Amber Horsburgh: When thinking about these digital campaigns, don't look at it as immediate ROI, don't go: okay, we spent $100 on TikTok ads, and we only made 30 cents back on streaming. Think about it as if you were building an audience, and you're investing in this long term asset, which is a catalog, which you can then go get a publishing deal, you can go sell tickets to shows, you can go use that catalog to get the attention of music supervisors, and you can compose, or you can license music for film and TV. That's where you'll make money, but think about what are the other income streams that allow you to be able to access once you've built up a profile and catalog.
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.

All right. I'm excited to be here today with Amber Horsburgh. So Amber has 13 years of experience in advertising with a portfolio that includes YouTube music, Google play, Interscope records, Atlantic and MTV. She's helped empower over 15, 000 artists and professionals with major record label marketing strategies and she provides services through the forms of courses and coaching. She's been featured in publications like Billboard and collaborated with Spotify for artists, SoundCloud, Google for thought leadership. And so she's someone that has a lot of experience, and has a background in working with major record label artists and really seeing some of these massive campaigns and how the infrastructure works behind the scenes. And now she's taken what she's learned and she's paying it forward and helping independent artists to be able to do the same things for themselves. So I'm really excited to talk with her today and kind of hear a little bit, see a little bit behind the veil of how does a major record label promote a marketing release and the thought process around you're running these types of campaigns. So Amber, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.
Amber Horsburgh: Thank you for having me.
Michael Walker: Absolutely. It's so funny. Before we started this interview, we actually realized that the bio that we had created for Amber was generated in partnership with ChatGPT. And it like, fabricated a bunch of details that sounded kind of true, but weren't really true. But through a roundabout way we eventually got back here and officially got started. So maybe at some point during the conversation we can touch on... AI and how like AI, both it's pros and it's cons and how to use it effectively in a safe way, as a musician nowadays. But before we get into that, I'd love to hear a little bit just about your story and how you got started and kind of found yourself, you're working alongside these major brands and record labels.
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah, sure. So I got started. I've always loved music. My first gig was working for AMI records. My job was for three days a week basically destroying CDs and putting them in the trash can. And I loved it. I thought it was great doing it but then ended up moving to New York, working for MTV and starting to work more with music entertainment brands like YouTube Music, Google Play, Sonos. In there, I learned how to build out global digital campaigns, digital marketing campaigns and strategy. And then I was hired at Downtown Records to be their SVP of strategy with the idea of how do you impose the strategic rigor of an advertising agency into an independent label setting, which usually is a more fly by the seat of your pants culture, shoot your shot. Less strategic rigor. So that was the dream job. I was able to combine music and then also strategy as well, but working on these individual artists as individual brands essentially. Then from there, I had a great time. I was working with a whole bunch of really incredible artists like Mike Snowing, Cold War Kids, Chet Faker, Tsmino, Tommy Genesis, Tayshii, and then ended up starting out a consulting agency where I was working directly with artists and managers, kind of as their satellite marketing team satellite marketing team, assembling independent teams, and then the pandemic hit. That kind of threw me for a 180. I went back to Australia for a hot minute. And in all that time, I had built up a newsletter called Deep Cuts, which is this background is and what the newsletter was meant to be or had always been at the beginning was I kept having the same conversations with managers over and over again, and my calendar was I'd get to work and I was stacked every 25 minutes of a new meeting, and it would be the same conversation. It would be how to roll out a digital asset. It would be how to leverage a music video. Or how to budget something properly or KPIs, or it would be the same thing. So I was like, if I just put everything in one spot and just blast it out to everyone, then I don't have to keep having the same conversations. And I did. And what I realized was there weren't a lot of people talking to artists, those career artists who may or may not be signed to a label but they're in it for the long haul. So it's not for the hobbyist artist who's just making music in their bedroom as a creative act. And it's not for a person who has a major global staff in every territory. It's for people who are doing it for forever. And they are either assembling their own teams. They might be working with one manager or they're doing it all themselves. And they want to learn how to put together a proper marketing record release plan that a major label would do. And that grew and grew and it started getting read and shared around by all the major labels and major major managers and agents. And I turned that into courses and stopped working with labels in 2021 and I started a course and a group coaching program called Fanbase Accelerator. And in that, what I do is artists come through feeling like they held back by they don't know what they don't know. And so what I provide them is hey, this is how a major label would do it. This is what a label would do for you. If you then have this information, you can then do it yourself, or you can choose how to roll it out based on what your goals are. But you don't have to go to a label, sign away all your rights in hope that you're going to get a marketing team that will roll out a record plan. That's what the program offers and yeah, it's really good. It's great working directly with artists. I'm really enjoying it.
Michael Walker: Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. At this point, now that you've, both had so much experience like working directly on launching these campaigns for major record label artists and then servicing managers and working alongside teams and then kind of taking that to an indie community and be able to kind of create a course around it. I'd be curious to hear, what are some of the biggest common threads that you see that are woven regardless of which type of artists that they are, whether they're signed or not, I'm curious to hear sort of the contrast of what are the similarities, the same patterns that every single person like has the same fundamentals and then maybe where some of the contrast as well, maybe some of the pros and cons of, being an independent musician that they can lean into.
Amber Horsburgh: Sure. And so the methodology I teach is I call it the "PRAISE U" framework or the "PRAISE U" methodology is basically ripped from Fatboy Slim, but "PRAISE U" is it's an acronym for the 7 most influential gatekeepers in the music business in 2023. It stands for promoter, radio, artist, influencers, streaming curators, editors, and useful moguls, and the similarities across any genre, any level of artist is that any great plan or any great rollout will have all 7 of those things firing. So you're going to have a touring plan with promoters. You're going to have a radio plan, the artist collaborations yeah, artist collaborations, features, remixes, that kind of thing. You will be pitched for influence and partnerships on social media picture playlists for streaming. You're also going to have music plus press and critical acclaim. And then you're going to be building out your music industry contacts, whether or not that's being signed with an agent or a manager or having a publicist on board or whatever. So the way I would put together plans is basically focused on those 7 areas, and I can see really quickly when an artist comes in and I do an audit of their project network. I'm like, okay. What, which of these 7 are we missing? Where are we strongest in these? Because a lot of the times if you over-index in one area, you're going to fall into different marketing issues. I've had clients before who are really good in the S category, the streaming curator category, really great streams, no press, no touring and then no social media. What ends up happening is you can't, you can't sell tickets or then I've had other artists that I've worked with who have had really strong in the e category, the editors, the journalists, and, they can get a pitchfork feature, but what they're finding is they're spending three and a half, 4, 000 a month on publicity to get those really big looks and it doesn't move the needle. So you need to have a holistic plan and that's across any genre. People in my course, I've got jazz musicians. I've got hip hop artists. I've got dance, electronic, and pop and the through line is those 7 gatekeepers. Your question was: what are, I guess, the cons of working at it alone, is that it?
Michael Walker: I would say what were some of the similarities, so this is the fundamentals that are true, whether you're signed or not. And then specifically, for this audience in particular, a lot of people are independent musicians who may not be signed to a record label. And so I was just curious to hear your thoughts on having worked with both sides of the equation, what are some of the key differences that you see? And what are some of the strengths and weaknesses of going at it from an indie approach?
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah, from an indie approach, the strengths you get to determine what your team looks like. I think there's a common misconception that if you sign to a label, you're going to be plugging into this machine who's going to work you and I've been having more and more conversations with label owners and major management firm owners who are saying that they're not signing anyone that can't bring an audience. So that doesn't have inherent skills and social media in Tik TOK in short form content, because the pace at which music moves so quickly now, it's just like: there's no time for that really traditional artist development process that used to happen at labels. So labels are really good now at taking an artist from 60 to a hundred. That zero to 60 is really they're leaning on the artist to be able to do that. I think the real strength of being independent is if you can do that yourself, you have so many opportunities afterwards because you can go, I could sign a label deal if I want, if it's attractive to me, but I've got leverage now because I've got the audience ßand I know how to build that. And I have a marketing system that works and I've got these channels and these relationships that work. I can choose to either sign with a label, or I can put together an independent team, or I can take an advance from a distributor and put together, you got so many more options and that really comes from when you are in the driver's seat of your own business, and you can put together and you build an audience, which is what your leverage is. The fundamentals of music marketing are the same of the building up that "PRAISE U" system, but it's if you can do it yourself and doing it yourself doesn't need to be like you're sending every single email. It can be like, okay, I'm going to hire a playlist pusher for this particular single, and then I'm going to see if that works and if it works, I'll use them again. And if it doesn't, I might invest the money elsewhere. But yeah, I think it's more about choice and freedom. And I think that opportunity has never been so ripe as it is now.
Michael Walker: Really well articulated. Awesome. Now that you've created this course and really sort of crystallized a lot of these frameworks, and I love the "PRAISE U" kind of framework as a way to kind of break down and think about and audit and look at which of these areas might be missing. I'm curious, what do you see as the biggest need or the biggest thing that's missing for most people? Like, when they come into the "PRAISE U" framework, obviously a lot of it depends on their situation, and it might be one or the other, but most if you had to choose one that seemed like the biggest need that people are missing, which one would you point to?
Amber Horsburgh: I honestly think... And this might seem really obvious, but I think streaming, because I think it's the easiest to be manipulated. And I think it's the easiest, it's the thing that everyone's looking at. So what I think you actually need is you need relationships with people who can put you on a bigger stage. So you need relationships, promoters who can put you on their festivals or put you on their showcases. You need relationships with radio DJs who could put you on to air and stuff. What all of these people though are looking at is your streaming numbers. And the opportunity is through a smart digital campaign or some key playlist placements, which you can do yourself that will open up the doors to what all of those bigger looks are. And once you've got those bigger looks, it just kind of snowballs. And it's so much easier to get booked for the next show where you can go, hey, I sold out this venue, or hey, I played at this showcase, or hey, I played at this festival. Same with press. It's so much easier to get national press. If you can be like, these people in my local scene, care about me. Almost like the gatekeepers, the people who are going to go out first for you will look immediately as streaming numbers. And that's the easiest number I think to increase so that is where I would focus on first.
Michael Walker: Super interesting. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is that almost as a means to an end, streaming is really important because that's like really what the end is that you want to get to is building relationships with these key gatekeepers. But, when you're looking to reach out and build relationships, one of the first things that they look at, the thing that's most visible, is the streaming. Therefore it's really helpful to, to be able to have, healthy, streaming numbers as you're approaching those conversations, so that sort of leads to the next question that I think which would be ... obviously there's a lot of different types of streaming campaigns you could invest into some which are you know very clearly just fake artificial like let's boost our numbers, so I'd be curious to hear your recommendations around if someone wants to boost their streams in a way that doesn't feel artificial or fake, but they're also looking to, kind of use it as a precursor to be able to build up some credibility, to be able to, build those relationships. What types of campaigns do you see getting the best results?
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah, I'll answer that. I'll just quickly caveat that the reason why you want relationships is because it's the fastest and most direct way to grow your fan base. So rather than going to one and going, I'm going to make one fan, one fan, one fan, one fan, if you can put yourself on a bigger stage. By getting the attention of these tastemakers that will expose you to a much bigger audience and your job as the marketer of your artist is basically to continue to build that audience because that is a leaky bucket that continues to go away. So that's the reason why relationships with these gatekeepers are so important. The best streaming campaigns I think at the moment is, again, they don't seem really revelationary or revelatory but the old digital ads to a follower to increase your followers and Spotify, obviously really good because you can get multiple marketing touch points with the follower. You can get added, you'll be, if somebody follows you, you'll be added into their release radar, their discover weekly if they don't have email notifications turned off, you get an email sent out to them and it's automatic. Yeah, it's automatically going to be there for them. I really like working with independents. If you don't have the time and you do have the budget, working with independent playlists pushers. I like them. Especially at the beginning you want the algorithm to be recommending. You want the bulk of your streams to be coming from. Algorithmic recommendations, just because that's where the volume of traffic is and that's also sustainable. That's what's going to lift your entire catalog. You don't want to constantly be paying for playlist pushes every time. But if you're just starting out and you need that kind of sparks to flames streaming activity. I like that. And I would say that the most important thing to do is to have a really great understanding of what the song's metadata should look like. One of the quickest ways to waste a whole bunch of money is by going to one of these agencies and saying, here's my song, it's alternative, go nuts. And they'll be like, yeah, we've got you on 20 playlists that did nothing and it's because the song was described in enough detail and you have to really dig deeper and what is the genre? Get even more specific. Go specific until it hurts and then think about what are the types of playlists that they should be appear on both mood playlists both like situational playlists and then also genre based playlists and then giving equipping anyone that you're working with as much information about what you're doing to roll out the song as well in order for them to be able to do a better job of pitching it.
Michael Walker: Awesome. That's super helpful. So it sounds like the two main types of campaigns that you'd recommend for indie artists are - one is sort of a direct to fan type of digital marketing campaign where the goal is to increase your Spotify followers, specifically. And another one is working with an independent, playlist campaign agency or company that as long as it's done in the right way where you give a lot, you know, almost on the borderline, like super, super great, like as specific as possible information about your song so that they can place it on the right playlist. So a couple of follow up questions to that are and we can go like one at a time, but I would love to dig a little bit deeper into both of those types of campaigns, like the direct to ad or direct to fan campaign going to Spotify. Do you use a specific platform that you see getting the best results right now? If I'm like, Facebook ads or Tik TOK ads and what does the ad itself that is working best for that type of campaign look like?
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah. I think the platform really depends like whether or not it's TikTok or Facebook… the CPMs for that change all the time. So if today it's TikTok, by the time this episode will come out, it'll be Facebook and I'll just keep going back and forth, or if you're doing YouTube ads, what you should consider is like where your audience is. I would budget for both and then test and reallocate. And then the type of campaigns or like the type of ad creative anything that looks native to platforms. So not overly produced. Don't just chop up the music video and send that out. More so, what is content? What is content that looks like that is you would be looking at natively. So if you're on, if you're doing TikTok ads, make it look like it's an organic TikTok video. If you're doing the same thing with YouTube. So what I would look at is more take what, if you've been posting organically and it doesn't even matter if you don't have very many followers post, whatever you've been posting organically, that's been working, recut it for an ad. And they just have, and then have a call to action in there, have a call to action up the front rather than in the back of going as well, following as Spotify and just use, use the creative that you already have, because a lot of the times that will be better than going for a fully produced and when you chop up the music video, it looks like an ad
Michael Walker: Awesome. Cool. Yeah, I guess a good follow up question to that would be for a lot of artists, making a sustainable income from their music, they're not quite at a point where like streaming or Spotify is really kind of like paying the bills. And if you're running a paid traffic campaign on Tik Tok or Facebook or wherever to drive Spotify followers, but you're spending I don't know, 20 cents per fan and you're earning maybe a penny per fan, then that alone isn't going to be enough to make it sustainable. So what would you recommend on the flip side of, actually being able to monetize their audience and, in tandem with this kind of exposure type of campaign and kind of building up their audience, then how would you recommend that they kind of best monetize those new fans and the relationships that they're building?
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah, I'm really glad you brought this up. I really like this. Because, and this would happen at the label a lot where you would release this stuff because music's always either frontline or it's catalog. And if it's and if you're working at a label, it's you're always promoting frontline releases and you're dealing in this really, you're dealing in this like very backwards economy where it's as you said, you're paying 20 cents, but you're getting a fraction of a penny back for it. What I think is a better thing to look at is you are investing in their long term asset. You're building a catalog and the catalog is going to make money over time and it's going to make money over lots of different revenue streams, not just streaming. I don't know an artist who lives off their streaming income. It's too small. What streaming is it's like a distribution method between you and your fan and the way that you get it to your fan is by paying for it. And it's the same as support slots. If you go tour with a major band, you went on tour with Taylor Swift, but it's going to cost you a lot of money to be able to do that. But you would do it because the ability to build an audience off the back end of that, and then go and monetize that later on is what it's really there for. When thinking about these digital campaigns, don't look at it as immediate ROI, don't go: okay, we spent $100 on TikTok ads, and we only made 30 cents back on streaming. Let's never do that ever again. Think about it as if you were building an audience that is a leaky bucket that you have to continue to top up and top up, and you're investing in this long term asset, which is a catalog, which you can then go get a publishing deal, which you can go monetize, you can go sell tickets to shows, which you can monetize, you can go use that catalog to get the attention of music supervisors, and you can compose, or you can license music for film and TV, that's where you'll make money, but think about what are the other income streams that allow you to be able to access once you've built up a profile and built up a catalog. And that's where I see the digital campaigns being helpful or like building up streaming. But I would never advise an artist, let's make money off streaming because it's just I just don't think that you can start anyway.
Michael Walker: Right. Yep. So it sounds like what you're saying is that, with a campaign like this it's important to have a long term mindset and see it as building a catalog and understanding that it's unlikely that you're going to make a profit off the front end of running these types of campaigns, but if you are able to stick with it long term, then eventually that asset turns into other opportunities where you can monetize it. I guess the follow up question to that, which I don't know, if there's like a good answer for yet, or if it's still something that, we're kind of figuring out as an industry still, but from your experience. It seems like the gap in that type of strategy would just be like, what if someone doesn't have a lot of resources to invest upfront or, they just, they need to have a way to make some sort of ROI faster. Or quicker so that they can invest the money in the first place, but they don't necessarily have a record label or someone to loan them the money ahead of time. What are your recommendations be for someone who is kind of in that state where they're just starting out and they don't have a huge budget to be able to invest, but they're willing to invest the time and the energy and, and in some resources into like into marketing, but they need to have, something coming back faster in order to invest more time into it.
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah, totally. I would say don't invest the money into it. Don't do a digital campaign. So one of my students they in the rock band called the Crystal Casino Band, fully self-managed based outta dc. They had this really neat thing where there were four of them in the band and they really wanted to build their streams. They made it their nighttime routine to reach out to seven different playlists curators every single night, and they just did it while they were watching TV. And they're like, I'm going to be sitting here watching TV anyway. May as well just be reaching out. And they did it and they collaborated with another band. They found another band who kept being featured on the same third party playlists as them and they were like, oh, they must be doing what we're doing. So they reached out and they shared the database and the 2 bands helped each other. They ended up collaborating on a song because they liked that they had a mutual respect. That song was the biggest streaming success for both of those bands. They used that method to pass a million streams and then the way that they were able to monetize it was in shows. And so they sold out the 930 club just just recently, which is a 1200 cap room in DC. They're on TV for it. And they did that all themselves. And so if you don't have the money, I'd say don't spend the money but instead put in the grunt work and what I loved about their approach was that they have all of those relationships now. So they don't have to go pay for those. They're not paying for playlist pushes or they're not paying for digital campaigns. And when they go to a label, they've got all of those, all those curators who are supporting them and they've built that themselves. What I like about it is it's sustainable. It's not by no stretch, not an easy task to do. It's a lot of work, but it, I mean, the results speak for themselves.
Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Cause I think that's one thing that sometimes people especially early on, if they don't have a lot of resources, it's sort of a way to justify not really going for it, not really going after it just thinking, well, I can't be successful because X, Y, Z. And it sounds like what you just said is that if you can't invest the money upfront, then you can invest the time and the energy and if you want to plant a tree and you want this tree to grow and bear fruit, then, you need to nurture the tree. Like you need to invest something in order for the tree to grow with no fuel, with no nutrients, the tree just doesn't grow. But, you can either invest money, if you have the money, which is like fertilizer for the tree, or you can invest your time and your energy, which is just a different type of fertilizer. So that's really helpful to hear whether, you want to save time and invest money up front or, if you don't have the money that you can do it and it's not easy, but you just work really hard to do it.
Amber Horsburgh: I think also, and this might not be that empowering of a message, but I think there's this real I don't think there's a lot of honesty around how artists make money within the artist community. And I think there's a lot of shame around if you're a musician and you don't make your money from your music, and I really don't like that because for the most part, in order to make music, you'll have another job and that's fine. And I also think that there's an author, I forget her name, she wrote a really big book, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, and she wrote this book about creativity, and she basically said, don't ask your art to pay for your art, or I'm butchering the quote, but what, essentially what she's saying is, she was a New York Times bestseller, she'd written four books before she wrote Eat Pray Love, which was a global smash, and then Julia Roberts played it in the movies and all that kind of stuff. When she wrote Eat Pray Love, she was already a New York Times bestseller four times over and she still had a day job. And she never quit it because she was like, I want to write for me, this is my art, this is my creative outlet. And when I'm expecting it to make money, then that's when it changes what I'm able to create. And her advice for authors is just don't get into it expecting it to make money. Have a job so you feel that security and safety in order to be able to make the art and have the creative practice that you want. And I think that's good advice for musicians as well, which is you can end up building a career where your original recorded music sustains you where you can compose for film TV, where you can tour and all that kind of stuff. But there's also a lot of freedom in it if you have a job that provides that base level of security in order to be able to really mess around with the type of music that you want to make without it having that commercial pressure too.
Michael Walker: Yeah that's a really important message to share, I think, is that it's okay if your music isn't profitable right away. Exactly. It's okay to invest into it and for it to grow. I mean, I do think that for a lot of people, it is a goal, for the music to pay for itself, for it to be sustainable, because of the freedom that comes from that and the time, the energy that they can buy back and just invest it into their music. But yeah, like anything, like you don't get something from nothing like the tree doesn't just show up magically it comes from time and investments and energy. So that's a really powerful message. Awesome. Well, hey Amber. This has been a lot of fun, and I appreciate you, basically taking your, what, 17 years of experience now, and sharing that with independent artists. So grateful for the internet and for the current state that we live in a lot of this stuff, this didn't exist to the degree that it does now when I was starting out with my band Paradise Fears. And I remember we had to learn the hard way. A lot of things we lived in our van for, a month at a time, we slept in Walmart parking lots, we ate peanut butter tortillas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I just think about how different our path would have been if early on we had access to resources like the conversation we're having right here and in your course and what you're teaching and it would have changed everything. So thank you for taking what you've learned and sharing that and helping artists. And for anyone who is listening to this right now, who's interested in learning more, could you share where people can go to dive deeper?
Amber Horsburgh: Yeah, sure. So I have a newsletter, Deep Cuts, which you can subscribe to. It's totally free. Every two weeks I do free workshops for artists. We do things like TikTok musicians, budgeting 101, Spotify 101 advanced revenue strategies. They're always free and the best way to learn about that is either through the newsletter, deep cuts or hit me up on Instagram. I'm pretty pretty fast on the DM there. And I'm just at deep cuts. co on Instagram yeah, that's about it. That's it. There's a website, et cetera, but I've got to redesign it. It's been on my list of things to do for three years.
Michael Walker: All right. Awesome. So we'll put all the links on the show notes for easy access, like always. And again, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.
Amber Horsburgh: Thank you so much, Michael.
Michael: 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 that’s make sure you don’t miss a new episode. Secondly if you share it with your friends, on 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 take their music to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.