Michael Walker: Hey, this is Michael from Modern Musician, and before we start the show, I wanted to let you know that right now I’m looking for new artists to mentor personally. Specifically, we’re looking for artists that have at least 1 song professionally recorded. It doesn’t have to be Beyonce level production, but it just needs to be something that you feel proud of and you’re ready to promote. We’re looking for artists who are really just poised for growth, and are ready to go all in on their music. There’s a saying that when the student’s ready, the mentor appears, and so if that's you, if you’re truly ready for it, then I want to invite you to apply for a free coaching call with our team. The goal is to launch an automated system that allows you to build a loyal and engaged fan base so you make a sustainable income with your music online without having to sell your soul to social media, or post 20x a day on TikTok. Before we get started, we always offer a free 30-minute coaching call to make sure it’s a good fit before you get your campaign launched. At this point, the artists that we’ve worked with have hit over 561.3 million streams, a #1 album on iTunes, and we’ve helped many artists grow from scratch to making a full-time income with their music online. In a few rare cases, they’ve even been able to generate over $1 million a year with their music. With that being said, we are very selective with who we work with just based on who’s the best fit and who we can best serve. Because we have a limited amount of time available for those free sessions, we do require an application process where you can submit your music, and you can apply for a free coaching call with our team. So if you’re interested, go ahead and click on the link in the show notes to submit an application and share one of your songs. I'm looking forward to checking out your music, and now… let’s start the show!

Kyle Weber: You're not getting truly accurate ticket sale numbers from smaller venues, but if you look at like the pole stars and all of that, the amount of money that has been made in the live ticket space in the last year and a half is through the roof. More than it ever was before. Some of that may be inflation, ticket prices are expensive, but still those expensive prices aren't persuading people not to go. They're finding ways to go because they wanna be a part of the experience.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

I'm here with the man himself, Kyle Weber. So Kyle is the president and co-founder of IndieOnTheMove.com. They've been established as a go to platform for the music industry that's revolutionized show and tour booking processes. He has independently performed over 600 shows worldwide from 2006-2009, and his passion for entrepreneurship has been demonstrated through Indie on the Move, as well as a second project: Everything Turned to Color. I'm really excited to connect with him today to talk about the current state of the music industry as it relates to live shows, the music communal experience, and what is the future of taking that music experience and combining it with the world of AI and this crazy, technological world that we live in. So Kyle, thank-you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Kyle: Yeah no, my pleasure. Thank-you so much for having me. 

Michael: Awesome. So maybe kick things off for anyone here where this is the first time connecting with you, could you share a little bit of a background with behind how you got started with Indie on the Move and kind of the core purpose behind the platform? 

Kyle: Absolutely. So, the whole idea kind of came about from my band before the last band. We took it upon ourselves to go out on the road, kind of decided we didn't want to sit around waiting for a label, an agent, anybody to pick us up. We had been playing a whole lot within our local area and region, and it was like: all right, now's the time let's make it happen. So then we went out, and as you kind of mentioned already, we did +600 or so shows through the span of 3 years. We covered the entire US, save for Alaska and Hawaii. We went to Europe a couple of times. Booked all of that independently. Shout out to MySpace. Woo. [laughs] Then obviously other connections as well, but MySpace was certainly very helpful at that point. So along the way, we kept having the same conversation in most of the towns that we would go to: where do you like to play? How do you get all of these shows booked? How do you spend this amount of time on the road? We want to get on the road, and this recurring theme of others wanting to do the exact same thing. So at that point we had about a thousand or so contacts that we had kind of saved in a Word doc or something like that, just so that we could go back and revisit it as we went out on the next tours. So we decided, well, why don't we take that information, let's publish it, make it interactive, and then allow other people to not only benefit from it, but also contribute to it. So then we were able to grow that initial list of about a thousand or so, to currently we have about 9600 music venues in the US and in Canada right now. Not Europe; not as of yet, but US and Canada now. Once we got the core, the music venue database, up there, the community would start to give us their feedback and it was: Hey, what do you think about this? Or, I have a show and I need bands; I'm a band and I need shows, you know? So we created additional parts of the site that would kind of feed off of the initial core. So beyond just a music venues database, which is where it all started, we added in colleges and universities so if people are interested in booking the college circuit, you can take advantage of that. We added in music festivals. So we've got several 100 music festivals on the site as well. Most importantly, ones that actually accept unsolicited inquiries as opposed to: Hey, I would love to play Coachella. Cool. Here's a contact form that's not going to get to anybody, or it might get to somebody, but they're not going to book you anyway. Then even beyond that, we've got a show availability section where people can go in and say: Hey, I've got this show, I'm seeking additional talent. We have a band availability section where people can say: I'm heading through Chicago and I need a show. We have a classified section where people can just kind of post the general sort of stuff, and then even beyond that, we kind of built a lot of functionality within all of the parts so that again, they could kind of feed off of each other and keep everybody as, hopefully, informed and equipped as possible to accomplish what they want to do, which is get more shows, get more tours booked. Then even beyond that we kind of figured out along the way that there's a lot of information here and not everybody knows how to use it. So, we do offer hands-on consulting services for people that really do want somebody to hold their hand through the process. We have a blog where we post free informative articles every week, which cover a range of topics from royalties to show booking, to playlisting, to what are the best distributors and all of that sort of stuff.

Michael: Amazing. That's so cool. What you're saying is that what started out as your own database that you're using for booking these shows became more of a communal resource for artists around the country/around the world to be able to find the people who want to book shows and be able to connect with them. There's a few directions that could imagine us going next, but I'd love to just kind of hear from your perspective of having both lived on the road for years, played 600 shows, seeing the communal aspect of touring and live shows. at the time of recording this, or we still have a little bit of PTSD from COVID and having the inability to….

Kyle: Thankfully, it's come down a little bit, but yeah.

Michael: I'd be curious to hear just your general thoughts and perspective on the value of the live show and an experience for musicians and specifically how the current state of the live show, and if you have any ideas or thoughts about: is it going to just stay the same, or do you think it's going to evolve with digital environment kind of thing, but what do you think about that whole thing?

Kyle: I guess to hop on the last thing that you mentioned there, kind of the digital environment, I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see maybe more of the independent show become a little bit more elaborate, just because obviously, as the years go on, the technology becomes more available and more affordable. So smaller bands needing to have more visuals involved in their performance, and maybe you're tying it to a live stream that then is going in through a channel that people that can't be there are able to watch. I would not be surprised at all if that continued in that direction, again just because it's going to be more available, and musicians need to continue to find ways to stand out right? There's a lot of oversaturation in pretty much every sector, much more so than there was 20 years ago, much more so than there was 20 years before that. So I think using that sort of stuff will kind of help to enhance that connection within the live environment. The big acts! You go and see those big acts and they're these huge productions and people walk away and they're like: wow, and it's not just, “wow, that guy can sing”, it's like: wow, that production/that show was awesome. I think we'll start to see that on smaller and smaller levels. Going back to kind of the PTSD, the COVID thing. Even even as all of that was kind of happening, there were certainly people talking to me since that's my wheelhouse and worried will the live show ever get back to where it was before this? I can't picture it. But there really is just such a demand for music and live music is just kind of something in and of itself. While we were attempting to do like these living room livestreams, as we were all quarantining and stuck at home, it just isn't the same. It's not the same. As much as you attempt to make it as close to the real thing as possible, you being in a room with other people that are experiencing the same thing in real time with no latency. It's just… It's an experience, specifically for people that really love music. So I don't really see performance really disappearing by any means. Even in the process of kind of going through COVID, again, I mentioned we've got a directory of 9,600 music venues. It's not just because we're just adding things constantly. We add them and we subtract them and we change them and it's an ever going cycle. But even then there were still places opening all the time hosting live music. Now in what environment is it? Is it going to be a specifically dedicated music venue where that's all that they do? Or maybe you're going to see a lot more like breweries and wineries and restaurants that evolve into listening rooms at the end of the day. I mean, maybe you're going to probably see more people trying to offer more than just one thing, because even now, there's a lot of venues that are struggling in the UK with the taxes. They're getting crushed, venues are closing all over the place at a drastic rate. You have venues in South Carolina in the states that are dealing with this liquor liability insurance issue where those prices skyrocketed, and a whole lot of places are closing there. So there's going to constantly be things that people are going to be dealing with but I do think that just the sheer desire and love of it will allow things to just naturally evolve along the way.

Michael: It's super interesting. Yeah. So it sounds like, what you're saying, and I agree with this, is that there's something special about the live music experience of coming together as a community and that demand is still there even after our rhythm got totally thrown off it. In fact, there’s more demand.

Kyle: Yeah, well, especially if you look at the bigger acts. You're not getting truly accurate ticket sale numbers from smaller venues, but if you look at like the pole stars and all of that, the amount of money that has been made in the live ticket space in the last year and a half is through the roof more than it ever was before. Some of that may be inflation, ticket prices are expensive, but still those expensive prices aren't persuading people not to go. They're finding ways to go because they wanna be a part of the experience.

Michael: Yeah, it's super interesting because I think that we're at a unique time right now with the community and AI and the Internet and technology, the amount of information online is exponentially increasing every year. We have less and less proportional attention to map to the amount of content. So how do you cut through in that ocean? It does seem like there's a trend towards real in-person experiences and connection and community. And the other side of it too is, I don't know, I think of malls. I had to go get my computer replaced cause my house got struck by lightning about a week and a half ago, and when I went to the mall to the Apple store to get it replaced, it was relatively pretty empty, and I was just kind of thinking like: when's the last time I've been to a mall? Very, very rarely. Of course, online shopping with Amazon is kinda.... There's a lot of in-person mall experiences. They have to close down now because it's just easier/more accessible to do it online. So there's like a question mark in my mind of: is that eventually where we're headed with music too? But to the point that you brought up, I think maybe the difference between a mall and a music concert is: the purpose of the concert/the purpose of the music is to connect. The sole primary purpose of being there is to enjoy the music together with the community, whereas the primary purpose of a mall is to buy stuff; to go buy stuff, and it's a secondary benefit of like: Oh, it's a kinda cool community thing. There's stuff around it, but it's not the main reason you're going 

Kyle: Exactly, and even if you were to look at when people were actively shopping in malls, I mean I could speak for myself, there's a percentage of those people that weren't there because they wanted to be there. It was because: ah I gotta go to the mall. I need pants. I'm gonna get in and I'm gonna get out as quickly as I can, whereas I would like to think with the music experience, you go because you want to be there. You know you're going to be there for more than 15 minutes. You're not just picking something up and getting out the door. 

Michael: Yeah, for sure. I know when I went, it was interesting because again, I'd rarely go to the mall, but it was an interesting experience. I walked in, I'm like: Oh yeah! This is interesting that these things exist. There's like all these different shops and stores around. It was an inconvenience for me to do. I had to get in my car, I have to drive a long ways to get there, I have to go in and out.

Kyle: Half of your day is gone. Next thing you know. 

Michael: Yeah, I do wonder… I don't know, this is like pretty far out, but if we had a neural link or if we had some sort of technology that can truly... because right now we're talking through these little portals in our computers miraculously looking through a warp dimensional portal to see and talk with another human being across the world. That's just so ludicrous. It makes me wonder: is it going to be possible ever to pull back/to expand it so it's not just a little screen, but with virtual reality with AI. I wonder, I don't know, like our brains are perceiving all of this and are kind of creating through electrical signals this experience of what's happening, and so if we could sort of map that and create the experience that doesn't have the same limitations of physics where we're at a concert, we can all float, and give you a high five and I can feel it, but like, wa! What kind of creativity that would open up? But you know, this is all just ideas about what might happen versus, right now what we're talking about, is really about creating real community and real connection in human beings. Right now, I don't think there is a better way to connect with another human being than being with them in person, giving them a hug, watching a concert together.

Kyle: I couldn't agree more, but maybe it's because I'm not in my early 20’s or a teenager anymore.

Michael: [jokingly] You don’t have a neuro link installed yet. 

Kyle: Not yet, but like even just beyond the experience, I just find that the the connection when you're like live in the same room with somebody, it's a different type of connection than when you're talking to somebody. Would I love it if we could just sit down and have this conversation in person? Absolutely! That would be a better connection. But, we're working with what we got because we all don't have an endless amount of time and an endless amount of resources. But to go along with the live music experience, it's a great way to stand out versus live videos and promoting on social media. Granted, you need people there, but it's still a different type of connection. I find a lot of times it can be a longer lasting connection once you make it in real life, as opposed to: Oh, Hey, that guy that I was just chatting with and I hearted one of his videos. It's easy to forget.

Michael: 100%. Yeah, it's, it seems kind of ironic that nowadays we live in the most connected world digitally in terms of that we're able to post on social media and have billions of people who are online who can potentially see it, but at the same time, there's sort of a greater demand or need for real human connection; a real depth of connection than just like the shallow impressions or the surface level things you can get with social media. 

Kyle: Maybe some of it is that on social media/online for the most part, it's not 100% real; it's the perception that people want to give you. So when it is in real life you see the good, you see the bad, you see the in between, and it makes it a truer connection. 

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors for sure.

Kyle: Some of it now, the technology is so good, that you don't necessarily know it.

Michael: That's a whole can of worms

Kyle: Right! It's easy to be fooled.

Michael: 100%. Yeah. I mean, it's basically here right now for, I don't know, text generation stuff. It can get pretty difficult if you have a well trained AI that uses natural language processing to be able to have a conversation. We're approaching that point right now OpenAI Sora is about to come out. I don't know if they're holding onto it to wait for the election to happen or if they'll release it before then. That's a whole can of worms. It does seem like there's different types of connections that you can have on the internet. I personally think that like the type of connection that we're having here right now where we're together in one space, even if it's just a little tiny screen/a little portal, I can actually have a conversation with you. I can see you. I can hear you. We're live together, and it feels like this is, I don't know, the most real kind of connection that we could have virtually, but it's still pretty incomplete, right? We can't high five. It's just a little tiny screen. I'm surrounded by everything that's not screen. So yeah, it seems like we'll move towards a direction where we can connect more and more, but I don't know if we'll be able to fully create an immersive experience without some kind of like brain neural hijacking where we actually literally create the electrical signals to make us feel like we're in a place together. 

Kyle: Wouldn't that be something?

Michael: Yeah, I'm gonna be interviewing the first Neuralink patient/first human on the podcast in about a week.

Kyle: Are you serious?!?

Michael: Yeah! I’m really looking forward to it. His name is Noland. He’s quadriplegic. He lost function below his neck and he got a Neuralink installed. He can now control things just by thinking about it on his computer. So we're planning on creating the first telepathically created song using udio.com with the AI music generator, and his thoughts. So yeah, some of this stuff is pretty far out, but I don't know, with that exponential curve of technology and Ray Kurzweil refers to as “the singularity”... It's going to be a pretty interesting next 20 years.

Kyle: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it'll be even more than we can imagine at this point.

Michael: 100%. Well, you know what, speaking of connecting and having live experiences where there's real human beings, sometimes what we'll do is actually bring people on stage where they can talk and we can hear each other. We have some folks who might have some interesting questions to ask and throw into the mix.

Leanne asked: I don't have any live performance experience, and I think you said, “oops, hang on, there's more coming to it”, but that's actually an interesting direction that I bet you have some great feedback on in terms of: how about for artists that are early on in their journey, and maybe they don't have a lot of live performance experience. I know you have an amazing resource where people can book shows and they can start to actually tour and connect with their fans, but what do you recommend for someone who's just getting started and doesn't have a lot of live performance experience?

Kyle: Well, obviously, continue practicing at home. I would say probably the first and best thing is: start going out; become a part of the scene. If you go through our directory and you find some venues that are probably on the smaller size, you're going to end up seeing artists that maybe they don't have the biggest fan base, or maybe they're just getting started themselves. Likely, those are going to be the venues that are going to give you your first opportunities anyway. Ideally, they've got some open mic possibilities, or maybe they have an open jam. So find some venues that kind of fit into that area, and get out there and go and watch the bands, and maybe run into a band that you really like, and then that band says: Oh, hey well we're playing next month and we need an opener. Do you want to hop on board? I think sometimes that's the best way is to just immerse yourself into what's happening and then opportunities will start coming along, 

Michael: Fantastic. Yeah, I know for myself and I think for a lot of artists who are here right now, your first export performance experience is some sort of open mic night. Like you're saying, where it's low pressure.

Kyle: Right. It's only a couple tunes. It's not like you have a whole set. Maybe you're doing probably two tunes on an acoustic guitar. It's the acoustic and a mic. It's a simple setup. The nice thing too about an open mic is: as well as it's something that's relatively well attended, you have a built-in audience and there's other musicians there that, again, you can start to form a little bit of a camaraderie with and then, again, that leads to more opportunities. You'd be surprised. It's not like open mic is only there for newbies. It's not. There's plenty of seasoned musicians that sometimes will go to open mic to just work on new material, see how people respond to stuff that they're not sure of. So you'll be meeting a bunch of different people at different spots within their career at that point. It's not only the people that are just starting out.

Michael: I'm actually thinking about starting an open mic night here in my community. So once a month there's a local restaurant that wants to host it, and so I think it'd be a lot of fun. My open mic experience, that connection that you get with other artists, it sounds like what you're saying is that, really, if you're just getting started, one of the best ways to do it is by starting to show up; actually figuring out where do people already go to start to perform and kind of get things started. It’s sort of like, I don't know, a river or there's a stream that's already going and you can kind of have some initial momentum, as opposed to trying to start this motion alone, go somewhere where it's already happening and the current's going to pull you along.

Kyle: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that you were considering doing an open mic. Most of the time the hosts are very experienced and very connected within the local scene. So even if you just get to know that person, it's going to lead to more opportunities.

Michael: Awesome. All right. So gunna keep on rocking some more questions from the audience. Leanne said: thank-you, Kyle! I’ll take a look at some open mic opportunities in my area.

Kyle: One thing actually that I will let you know is that we do have a filtering option on IndieOnTheMove where you can sort by places that host open mics. So if that is something that is in their regular schedule of events, then you can just go there and it'll let you know what night of the week that is.

Michael: That's awesome. Yeah, IndieOnTheMove has a filter. You can actually see where the open mic night’s happening. Awesome. All right. So moving on to an extra question. So actually a great follow-up question from Leanne. So Leanne asked… Oh, I thought the question was “what is IndieOnTheMove?” but she said, is that IndieOnTheMove? So I think the answer is yes. [laughing]

Kyle: See, if we were in person, we could clarify that a lot easier. I feel like I've run into this conversation sometimes with friends of mine where they have a question that's a multiple tiered question. And it's like, dude, just call me. It's going to be way faster. We're going to work it all out rather than 15 text messages back and forth.

Michael: 100%. Connection is everything. I mean, I don't want to get too far out here, but it definitely seems like connection is one of those core needs, or maybe like the core of life itself. When people were studied and asked “what makes you fulfilled?”, they found it wasn't really money to a certain extent and the #1 factor that led to a meaningful, fulfilled life was your relationships and your connections. So it seemed like this whole conversation has really been an angle on that core need that we have as humans to connect, and how music can play a role in making that connection happen. All right. So moving on here to other questions. We've got David Patrick Wilson said: I'd love live. I haven't toured in decades, but I have played before, thousands-5,000 seat venues. I'm looking at maybe 500 capacity spots. How many of the 9,600 venues you have fall in that size category? Okay. So he's interested in around 500 cap venues, and if there's any spots there on the database.

Kyle: Well, there definitely are. Let me pull it up here and take a peek for you. Bear with me one second. 500 cap and down 500 are just like right around that area.

Michael: This is awesome. So I just shared a link to IndieOnTheMove.com and the direct link that they can look at the venues. Yeah, it looks like there's 11,093 venues added here, and you have some great filtering options. We can see the radius of how far they are away from certain zip codes. It's interesting! I see Joe Eddie, one of our Gold Artist client’s here. I think he's probably about to say something, hopefully, related to the fan map feature that we've been developing together. Joe had an awesome idea of… so with our StreetTeam platform, it's basically a community builder. There's a email list, phone number list, and a website builder CRM. We were thinking: what if you could map out all of your fans who are subscribed to your email list onto a Google map and see where they're located so that you could do things like say: okay, I have 521 email subscribers that live in New York or from 20 miles away from New York. I want to send out an email to those people specifically and because it's with a CRM, we actually have the ability to target this group and not just know they're there, but actually send them a message to text them or email them, which is really cool. I bet that in combination with IndieOnTheMove, and actually having a resource of all the venues would be really interesting, in that you could see like a hot.. I don't want to say hot pocket! [sings] Hot Pocket!

Kyle: But I love hot pockets. 

Michael: [laughs] Let's be real, hot pockets are the reason that any of us exist as humans. 

Kyle: So to go back to the question, I pulled it up and I sent a link to you, Michael. I don't know if you can see the full link there that I sent. There are 714 venues that are between 400-600 capacity on the site.

Michael: Wow, that is cool. I love that you can have the shared link with the URL parameters. You can actually open it directly too.

Kyle: Yes, so yeah, that'll take you right to there. Now some of the additional filtering options are a part of the premium subscription, which is the second level subscription, but via that direct link, you'll be able to at least see what venues are there, and then get an idea of some of the other filtering options that do exist beyond the free. You can utilize the site even without an account, just obviously, if you create a free account you get a little bit more functionality. If you get a premium subscription, you get a little more functionality. If you get a deluxe subscription, which is our top tier, and you get more functionality. So, along the way, if you are using the site, really, it's just a question of how much time do you want to spend? If you have an endless amount of time, then sure, go with the free account. You'll find plenty of value there, but it is going to take you a little bit more time to go through stuff.

Michael: Got it. Super cool. I really appreciate the time and energy that you've put into creating this resource for all of us indie musicians. I also would love to explore what it looked like to build a software-level integration with your venue database with something like what Joe created with the fan map feature. If we could look at the Google map and for people who are premium subscribers, for example, if they could pull in a list of venues that are located on that map as well so you can basically see…

Kyle: Connect the two!

Michael: Yeah. You have the highest amount of fans as well as you have lifetime values so you can see: these are where all of my fans who've been out to 3-4 shows before are located. I want to find a venue within 25 miles of that, could be a really interesting thing to explore. 

Kyle: Yeah. I mean, it's all about connecting the fans with the spaces.

Michael: It's all about connecting the fans with the spaces. Awesome. All right. So I think that that's probably a good time to wrap up our interview for today. So Kyle, thank-you so much again for taking the time to be here today. I really appreciate the platform that you’ve built to help artists to connect with each other, to connect with their fans. I think there is something truly special, and something you might even use the word sacred, that describes the live concert experience, and so I think it's really important, especially in today's day and age with AI and technology and social media, that we have that real human-to-human connection. So I appreciate you and what you're doing. 

Kyle: Thank-you much. I appreciate you having me on. It's cool. 

Michael: Absolutely. Just one final time for anyone here that is interested in checking out IndieOnTheMove, and exploring that resource, what's the best place for them to go?

Kyle: Yeah. So IndieOnTheMove.com, and when you get there, if it seems like a lot, at the bottom of the site there's a handful of links that you can check out and one of them, it says “features”, and so it'll give you a nice point-by-point breakdown of just the main features of the site so you can just kind of get an idea of what we offer, what's going to be appropriate for you, and how to find it. 

Michael: All right. Fantastic. Well, like always, we’ll put all the links in the show notes for easy access and let's give a virtual round of applause for Kyle.

Yeeeaaaah. 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.