Canada. And just really trying to figure out myself and pulling off from the road, and not going on these tours that I'm so used to and getting that ego boost and where my identity is strapped to.

Chris Greenwood: I started focusing on online, and marketing, and selling my music and whatnot. And I just went through this phase of learning and especially getting my records back. It's like, "Okay, if I'm not going to be on the road, how can I get my music and message out there? How can I continue to do this?" Because I remember this one guy said to me when I was in the conference Midam in France, he says, "Okay, you've got your catalog, but what's your plan for that catalog?"

Chris Greenwood: Right now we're doing a ten-year anniversary launch for one of my best selling albums. That's one of my plans is to create a bunch of merch around it, a big promotion. And that's what some artists don't know is that you can resurrect an old release. You can keep bringing attention to it. Heck, Eminem just did for his Slim Shad. He did like all these cassette tapes and breathed this new life. And he just happened to have the single offered in that new Shazam movie.

Chris Greenwood: So you need to be looking and seeing what artists are doing and what you can do to breathe new life into your stuff, and for me, it's all online. I'm not saying I won't tour anymore. I definitely... Because we're going to be talking about a webinar later where I say, "Oh, I'm selling thousands of albums without touring." I never ever want to be the guy that says, hating on tour. I just want you to know that you can sell music without having to do it, and for me, mostly, that's been when with online marketing and direct to sale like running ads, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube saying, "Hey, here I am, buy my stuff."

Michael Walker: That's such a great point that you brought up with resurrecting or recycling. Just because you released an album or song in the past doesn't mean that it just goes dark. Seems like the common tendency is to always be releasing new content and always be thinking about new, new, new, new, especially at the beginning when most people haven't heard your original stuff. It's like you don't necessarily have to move on to the new stuff if the old stuff was good quality. It's more about promoting it and putting it in front of people.

Michael Walker: And what we described too about your transition from touring to some online stuff, I can really relate with, because that was the exact same transformation that I've gone through with my band, Paradise Fears was that we were out for 10 months out of the year and probably a lot like you, I love the feeling of playing shows, and my identity was also wrapped up in it. I think if it feels good, you feel special when you come off a stage and everyone's walking up to you and wants your picture, an autograph, and is telling you stories about how your music has helped them. It's awesome and that's always going to be something that you're going to enjoy.

Michael Walker: But like you, when I started my family and I found out that I was going to have a baby boy, I didn't want to be gone for 10 months out of the year is a lot more challenging. So I wanted to figure out how could I provide for them without touring full-time. And started to get into this online digital marketing stuff like you as well. That's awesome, I think that this is even opportunity for us right now. Like we're talking about, beginning with knowledge and be able to share that, but also in terms of your music and putting it in front of people.

Michael Walker: I know that you've built some really profitable campaigns that are just based purely around online sales with albums have already been released, so that's really cool. I guess moving on to my next question would be, at this point, I know you've worked with thousands of musicians and you're teaching them how do they improve their Spotify presence? How do they get more streams? How do they build a sustainable music business online? What are some of the biggest challenges that you see people facing when they first come to you?

Chris Greenwood: The first thing is, I think that a lot of artists expect like, especially when it's their first song, they expect this massive thing right off the bat, and if it doesn't blow up, they're frustrated or they've only taken a couple swings. Maybe they've released a few songs and they're frustrated. It's like, "Ah, this doesn't work. It won't work for me," and they give up too soon. Some artists I find are super eager, but they're rushing it out. I'll give you a couple ideas for Spotify here.

Chris Greenwood: We get our art and we get the mastery like last night and we want to upload it the same night and have it released the next day because we're just feel like there's such this rush to get it out. I think it was Ryan Holiday who wrote the book, the Perennial Seller, which is amazing. He talks about even his first book deal. He had this deadline in his mind that it had to come out this time and had to be out there. You know what I mean? And people, we put these deadlines on ourselves.

Chris Greenwood: And I'm not saying don't have a deadline, nothing gets done without a deadline, but you don't want to just whip this thing out here and specifically on Spotify, because then you can't submit it to the editorial playlist because they need, at least I think it's seven or eight days. I like to give at least three weeks, so if I've got a song that I just uploaded to TuneCore, DistroKid, CD Baby, whoever your digital distributor is, it takes about 24 to 72 hours to show up in your Spotify artists dashboard so that you can then submit it to a playlist.

Chris Greenwood: They're getting thousands and thousands of submissions every day, so you got to make sure you give them time to look at all of them. And if you're just putting it up and then you're going to release it seven days later, they might not be able to get to it to review it, to even get a chance to get an editorial playlist. And speaking of rushing, I always like to say to artists like, "Look, you submit this and you rush the album out there. I bet you rush the artwork too and it probably looks like crap, and you didn't really take some time, and you forget that people don't hear you first, they see you first."

Chris Greenwood: And I was coaching an artist yesterday and we're doing this coaching call and the album artwork looked awesome. And I was like, "Dude, this is sick. I want to listen to your music more just because... And I want to check you out because I just love the design. It's intriguing me, it's bringing curiosity." I was like, "dude, you can put that on a shirt as well," and I was just coaching him a little bit. That was the second thing is the artwork.

Chris Greenwood: And then the third thing that I think that would really help is that collaboration's. I wish I did more and more collaborations with other artists that were bigger than me. Because just like me and you are doing right now in an instance, I'm going to promote this to my audience, you're going to promote this to your audience, and this interview podcast is now going to get double the smash from all the people you know. It's the same thing, like your band, Paradise Fears, if we did a song together and I do a song together and featured, we pull from not only our fans. If you post it on Facebook, I tap into all your friends, family, cousins, all those stuff.

Chris Greenwood: All your Spotify followers, all your Twitter followers. If we decide to come together, it's like, boom. As opposed to just Paradise Fears just, "Oh, I've got to be the lone soldier and do this myself for Manafest," or "I don't want to feature anyone else." We don't realize like you're not a competitor, you're a collaborator. We got to collaborate because then we get doubled the smash. I released a song with a buddy the other day, and not only did we do the collaboration, so both our monthly listeners got smashed, the Spotify's algorithm got notified about the song.

Chris Greenwood: We both submitted the song through our artist's dashboard to the editorial playlist, and man, we got some pretty good editorial playlists on this one. Plus the song, I'd like to think it was good, that's part of the reason, but I also believe it's because we're both giving double chances. So if I can say to any artists, when you're getting started, don't get your ego so in it, get a feature, pay for a feature, man. If you got to spend 1,000 bucks, 2,000 bucks, you get to tap into somebody's fan base that might have tens of thousands of followers and you just get that instant boost as opposed to just like slugging it out.

Chris Greenwood: I always say in my trainings like, "Stop working harder and work smarter." Work hard, but work hard smart.

Michael Walker:

Dude, I love that. And I think that's so important is switching from that mindset of competition, it's a collaboration. One analogy that reminds me of is what we're doing right now, and really what also what happens, probably why touring is such a successful strategy for people, at least in terms of growing a fan base is because exactly what you just talked about. It's like you're coming together and your audiences are coming together, and it breeds new life into it.

Michael Walker: And it's like bees cross-pollinating the flowers, it's essential and it's how fresh blood happens. Like if you're just chewing a piece of bubblegum for a long time and the bubble gum is your fan base, and it's just the same piece of bubble gum, then it starts to get stale. If you can throw in another piece of bubble gum, if you have fresh new people and you can interact with new people, it breeds life and it is fresh. I know people are doing some...

Michael Walker: Features seem like a great way to be able to have that cross pollination and I do wonder too, if there's something like, if you just do things like what we're doing right now, but for your fan base, maybe you interview another member of a different band that's that you think your fans would like, or you connect with them, you write a song together, you do a live stream together. There's probably so many ways that we can utilize the internet and collaborate in innovative ways and come up with inventive new ways to come together.

Chris Greenwood: Yeah, absolutely man. I need to do that more. I have a radio show I've been really blessed to have and it airs on about 56 stations across the US, which is awesome. I get to play about four of my songs within the hour, but I want to tap into and do interviews with some artists that I like and that I actually want to collaborate. So I'm actually going to use my radio show as a leverage, not to just get them on, but get an interview, and then hopefully work with them because some of them are bigger than me and I just like their music too.

Chris Greenwood: So you got to think of different ways that you can leverage and build a platform. There's so many people that we all started with one subscriber. Everyone started with one follower. How did we get it though? We just stayed in the game and kept on releasing stuff and stayed at and we didn't quit.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. It sounds like, just recapping some of the challenges that you see or the mistakes that the artists I think when they first come to you is, one, having really high expectations when they first release their song. It's like their first song ever, they haven't built up an audience yet, and they put it out and they're hoping that it's just going to explode. But it's like starting a fire in a sense that their song is like a log for the fire.

Michael Walker: And it's like, they throw the log into the fire pit and then just sit down, they're like, "All right. Wait, oh, the fire didn't start." It's just a log sitting in the fire pit. And so it's really important to be willing to be in it for the longterm, and then in terms of when you first release something, not getting discouraged if you don't get millions of streams on your very first song, but just stick with it.

Michael Walker: And you mentioned too, in terms of like people, one of the mistakes is rushing into it too quickly when it comes to like the Spotify. If you don't only give them a few days or a week or so before you release it, then you're not going to have enough time for them to really check out the songs and possibly place them on editorial playlist.

Michael Walker:

One thing I'd like to dial in or I'd like to talk about is Spotify, because obviously Spotify is a huge focal point nowadays with the music industry, is where most people listen to their music. Specifically when it comes to Spotify, what are some of the biggest challenges or some of the biggest questions that you get when people come to you?

Chris Greenwood: Just go bouncing off what you were saying about when someone is releasing a song on Spotify, and say it is your very first song on Spotify, or even your third, fourth, fifth. If you want that thing to be successful, one thing you can do and you need to realize that this is okay to do, run a ton of Facebook and Instagram ads and give that song away for free before it even comes out. Or give away a ton of your other older before the new song comes out. So you have an email list and have hopefully more followers and people following you before it comes out.

Chris Greenwood: If your song is done right now, it's your very first song and it's not coming out for two months, you can be running ads to give it away. Nobody cares like about, "Oh, I don't want to give my best stuff away. I don't want to fight." Nobody cares about you. They really don't. Only you care about you. Nobody cares about me, so I know what it's like to have an amazing song, the one's like, "Oh, it's my little precious thing, I don't want anyone to steal the idea. This, this, this, that." Look, that's not going to happen. Okay.

Chris Greenwood: And I think it's 50 Cent who says, "Look..." I forget who said it to him. I think it was one of the Jam Master Jay who said to him, "Okay, you've written one hit, can you write another one?" And I say that to myself as well like, "Okay, I've written one, I know I can write another one and I can write another one." I say that to anyone listening, but it's like, build the buzz up before it hits. It's okay to be giving away your music.

Chris Greenwood: This biggest thing that I say to artists with Spotify. If you're just releasing songs just like... And it's just like posting on Instagram, just releasing songs and you're submitting to the playlist. That's great, you're doing all the great stuff. But if you're not marketing on top of that, you're just what I like to say in the movie, Social Network, you're just bouncing around doct'ed. Hey, there's a scene in The Social Network movie where Mark Zuckerberg says to Eduardo, he's like, "Give me those email addresses of your friends," because they're famous and he wants to tap into his email database."

Chris Greenwood: And he's like, "Oh, I don't know, man." He's like, "Dude, if you don't give me those, we're just going to send it to the only people we know and it's just going to bounce around. doct'ed." And this is what's happening to artists is they're just releasing songs on Spotify, but they're not marketing. But what I teach is that, look, you release a song or you do the marketing before the song so that your fan base went from here to here, and then you release the song, but you're still doing marketing and marketing your fan base is growing and growing and growing so that when you release your next song, now even more people are hearing about it, what I call is stacking the release.

Chris Greenwood: But it's not stacking the release or growing your fan base unless you're marketing it. It was this guy, Garrett White who said to me, he's like, "If you are not marketing your businesses dying because you're not getting new leads into the building." If I ever have a Facebook or Instagram ad that's not working, or if I've stopped promoting to radio, that freaks me out because I realize I'm not getting anyone new in. You've got to be constantly marketing and spending a little bit, whether it's time, energy doing interviews like this.

Chris Greenwood: You don't have to spend money, you can do it freeways by trying to get on interviews and different stuff, but all these things fuel Spotify. But I like just to say that if you think that you're just going to release a song on Spotify, and submit to the editorial playlist, and just keep hoping on that, just chances just aren't as high. They're just not. I'm not saying you can't. You might have a smash freaking song and you get on one playlist and that could change your life. I'm not saying that won't happen, but I like to put in the other work. That's what I say to artists about Spotify.

Michael Walker: Oh, what's up guys. Quick intermission from the podcasts so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public. They normally reserve for our $5,000 clients that [inaudible 00:27:21] personally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode Your Fan Base and Make A Profit With Your Music Online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel.

Michael Walker: It's going to allow you to grow your fan base online and the system is designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers and really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. So if that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that.

Michael Walker: And the other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor. One thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. And so that'll help us reach a lot more people, so if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate if you click on the subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: That's so important. What it reminds me of is like a common business principle and I'm sure you know this really well, and probably people have heard about this... I think maybe the number one business conference in the world is like Traffic & Conversion. That's really what everything comes down to in terms of business and your music business, and any business in general is like those two things, traffic and conversion.

Michael Walker: And if all you're focused on is releasing new songs and getting the people you already have to listen to it, then it's like, there's nothing to convert. You need to drive traffic, you need new people coming to the music in order for the business to run. The same thing with like a stagnant river. If a river isn't moving, if there's no fresh water coming in, then it starts to breed bacteria and it starts... Is a still pond, then it's not good, you need that freshness.

Michael Walker: I recommend exactly the same thing too, in terms of so many artists want to release something, they haven't built an audience yet, not even started promoting, they don't have anyone to release it to. And so the likelihood of you triggering an algorithm with Spotify or YouTube is significantly less likely than if you did do what you're saying, and promote and get your first 5,000, 10,000 true fans who are waiting for the official release or waiting for a new song. And then you send out an email, you send out a text message to all those people.

Michael Walker: Then that first day, the first week, you get 10,000 streams or something. That probably is going to make it significantly more likely for you to get on playlist. So I love that that focus that it's important to build a fan base, to promote first before you release something, so you can fully capitalize on that new release.

Chris Greenwood: Yeah. Smash that algorithm, man and... Because people... If you build the fans before, whether they got like... You could give the song away for free for a month, and then you can say, "Hey guys, this is now on Spotify. Do me a huge favor and go listen to it here and share it with some friends." You gave first and now you're asking for that for the ask," and it's just a powerful thing. And you're going to get tired of marketing your music before your fans are going to get tired of it.

Chris Greenwood: I don't know if it was Gary View ever said it was, but they're like, "When you feel like you were screaming at the top of your lungs promoting your music, people are just starting to hear you." If you're not getting haters every day, then you ain't marketing your music enough. I love seeing the people that say like, "Man, I never heard of you before. I never heard of you before." And I get some hate too, because obviously not everyone's going to love my music, and that's okay.

Chris Greenwood: But I'm just going after just the people that do like it, and I'm focusing on them. I'm not worried about the few haters.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. That's really important. And like you said is, not everyone's going to like it and that's okay. For the people who do resonate with it, it's like a C chord. If your music is like a C and E, then the people who are going to like it are maybe playing a harmony, they're in the same key. And there's going to be other people that just are in a different genre or whatever and it's like F sharp chord. And it sounds good on its own, there's intuit. But then when you put your music next to what they like, it's it... Just doesn't fit, and that's okay. They're both equally valid. It's just they're not in the same key, and that's cool.

Michael Walker: One thing you mentioned was utilizing like Facebook, Instagram, some of these other traffic sources to start to build an audience before you officially release a new song on Spotify, for example, and stacking that over time. What are like one or two of the campaigns... like a framework that you've seen working really well in terms of actually driving traffic for someone who's completely cold, has never heard of your music before. What kind of message would you put in front of them?

Chris Greenwood: There's two, depending whether you have an album or you have singles. If you just have singles, then you could give away a song in exchange for an email address, just run a song, say, "Hey, for fans of Kanye West and Drake, or for fans of Florence and the Machine and Adele, get my new song," whatever, name the song, "for a limited time and click learn more now." And they go to a squeeze page. And a squeeze page is just a webpage that the only thing they can do is give you their name and email address or go away.

Chris Greenwood: They can't click on tour dates, they can't click on contact. All it is is give me your name and email, and I will give you music. That's one way for maybe more newer artists. But if you've got albums, you got USBs, you've got merch and stuff like that, I like a free plus shipping model where I'm giving my album away for free and I just ask them to pay the shipping and handling. And that's how we're selling hundreds of albums a week. Earlier I was telling you, we sold over 40 something albums just yesterday, not including the upsells.

Chris Greenwood: And an upsell just for someone that doesn't know what that is, if you go to Amazon or if you go at a checkout at a store, the most famous up-sale is when you say, "Hey, can I get a cheeseburger?" And they go, "Would you like fries with that?" That is an upsell. "Did you leave room for dessert?" That is an upsell. In the music world, it's like, "Hey, you've got this CD do you want to get this bundle?" When you're on tour, we always used to tell the girls running our merch table or guys, "When they bought something, you say, 'Hey, did you get his new CD yet?'" You're trying to upsell you.

Chris Greenwood: But we do this digitally online and that's how we're able to be really profitable and sell more music. What's awesome about that is I'm getting their contact information, which is extremely powerful, I'm getting the email and stuff and so I can send them to Spotify or iTunes, but Spotify don't share their email with you. iTunes don't. And you know what really ticks me off about Spotify, even though I love it? Is that it's owned by the majority of the major labels. They have like a pretty big cut.

Chris Greenwood: Maybe not the majority, I don't know if they own the majority, but they own a big thing, and that's why they're able to spam us with Coldplay, and Bieber, and all that stuff. I don't know if you got those two that it infuriates me because they're able to just spam us with that, even though we don't listen to it. But what's cool when I'm running these ads to sell my albums is that I see in the comments, in the Instagram comments, the Facebook comments on the ad, "Oh, I've never heard of you before, I'm going to buy this on Amazon. I'm listening to this on Spotify. I just downloaded all your music on iTunes."

Chris Greenwood: So some people take my offer and they buy, which is amazing, but it's also fueling the Spotify, the Apple Music, et cetera. You know what I mean? So that's where I'm spending a big majority of my marketing budget on.

Michael Walker: Cool. It sounds like the two campaigns that you're running that have been giving you the best results so far are one, a traditional ad going to a squeeze page where basically you say, "Hey, if you're a fan of blank or blank, I think you probably would like my music too. If you want to hear one of my new songs, click on here and I'll send you the song." They click on the page, they go to a squeeze page that says, "Hey, here's the new song, I'll send it to you, give me your best email address and I'll shoot you the song there."

Michael Walker: Or just ask them to opt in in order to get the song, and then they listen to the song. And then maybe on the following page, maybe there's an option to dive a little bit deeper, to join join a central private community or, become a part of the tribe and maybe an offer for like a CD or something.

Chris Greenwood: Absolutely.

Michael Walker: But it also sounds like maybe the most successful, like the one that you're running right now that's working really well is free plus shipping offer that essentially is an offer for CD saying, "Hey, I've got a CD here I want to send it to you. If you're a fan of blank or blank, I think you'd like it. But I've basically purchased a bunch of these, I want to send these to you for free. All I ask is that you help cover the price of me getting it to you." Then they can get the CD and they can get a discount on it.

Michael Walker: And then afterwards there's some options for upsells, so like a bundle for other different things. And that sounded like... And also one of the benefits of that would be that the people that you are attracting, they have skin in the game, they've already put down some money to join. They're not just like-

Chris Greenwood: Oh yeah.

Michael Walker: ... your 40-

Chris Greenwood: They're a buyer.

Michael Walker: ... emails, was like... Right, they're buyer. And I've heard in the business circles that two different lists. If you have a customer list and you have just like a prospect list of people who've bought something and people who haven't, then in general, the customer lists can be like 10 times more valuable than-

Chris Greenwood: Big time.

Michael Walker: ... the prospect list. So not only are you growing your audience, but it's like people who are really good quality fan. With the free plus shipping offer, are you driving that just completely cold traffic? Or do you have any... Are you doing like some retargeting where it's like it's going to people that you've already connected with? Where have you seen the best results from that?

Michael Walker: People who've never heard of you before, they're seeing the ad and they're going in there and they're getting it completely cold? Or is it when you're retargeting people?

Chris Greenwood: It's the majority is cold, that's where I have the majority of the budget. And I actually exclude my page because I don't want people that have heard of me. I have a big net, so most of the budget is going to people who've never heard of me, which I really want people to understand, that's powerful. People have never heard of me, and that's because music touches people in a powerful way. And I just want to drive home the fact that yes, CDs, people are still selling CDs, but that's because I offer it in a very special way.

Chris Greenwood: They get not just the CD, the MP3 download, and I also always include a foldout poster or something like that to make it more valuable. Yes, they are still buying CDs, not forever. That's why we're switching to USB keys, but right now, I'm telling you, CDs. But yeah, then we get the buyer's contact and we get the upsells and whatnot, which is just incredible. They're giving us their credit card information, or PayPal, or whatever. Then we put them through a journey where we build the relationship with them and sell them more stuff.

Chris Greenwood: But what's also powerful is you're getting something in their house. Now you're in their house and they're going to share it. People are going to come over to their house and they're going to see it, they're going to ask questions, so it's like a self perpetuating thing. This is the strategy where I actually got featured on Facebook, that Facebook actually sent me a plaque for this because we... And this one campaign, we spent over $10,000 on and just crushed it. And they made me do a case study and give them all my numbers and all this stuff.

Chris Greenwood: But it really, really does work. It's the most... Oh, what I love about is it's just selling while I'm sleeping. After this interview, I'll go check and there'll be some more sales. It's just leverage, and instead of going, one-to-one, I'm going one-to-many. I'm reaching just millions of people without me having to be there.

Michael Walker: That's awesome, dude. That's so cool too, that... Having all the experience at this point with running paid traffic and the numbers, understanding how... It can be really difficult, like running a completely cold traffic, people who've never heard of you before and bringing them in your community. The fact that you're going directly from cold traffic to some sort of investment or some sort of sale right off the bat is amazing and it's a huge opportunity. And so-

Chris Greenwood: And we're hot too, we are running hot. I forgot to answer that. Yeah, I'm running hot and I'm getting that even cheaper. For a cold person, it costs me maybe anywhere from like five to $8 to acquire a new fan. For warm traffic right now, we're getting it for like a buck, 53 bucks, so it's way cheaper, but they're not as big of a pool, but yeah.

Michael Walker: Cool. So, there is some warm traffic that's going to it too, and they're not as big of a pool, obviously, because with cold, it's like there's so there's so many people, but it is working really well. When you're doing your targeting for it, are you basically just targeting... Because in the ads, it sounds like you're saying, "If you're a fan of blank or blank, I think you'd like it," so you're just thinking about from experience, what are the people that are listening to your music? Who do they really resonate with, who they enjoy?"

Michael Walker: So you're just targeting them. Are you using like lookalike audiences or is it mostly just the cold audiences that are doing really well?

Chris Greenwood: It's cold works really, really well where you've put all your audiences and I like to have a few million when I'm first starting. But what's really powerful is the algorithm starts to learn, and so say like, I'm most compared to like Linkin Park and Linkin Park's like a seven million-audience, it's pretty big. But as I'm starting to get sales and because I'm running conversion ads, and that's where I can track conversions, so I know how much it costs me to get a result, which is buy my music, Facebook, it's smarter with every single purchase because that Facebook pixel is firing.

Chris Greenwood: So out of that seven million Facebook goes, "Oh, these are the people that are most likely responding." So it only shows my ad to them and it just gets super smart, and it gets out of this learning phase where we like to see your Facebook pixel or the algorithm is seasoned and it knows exactly who my audience is. So if I want to add Metallica in there, or Red Hot Chili Peppers, or someone that I might not even sound like, it'll still be able to find that fan because I've had so many purchases and it's learned, and it has so much data about us on Facebook, which is scary.

Chris Greenwood: But it's amazing for marketing that I can even run ads now and I don't even have to target anyone. I can just target people in the United States. And it just puts it in front of, because I've had so many hundreds of purchases. Yeah, we'll do look alike audience sometimes too, but your audience tends to burn out, and that's why you do sometimes need to have new audience or a new ad and keep it fresh so that people know just because they've seen the ad before. But normally if you've got good music, man, and got a good killer ad, you're going to get sales.

Michael Walker: Cool. It sounds like what you're saying is that mostly you're running cold traffic based on interest-based targeting. So you're targeting people who are fans of blank or blank of like other artists. And because of the way that the algorithm works, which yeah, like Facebook is in terms of privacy sometimes a little bit creepy, but it's amazing for us because we really get to find out for the people who are most likely to really enjoy your music and to be able to put it in front of those people.

Michael Walker: So over time, the pixel, because it triggers on those conversions, so when someone does buy something, it's like ding, that's the right person and it takes that into account. It's really gotten to a point where even just with cold targeting, even without really super refined targeting, it's working really well. That's interesting too. So you are running some lookalike audiences. For us, and I'm probably going to geek out too much here because I love this stuff. I'm all about the algorithms and about Facebook ads and Instagram and all these different... Like the lookalike audiences and funnels and how it works.

Michael Walker: But for us, it's the same thing too in terms of it's gotten to a point where they have so much data that they just know, the algorithm gets it and it's really powerful. And for us, the lookalike audiences that we've created out of like the highest quality traffic, so the people who've gone all the way through and are the most dedicated fans has it works every single time, that's outperformed every other audience that we have.

Michael Walker: And like you said, you have to introduce new cold audiences sometimes in order to widen it, but it's pretty amazing that that's even a thing where we can create these "lookalike audience," that if you give them a group of people, then they look at that group of people that you give them and find people that match the same characteristics as those people.

Chris Greenwood: Yeah. It's incredible. It really is. If you're not marketing your music with Facebook, Instagram ads in the 21st century, you're missing out on the most powerful tool ever, because it's the best ROI. I say to my students, "You can't track radio, you can't track your publicist, but I'm tracking what I'm doing because I'm running conversions. I'm seeing what it costs me to get new fans. And then I'm also tracking the other things that are happening with my sales in TuneCore and stuff."

Chris Greenwood: I just think it's worth learning, and if it sounds too techie for some of you guys, it sounded techie to me to, but you know this is one thing worth learning. I don't know who said this, but they said, "I want to outsource my marketing." They said, "That's like outsourcing your sex life." You know what I mean? You want someone else to do it for you because you want to have somebody else to blame. That's what you're saying. You always want somebody else to do it for you because you want to blame someone when it doesn't work out.

Chris Greenwood: And I seen those artists all my life, and I'm sorry if I'm hating a little bit right now, but I think some artists need to be told off a little bit that you always want to outsource stuff. And I'm not saying don't outsource, you need a team. You need a team, but you need to understand marketing, you are a marketer. And you want to just give the power to somebody else so that you can blame them and go, "That's why my career didn't work out," instead of learning the stuff yourself and diving into it.

Chris Greenwood: I really think that like the most powerful things, if I could go back and start over, it'd be writing way better hit songs and how to market, that's it. Write the best, produce the best songs and how to market, that's it. All the other stuff is child's play.

Michael Walker: Absolutely, dude. There's some things that you don't outsource. Like you said, like your sex life where it's you don't outsource your wife, you don't outsource your relationship. It's something that because you're marketing, especially like it's... I feel like marketing maybe gets a bad rap sometimes-

Chris Greenwood: It does.

Michael Walker: ... especially from creative types or they feel like-

Chris Greenwood: It does.

Michael Walker: ... oh, marketing is all about misleading people or it's all about like slummy stuff, like making money and that's not why I'm making music, but ultimately that's not the core. That's bad marketing if you do it that way. Marketing is about expressing who you are and finding the right people who are going to resonate most with your music, who need it the most and about providing a service. And yeah, it's about finding those people and creating a system so that you can do what you love sustainably and reach more people and make a bigger impact, and that's so important.

Michael Walker: It's baked into your... Your marketing is like... I've heard it described like, it's the engine of your car. Your music is like the body of the car and it can be shiny and nice, and it's important to yeah, you want to have like a nice looking car, but it's not going to go anywhere if you don't have an engine in the car, the engine drives it places, it goes places. So I 100% agree marketing is such a valuable tool to learn.

Michael Walker: Just this is great. I'm just geeking out because this is a great conversation. But one thing that you mentioned that it was so important is how the value of having concrete metrics and numbers and how when you're running these campaigns, now that you understand it, it wasn't always that way. Right? At first it was like, "Wait, what the heck does all this mean?" But now that you've spent the time to learn that skillset, that it's so concrete compared to other methods where you totally know like what kind of results did he get? You got like a blog placement, but what kind of impact did that really make?

Michael Walker: You have these concrete numbers and it's like, the difference between having a completely pitch black room and looking for your keys and just waving around your hands and trying to find the keys. And eventually, maybe you'll find the keys, but it's going to take a long time compared to just turning on the light and seeing like concretely, oh, that's exactly where the keys are at. I guess I need to go in this direction.

Michael Walker: And so with the metrics, it's a lot like that where it's like turning on a light where it's like, oh, this is exactly what's happening here. There's no lying about this, this is the results tangibly and here's what we can do to improve it.

Chris Greenwood: It takes a lot of the risk out of it, because music is a risk, all right. We're the most entrepreneurs out there, music artists and we take risks, and we drive through the night and do all these crazy things because we're so passionate about our music. When I first got started, wasn't about the money, it was never about the money, just about getting the passion and getting it out there.

Chris Greenwood: But it did come a time where I wanted to feed my family, I wanted to keep doing this, where I needed to understand the business part of it, and the marketing and I'd wasted tens of thousands of dollars, I don't know how many times on radio campaigns and just hoping it would work. But now with this new way, I'm just being a lot more strategic and being more wise with my money because I've literally set so many tens of thousands of dollars on fire.

Chris Greenwood: When you go for a radio campaign, I don't care how good the song is, you got to be prepared to take that 10, $15,000 and set it on fire, and film it. Film a video of you filming it, and that'll be about all you get out of it for marketing, because it was only a couple of years ago we spent 30, 40 grand on this campaign. We hit the billboard charts and everything for the active rock genre. And it barely moved the needle for Spotify at all.

Chris Greenwood: In fact a different song that we didn't take to radio did better on Spotify than the one that hit the billboard charts. And that's because not all spins are created equal when it comes to radio. It's this overnight thing where they're just spinning it. And so you got to really know what you're spending and investing your money in and know that you're getting a result. And that's what the world I'm living in now, because I'm an entrepreneur, I don't got these massive pockets like a label that's willing to waste money and throw it at the wall. I need to...

Chris Greenwood: Not meaning that I won't risk, you got to be willing to spend money and try stuff. And they're still willing and they keep swinging no matter what. But at least we can do it a lot smarter now, and that's what you're providing your students and I'm providing mine, and that's why we have coaching or just go learn the hard way and the long way and get beat up like we have.

Michael Walker: If you haven't noticed, I use analogies all the time. I love analogies, but it's like the difference between having a map. Knowing you have this destination and having a map, having someone to be like, "Hey I've gotten here before, here's the path, here's how you do it," compared to doing it on your own, which you certainly can and you stumble out there, then you can do it. We both are proof of that, that you can struggle and do everything wrong to figure out what doesn't work and find out what does work. Man, it's just so much easier if you have a map and you have someone that can guide you like a personal Yoda.

Michael Walker: Dude, I think we're probably coming up to the end of our interview here, but man, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here today. This has been awesome, really valuable. Hopefully the people who are listening to this have had a few aha breakthrough moments.

Chris Greenwood: Absolutely.

Michael Walker: I know that you mentioned that you have some sort of advanced training that goes more in depth into some of these strategies, some of these funnels that you've created, where can people go to if they want to learn more from you?

Chris Greenwood: If they want to go and learn more, if they want to just... They're like, "Heck, that free plus shipping thing and running ads like that," and they just want to get right into that and just pick up the program, it's not cheap, but I created a special link for you guys here. If you just want to watch this other free training and learn a little bit more about it in the story behind it, go to smartmusicbusiness.com/story, and you can get it.

Chris Greenwood: It's an hour long training where it just shows you the three secrets of how I'm selling tens of thousands of dollars doing this and explains the upsells and the journey a little bit.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. Thank you, dude. I appreciate you creating those for us. What we'll do to make it as easy as possible is, like if you've listened to this and you're like, "This sounds awesome, I'm ready to invest and I want to figure out how to do that myself, then we'll include a link to the actual course so you can click on it and just get right into it.

Chris Greenwood: Sounds good, man. Stoked.

Michael Walker: Yeah, dude, so yeah, once again, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate you being one of those lights. You're like a lighthouse and you're helping people and you're sharing this with them. You don't have to do this, you definitely don't have to do this, so on behalf of everyone thank you for being here.

Chris Greenwood: Yeah. Thanks for having me, man.

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 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 on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out.

Michael Walker: 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 the music career to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.