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 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!

Bee Adamic: In terms of knowing whether all it takes is a few tweaks and to just carry on, I think you need to sort of figure out why you're doing it. So what is your “why”? Are you doing it because it just makes you happy and you maybe work 9-5 for a finance company or a law firm or your insurance broker and it's just a really nice outlet to sort of get yourself out of that headspace and just get into the studio in the evening and you perform on a Saturday in front of friends and maybe that's that's enough!

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. 

YYEAAHH. All right. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend Bee Adamic. Bee is at the helm of Liberty music PR, which is transforming the music industry through empowering indie artists and crafting innovative campaigns. She's worked with major firms, including high profile brands like Tesla and Tommy Hilfiger, and she also has an initiative called, I think it's pronounced “mommy”, but it's spelled Mami, which champions women in music and earned her recognition such as Jim Shark's inspirational women's feature and a spot on She Said So alt 100 power list. In terms of timing, hopefully it's okay if I mention this, Bee, but it sounds like in about a week or so, you're due for a baby! So talk about a champion of women in every way. Thank-you for taking the time to be here today, especially as you're approaching this due date. I'm sure that there's a lot of different things that you're kind of preparing, getting ready for it, so thank-you for taking the space to be able to share a little bit about what you do and how you can help serve music artists. 

Bee Adamic: Perfect. Thank-you. No, thanks for having me. It's always an absolute plesaeure to guide, support, and give any of my kind of tips and tricks and experience to people that really will value it. So I hope this is a really interesting episode for your listeners. 

Michael: Absolutely. I'm sure it will be. So to kick things off, maybe you could share a little bit about your story with Liberty Music PR and collaborating with brands like Tesla and whatnot. I’m curious to hear how that happened for you. 

Bee: Thank-you. So I co-launched liberty 8 years ago now. So we're just going into our 8^th year, and if I sort of take it back sort of a little bit further than 8 years, I remember kind of diving into university, and then into the corporate world, and never really being very happy with where I kind of landed. I did a marketing degree, and then just kind of landed a few kind of cool marketing roles, but in different sectors. I was working in the financial services, I was working in the charity sector, and I was kind of hitting my late 20’s early 30’s and I just thought: I'm just not happy. I know that I'm destined to be somewhere else in another industry, but I just don't know where that is, and I always had this passion to do my own thing as well, but again, I just didn't know what that was. I know a lot of young people struggle with that nowadays. I get so many DMs on LinkedIn from people going: I really, really want to pursue a freelance career, or be my own boss, but I just don't know which door to open. So I was very much facing that dilemma in my early 30’s, and then I went to a festival. It was in Brighton: The Great Escape Festival. It's a bit like South-by-Southwest. It's a multi-venue emerging artist festival for the discovery of new talent, and I remember it just hit me. I was like: Oh my goodness, this industry is so exciting. I could see behind the scenes, I could see sort of on the stage and I just thought: I've got to be here. What do I do to get into this industry? And that was it. That was like the starting point for me. I knew that I wanted to get into the industry. I knew that it was going to be a challenge because I had no experience. I had gone down a slightly different career path industry wise, but I thought: no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. So I actually wrote a big plan of action, almost a strategy, as to how I was going to approach this industry. And I started off with applying to a million different job applications, and I had quite a lot of experience. I had been working in various marketing roles for about 5 or 6 years, but I just kept getting the same rejections, which was: you don't have the experience; you're just not what we're looking for. So that was really disheartening. So I decided I was then going to throw myself into passion projects. So, okay, if I don't have the experience, then how can I create some experience? So I started to do a bit of everything, almost as a side hustle within the music industry. So I still had my 9-5 job. I was working for a global events company at that time, but I thought, okay, how do I just chip away at it? So the first thing I did was do some music journalism. So I actually started because I was a really passionate, creative writer, and I thought: well, I could use this skill to actually write about artists and bands and go and review them. So I put myself forward for loads of blog/journalist opportunities and actually started writing for some really big publications, and then actually even went on to become music editor for a few of these publications as well. And again, this was all from just doing it in the evenings and the weekends and I think the only perks back then was kind of I got to go to free festivals and free gigs, and that for me was enough. I loved that, and then that kind of progressed and I started to find more of a passion within the music industry, so I actually launched my own live music night. This was in Brighton. From then, I started managing a band. From then, I started running stages at music festivals, like stage managing. So I kind of threw my hand into everything and I thought: well, I'm just going to try everything and just see if there's anything that particularly gets me and where I feel like I really sort of light up. And it wasn't until I started managing a band that they were like: we've got an EP, we're really excited. Let's do some proper promotional support on this. So I started researching PR agencies, and we found a couple of agencies we really liked. We basically decided on one, paid the money, and then the results were actually, pretty disappointing if I'm honest. So they spent quite a lot of money, the band, on this kind of PR campaign, and they were like: you were the one that recommended this agency, you're our manager, and you need to sort this out. And I was like: Oh my God, what do I do here? So I basically just had a go at PRing the EP myself. So I thought, well, okay, I'm a good writer, so I can write a good press release. So I was able to put together a really good press release, which I did. I had quite a lot of contacts already I started to build in the music industry from being a music journalist,so I kind of knew who wrote for where. So I basically started to pitch out this press release, and started to see great results. So suddenly, the band went from being hardly ever kind of written about to suddenly we had like 20 really cool pieces of content on them online, they were getting radio interviews, they were being invited by music magazines to do photo shoots, and suddenly I'd seen this whole world that actually did light me up and I thought: this is it. I actually want to be in music PR. I think this is my calling. So that was the start of it, basically. So it was actually at the tail end of 2015 that I started this very gradual organic process of starting this career in music PR, basically. I took on a client, basically. Someone had seen all the work I'd done. I was quite vocal about my successes on social media. A band approached me saying, could you do our next single? And then another one approached me, and then another one approached me, and suddenly I had like 10 clients, and I was still working full-time, at my previous role, and I just thought: wow, this could actually be a business. I could actually make this work financially. So I remember telling my boss at the time that I would like to go part-time and see if I could perhaps do the 2 together, and she said, no. She said, you're either here fully or we have to let you go, and I remember going home that night and kind of contemplating what to do and I decided to take the plunge. I thought: if I don't do this now it may be one of those things I really regret, and if it doesn't go right, then I can always go back to my old career. I had enough savings to sort of keep me going financially for about 6 months and I thought: well if I can't make it work in 6 months, I'll just go back to my old career, it's fine. But I did make it work and I never really had to look back. It was March 2016 that I officially launched Liberty. I didn't have a website. I didn't have a team. It was literally just me with a few local clients, a few local musicians relative to Brighton, and if you fast forward 8 years, we now have a team of around 45 people, albeit freelancers, people taking on small projects with us, some people are with us full-time as actual employees. We have a commercial director. It's now a proper established business, and we work with over 60 clients a month. I've been on quite the journey and when I first launched Liberty, I actually also fell pregnant around the same time. So it was quite an interesting time, 2016. I remember kind of leaving my old job, diving into this, then I found out I was pregnant. So it was a very different maternity situation back then to what I'm going to experience hopefully now in that I now have the structures in place, I now have a team in place, and I can actually take that time out to actually enjoy being a mother the second time round. I think the kind of story in that is that I kind of wasn't given any opportunities and I just went out there and sought the opportunity that I wanted, discovered the area of music that I wanted to be in, and here we are now 8 years later.

Michael: That is so awesome. Thank-you for sharing that. I love hearing success stories in all kinds of different ways because I feel like they are inspiring, and they can be applied in so many different ways to all of our own journey. It sounds like you started out with nothing, really, and you started out with working a 9-5 job, and I think for a lot of us as musicians, we feel, in some ways, kind of trapped to our 9-5 and maybe music is sort of that passion; maybe that's kind of the thing that we really want to go into, and so hearing how you're able to make that work in addition to working in a 9-5 job… Damn. Like,  Bee is a bad ass!

Bee: [laughing] Thank-you. No, I'm a strong believer in the side hustle, because I think it's quite hard to try and launch something completely from scratch without that kind of security blanket. So for me, having that full-time career, and being able to sort of launch myself into this music project, Liberty in the weekends/evenings, felt like a good way to sort of gradually dip my foot in the water or toe in the water, and I think it's the same with a lot of musicians. I know most musicians have 9-5 jobs or evening jobs or another career, so it's very hard to fully throw and immerse yourself into music without having that financial buffer, cause it can be quite scary. I'm always a huge believer in just try. So I get a lot of people asking me: how do I get into the music industry? Lots of young people that just left, music college and music uni and they just can't find anything, and it's a very competitive industry, and sometimes it's who you know/what you know and that sort of thing. I always just say: if you can, just try a little bit of everything; make yourself known; throw yourself into different circles and you'll meet some really great people along the way, basically. 

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, one thing I really appreciate about your story is both how you came from this place of creating a safety net for yourself in terms of the 9 to 5, but also there's a moment in your journey where you sort of had this crossroads where it's either like you go all in and you give it a real shot, or you don't. I know for a lot of us, making that decision is one of the biggest kind of leaps of faith. I remember having a very similar experience with when we started our band out of high school. We basically had full ride scholarships, or a few of us did, and we weren't sure: do we want to go for the band or go to college and do it at the same time? One of our producers recommended: if you're serious about actually being successful with your band, then there's a point where you want to go all in on it and give it a real shot without being distracted. But it was similar to what you had mentioned with your story in that we found out we could defer our scholarships for a year and basically have this window through if we could go all in and we had kind of a fallback safety plan where we could defer our scholarships and come back. So I think for a lot of people listening to this right now, that might be a helpful model to kind of look at it as: okay, can I find a way to build a buffer so I have the safety net so that I can give myself permission to go all in for a period of time? Maybe a little bit like a tightrope walker who, if you're going to go out on a tight rope and try it out, like you do want to make sure that the safety net. So it's like: you have that buffer, you're not going to die if you fall off, but there's a certain point where it's like: you have to let go and actually go out onto the tight rope. Then you have to give it a real shot. 

Bee: Definitely, definitely, otherwise we speak as musicians at Liberty that we have some people that have been entrepreneurs all their life, or they've worked in investment or banking and they're actually in their 40’s, some people in their 50’s, and they're like: finally have decided to give it my all in music. I can financially because I've made my money, and I've never been happier, and they've put together their first album or the EP and they're so excited to put it out. So I think otherwise people will maybe leave it a bit too late, but there's never a too late time, I don't think, in music. I think the barriers for age feel like they're coming down slowly, and I think it's a great time to be in the industry. 

Michael: Absolutely. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that because certainly, in the traditional music industry, it seemed like there was a certain type of artists that record labels were looking to get behind and kind of break, and it seems like nowadays there's been a big opening and a big opportunity for independent artists, regardless of what style of music you make or how old you are. There's all these things that aren't really limitations anymore. 

Bee: No, I love that. You mentioned Mami, which is the initiative in the community that I run with a lovely woman called Jo. Even when we sort of started out and we launched the community 7 years ago, we felt like the whole mom in music/being a pregnant woman in music was quite a taboo back then. There was lots of major labels dropping female artists who announced that they were pregnant or something, but now, that's come along so much. We've got the likes of Beyonce and Rianna and people just being very loud and proud about being pregnant and being a musician. So those barriers have felt like they've definitely come down. Yeah, I think it's the same with age. I think the industry very, very much did feel like it was sort of more favoured towards the young a few years ago, but now it feels like, it's changed as well and I think it's kind of ageless now, and I think we throw ourselves behind, anyone. If we love the music and we love what they're up to, it doesn't really matter and I think record labels and the media have started to recognize that as well. I think it feels like there's some really big inroads into the whole ageism around music, because I think that certainly, some of the musicians I've worked with in the past, that's always been quite a big key factor for them, and not really revealing their age and things like that and so it's a real shame. Especially for men as well, but I feel that's that's changed. I feel like it's definitely changing, which is is great. It's really positive. 

Michael: So one thing that appears here from your perspective, having worked with a lot of artists now in Liberty PR, in this age where there are so many blessings and it's kind of like a golden age to be an independent musician, there's also some unique challenges that start to come up because of the access that we have. So I'm curious from your perspective working with artists, what have you seen to be some of the biggest challenges that they're facing right now? 

Bee: Yeah, there's quite a few. I would say one of the biggest ones is probably comparing yourself to bigger, overnight successes or kind of big artists. I think everyone starts off on their journey and even the people the likes of sort of Ed Sheeran and people like that, they put the hustle in years before they became this huge global star, as did a lot of the others, and I think, artists get quite frustrated, especially artists at the very start of their careers, could even be their debut single, they get really frustrated if they haven't hit a certain number of kind of streams on Spotify, or they aren't on the biggest publications like Billboard. It's quite hard to explain that they're at the start of their career, and we are slowly building that point. It will happen, but you have to be consistent. One of the big things a lot of musicians do is they back everything on that one track, and then you don't hear from them again for another year or so, and I think that, the artists I've seen that seem to succeed are the ones that just keep going and keep putting something out every couple of months and just reminding the media and their fans that they're still there and they're still creating, basically. I think that's hard, but also financially, it's hard. It's really hard to kind of be an independent artist. You're paying for everything yourself, so you may be using an agency like us, but we charge for our services and there's only so much someone can afford. It's kind of having a bit of a budget in place, and I think the finances for being an artist still sometimes feel like they're completely against you. You have to have money for your promotion, money for your production, money for your mastering, your look, your artwork... Sometimes it feels like it's just a bit of a losing game because you're putting all this in and you may not see that return for maybe a couple of years. You may not see that return at all, and I think that that's the hard bit that I even struggle with sometimes when I'm speaking to musicians, is I can see that it's really hard in terms of the return on investment, but I always say that your music is your legacy and it will be there forever. It's timeless. You'll always leave that footprint. They're not doing it at all, you know? So I think they're probably kind of the main sort of challenges that I seem to come across quite often. Also just using kind of rogue, cheap agencies. I see a lot of artists that come to us where maybe they've kind of found something online which gives them, I don't know, 100,000 plays, and you kind of look at the data in the background. We use Chartmetrics, which is a great, great data analysis platform that I strongly recommend musicians to look at, and you can see in the back end that all of the playlists that they've been placed on are botted, or they've just got on the wrong kind of playlist which will just have an adverse effect on the algorithm for them that's within Spotify. There is no shortcut and there is easy way to get to the top. You just have to put the working, and I think that can be really challenging for some musicians. 

Michael: That makes a lot of sense, and if it feels like a very honest answer, it reminds me of Steve jobs had some quote to the effect of saying that he really thinks that 95% of what goes into successful entrepreneurs is just pure perseverance. Like 95% of it is just perseverance and showing up and keep going. It sounds like one of the things that pointed to is just sort of this phase that you have to go through at the beginning where maybe it's like launching a rocket ship, right? Launching a rocket ship where it's like, all the fuel and energy like goes into getting it off the ground. There's all this gravity. It's so hard. It's like 90% of the energy is just like in that initial phase, and when you finally kind of break orbit now, it's like: you have momentum, it's easier, the gravity is not pulling you, but man, that initial launch phase can be so challenging. 

Bee: Absolutely. I love that analogy, and I think it's fantastic. I think you're so right. I've got some really good friends who have just been sort of putting music out consistently for like, maybe the last 8 years, and I'm just starting to see those guys break through, and I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, it's finally happening! So honestly I can't… It might feel relentless. It may feel like you're wasting your time and there's been no real progression or consistency, but you just have to keep trucking on, and keep going and try not to look at the noise and the surroundings and who's doing more and how many plays they've got, but I think there's so much pressure on musicians because you're essentially putting yourself out there, aren't you? And it can be really challenging if somebody has written a bit of a negative review about you. I know I think that's really cruel when someone has done that, but that's the industry that you're in. I think you just need to kind of brush yourself down and keep sort of going on, basically, like you say with the rocket. And it is the same as an entrepreneur as well. There have been days in the last 8 years where I've kind of gone: what am I doing? And you know, why am I here? And this just feels relentless and feels like everyone's against me, and I just haven't met the right kind of people and the right team. 8 years on, I can honestly saying I feel like I've finally turned a really great corner and I'm really enjoying it. So I think that's a big piece of advice for me, that's for sure. 

Michael: So good. Yeah. I mean, I'm really laying the analogies on thick here, but, it's really like planting a tree, right? Like you have the seed and thenthere's this phase where the roots have to grow and eventually like the fruits start to fall. At the beginning, you have to have faith that like, okay, I'm just putting in the work here. I'm fertilizing it, and I can kind of see something's happening, but there's not really like fruit yet, until it does bear fruit. So I guess one follow-up question is: for artists who might be listening to this right now who kind of feel like they're like, okay, like, this is me; I can really resonate with this. I feel like I'm in that phase right now. I'm hustling. I'm working so hard and I haven't seen the fruit yet. I'm curious: how does someone distinguish between, okay, I'm doing the right things, it's taking time and I just need to keep solid/keep doing this, versus those times where going West looking for a sunrise. You'll never see the sunrise. So there is sort of that balance of: how does someone distinguish between if they're on the right path but they just need to keep going, versus maybe it's time to pivot? 

Bee: That's a really good question and I think it's probably quite hard to rationalize with. I think it's always good to get some feedback. I suppose as a musician you need to see whether you've progressed or developed. Like if you have been doing something for say 6 years and you don't feel like it's really gone anywhere, maybe you've only got a couple of tracks out in those 5 years, maybe you have played a couple of gigs and only a couple of people have turned up, and maybe you're just not enjoying it. I mean, that's the biggest thing as well is you've got to enjoy it, you know, and if you find it's anxiety inducing or it makes you really stressed or you're falling out of people in your band, then perhaps it literally isn't the right thing. I know a lot of musicians who've been in bands and then they've sort of broken free from their band and gone it solo and actually became successful through being solo because there was just too much kind of red tape, or too many egos and too many people to please. So they were like, actually: chill. I just want to do what I want to do, and I want to write my music and my lyrics in my style, and actually they've never been happier. So there's sometimes that, actually figuring out whether what you're doing is making you happy, whether you actually feel really passionate about it. So it might be that actually you could be better off going into a completely different area genre wise of music. Maybe your tastes have changed, maybe you want to try something new songwriting wise or production wise, and that's okay I think. I do see that a lot and it's brilliant, but I think in terms of knowing whether all it takes is a few tweaks and to just carry on, I think you need to sort of figure out why you're doing it. So what is your why? Are you doing it because it just makes you happy and you maybe work 9-5 for a finance company or a law firm or your insurance broker and it's just a really nice outlet to sort of get yourself out of that headspace and just get into the studio in the evening and you perform on a Saturday in front of friends and maybe that's that's enough! You know, that's actually all you need, basically, is just a really lovely balance of kind of art music and then your kind of day to day but I think in terms of… It could just be a little tweak. Maybe you haven't sat and worked out what your plan is. I always say: get a plan in place, work out your strategy. Don't just put a track out and then disappear for a year, put another track out, disappear for a year. Actually kind of sit as a band/as a team and kind of go, what do we want? Why are we doing this? Why do we want to go on tour because of X? Why do we want to do that? You know, and you'll eventually get to the root of why you're doing what you're doing, and then from that, you can work out: okay, what do we want to achieve for the remainder of 2024? We want to put out two more tracks? Okay, when should we do this? What's our finance and budget? Let's put that all together. Let's kind of figure out whether we want to revise our sound and our style/image. You know, we've been running this kind of image for the last 3 years, but it's not really getting much attention. Maybe we need to change our look. You know, I think there's so many things that you can do, but I think it fundamentally goes back to your why and why you're actually doing it, and I think if you can answer that honestly, then you can figure out whether you should just carry on or not. I think if you are doing it 'cause you've always done it, that for me may not feel like the most relevant reason to carry on. I would say: I've always been a musician. I know nothing else… Well you need to sort of figure out why you're still doing this. I think you need to have your key reasons and a strong plan in place to figure out the next part of your journey as a musician. 

Michael: So good. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the most important things you can do is really get to the core and get to the foundation of why you're doing what you're doing, and then from that, in a lot of cases, that's where the direction comes from. 

Michael: I’d love to hear your advice as it relates to planning. It seems like that one of your geniuses is around planning. I think for a lot of artists and creatives, they know it's important because ithey've heard the kind of: okay, I need to start with why, and I know the why is important, but they might not be totally clear on what that looks like or how they even create a plan in the first place. So, could you share your advice in terms of: when you're sitting down and let's say that you were with an artist right now and they're kind of looking at the next, I don't know, 3 months or a year or 5 years and they want to start getting clear on that. How can they go through that process? 

Bee: I always have a notebook with me. It's like one of my key things, and it helps me plan and it helps mindset and motivations and things and how I prep my day and very much helps me with the planning process. I think if you're a full-time musician, I think it's really good to wake up and actually set your intentions for the day, and I think that helps with the grand scheme of what you're trying to achieve, and I think that you need to carve out time in your day for you and your music and your family and your friends. I think sometimes it can be a little bit all encompassing being a musician as well. So one of my top tips is just: you've got to create some kind of balance and you want to have a really healthy mind and body as well. I think that's the most important thing. Don't just kind of lock yourself up in a dark studio day and night and not really kind of have a world outside of that because yeah, I don't think it's very healthy. So for me, if I was sat with a musician, a band, or a group of people right now, and they were like: okay, what do we do? What's the first thing we do? I would probably say: okay, so we need to put a plan in place, a release schedule in place. That's essentially what we do, but first of all, we kind of sit and figure out who you are, what's your kind ethos and your mission and your purpose as a musician? Is there certain trends and styles and themes in your music and your passions that you're trying to portray in this sound and style and lyric? So maybe we sort of map out who you are as a musician first of all. It might be that you're a female artist, very passionate about female empowerment and independence and all that sort of stuff, and that will almost start to shape your brand identity. Nowadays, obviously with social media, it's really good to have a consistent theme running through everything. So that would be your style, your lyrics, your social media presence, how you interact with your fans. We would probably look at which social media platforms you're most comfortable with. Maybe you've got one that you prefer. That's fine, let's just focus on that. Let's just have one that we can really nail, and that we can really kind of connect with your fans. It may be that you don't really have any fans. You have maybe a handful of people that kind of like and comment on your say Instagram posts and that's fine. That's the start of your fan base, basically. So what we would do is get you maybe trying to interact a bit more with those fans. So the first thing is kind of your brand identity or values and everything you stand for as a musician. I think that will start to form the basis for your artwork and your image and things like that. So it might be that we go down a bit of a journey in terms of the type of images put out there of you and your music that's like the tone. What’s the kind of language that you're going to start using to interact with your fans? Do you want to just be a releasing artist or do you want to get out and tour? Some artists just don't like doing the live thing and that's okay. You know, you don't have to. Or some are just like: I just want to be on the road all the time, and that, again, is brilliant as well. It's fine. Next, we want to look at what's in the song bank. It might be that you've got some really old songs that you're kind of not fussed about and you want to start writing again but you don't have any sort of creative ambitions. So it might be that we put you in a room with other songwriters to draw out some ideas and inspirations. You may think actually going down a more collaborative route is great. So I would always suggest having a bank of tracks that we can pick through, not just having one track. It's like, I've got this track and that's it. It's like, let's have about 6-8 different tracks we can pick through, and that can form the basis of our release strategy. It might be that you don't have those yet so I would probably suggest that you go away and write some music and new material and then we'd come back and then we'd go through that together and we'd shortlist our favorite songs; which ones we felt were going to be singles, and then maybe wrap that into an EP at the end. So once we've got the kind of brand identity, the image and the tracks ready to go, that's where I'd say that you're probably in a really good place to start to map out the next 12 to maybe 36 months; so the next year to 3 years, it could be that. What are your biggest goals and ambitions for the next 12 months? It might be: Oh, I really want to land a festival stage at my favorite festival. Okay. Well, let's look at that for summer 2025 now. How do we shape you into a position where you could get your dream gig at a festival? It may be that you're not on a big stage, but it may be that you just have a presence at one of the smaller stages there if you're just starting out. It may be that I really want to land a new music Friday Spotify for UK or whatever. Okay, well let's try to feed the algorithm at Spotify with your releases and there may be a chance that that could happen. It might be that you want to be on a big radio station. So again, we'd kind of focus on those key ambitions and formulate that as part of the plan, basically. So what I'd be looking for is I'd almost map out… It would almost be if you think about sort of a calendar or planner, it would almost be mapping out timelines. So we want to put out our first new track on the 1st of October. Brilliant. So we've got plenty of time to work backwards from that. So what we would do is figure out the first track that we'd release. When's the second track going to be out? Would that be in late Jan or do we want to get one more out before Christmas? And we keep working like that. So we'd be like: okay, we've got a track out. What are we going to do with that track? Are we going to work with a PR company? Are we going to do it ourselves? If we do it ourselves, what sort of marketing support is there? You know, there's so many tools now for independent artists, the likes of SubmitHub and PlayersPush and things like that. I think there's means of being to promote yourself without using an agency, which can be quite expensive. So basically, it's literally just sort of… A strategy is literally mapping out what your goals are and how you think you're gonna achieve them, basically. That is it in a nutshell. And you do that over a timeline. It doesn't need to be complicated, and it doesn't need to be pages and pages and pages. As a business, we actually put all of our annual strategy onto one page of A4. That's it. I don't like having reams and reams of pages of strategy. It's just one concise document that maps out what we're going to do and how we're going to achieve it, and then giving ourselves measurable goals. So the same could be with a musician or a band as you set yourself out with some goals and it might be: we plan to release 3 singles and an EP in 2025. Brilliant. Okay, you've set that. You've made that goal measurable. What else are you going to set out and achieve? We want to be playing Glastonbury stage in 2026. Great. Okay. We'll map that out as a goal. So it's giving you a vision board of what you're going to be up to as a bandm and then you can pass that on to a manager, you can pass it on to a team member, and everyone can see what your clearly defined goals are for the next few years. 

Michael: Yeah. I mean, there's been so many studies just around the power of goal setting and the effect of just writing down on paper and getting something down in terms of what your intentions are, what you want to do. Just to recap what you shared, it sounds like what you'd recommend for artists and really this process that you take artists through involves, to use another analogy, you want to map out your plans for where you want to get to and set some strategies for how you get from point A to point B. Maybe one way to look at it would be like setting a GPS. In order for a GPS to work, you need to know what's the starting location. So at the beginning, you do all this deep inner work about figuring out who you are and what's your core; what's your starting point. A GPS can't function without knowing where you're starting from, but then it also needs to know: what's the destination that you want to get to. So you have to get really clear on what is that destination? What does it look like? Where are you trying to get to? And then only from there, you can kind of cross that bridge and you can try to figure out: okay, what's the plan to go from point A to point B, and it might not be perfect. You might have to adjust along the way, but as long as you have those key 3 things in place, then you can do it if you have the part that you talked about earlier about the perseverance, so like keep going when you take a wrong turn; keep coming back to the path; keep on that pace. 

Bee: Yeah. Absolutely, and it might be that the thought of planning and strategizing for 2-3 years ahead may feel like it's quite overwhelming, and that's okay. You don't need to do that. If you literally do just want to figure out what you're doing for the rest of the year, that's actually brilliant in itself. If you've never planned before and you literally want to just get some milestones set for the rest of the year, for the remaining part of the year; the 5-6 months we've got left. So I think just any kind of plan is better than no plan and having that direction as to where you're going. I think it's really healthy for fans to have that as well because I think sometimes it can be quite confusing being with a group of other musicians and no one really knows who's doing what, and actually having clearly defined roles as well. It might be that when you're in a musical project and it feels like one person's doing everything, they're the one that's planning the gigs and booking the rehearsals and booking the studio time and stuff like that. It could give everyone a bit of an opportunity to put themselves forward in different roles in the band and in the music project, and actually see who's doing what, and make it really fair. So yeah, that's kind of, yeah, I'd add there. 

Michael: Awesome. Well, hey, Bee, this has been a great conversation. I feel like we've gotten to cover some extremely fundamental and important topics like goal setting and planning and being able to touch on, really, in this amazing age of being an independent musician, some timeless principles that are going to help them to be able to accomplish their goals. So thank-you again for taking the time to be here today. 

Bee: Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm always here if anyone wants to find me. I'm obviously going off to have a baby, but I'm going to be still sort of around, obviously. So if anyone's got anything they want to kind of ask me, I'm here.

Michael: Last question, Bee, I was just going to ask, for someone who might be listening to this right now or watching this who's interested in connecting more with Liberty PR. I'm curious 1) who have you found, from experience that has just been like the perfect fit, like, your dream clients who are a joy to work with, you get the best results. Who specifically would you say is the best fit, and then, where can they go to connect more and take the next step? 

Bee: Sure. Yeah. So the best clients for Liberty have always been, sort of mentally balanced. I think, perhaps, they have no huge expectations. They're very realistic. They have invested a lot of time and effort into producing a suite of amazing music. They are a long-term retainer client of ours. I find that some of our best clients and people that we've worked with for over 12 months, and we've seen the results improve month in/month out, and we can see that progression/that development, that they are part of the team. We're part of their team, so we all work collaboratively. They've got brilliant music. They've got the best artwork. They've got great photos. They're available for interviews. They're very responsive. I think they and their expectations are realistic. They have been the best clients and I think we have seen huge, huge successes and huge results from working with people like that. We've worked with a couple of artists that sort of spring to mind, an artist called Lisa Ramey, an artist called Wanyi who's based in Hong Kong. We worked with her Wanyi for over 12 month, and by the latter part of that project, she was hitting New Music Friday across all of the Asian countries and it was just amazing to see her go from an artist that maybe had around 4-5 thousand plays on one of her tracks, to go right up to like 250,000-500,000 plays on one of her tracks towards the end. So we could still see our clear work and the impact it's having on her in that project, which was amazing. She's just actually about to release again, so I'm very excited about that. She has every major label kind of wanting to sign her. So that's been really interesting. So I think, definitely, having realistic expectations, being very calm in the process, trusting that we know what we are doing, and we can do our job. We work with you. We'll be transparent. We'll be communicative. Let's set the goals from the start. What do we wanna achieve, and also working with each other on that longer time scale is just the ideal scenario for us, but we also understand that that's not always possible. Then how do people get in touch or how do they work with us? Well, you know, with Liberty, we work with artists from debut singles, to people who have put music out in another alias, who have rebranded, new sound, new style, and now want to really give it their best shot. The music has to be fantastic. The production, the quality has to be optimal. That's one of the biggest caveats you have to have really good assets to support your music. We want really good imagery, good artwork, and potentially there's something else in the bag of music ready to be released after this track that we're working on. We offer a range of services. We're always trying to be at the forefront of music promotion, so we recognize there's new trends all the time that we need to be on top of and at the forefront of. So we offer everything from traditional PR right through to Spotify native ads, YouTube, promotional support, TikTok, Instagram, influencer reels, right through to players pitching. So we do it all. It can be quite overwhelming shopping around for one bit one service to another service, so we can offer all of that in house for you. Find us on our website. There's a submit your music button on our website so please do if you're interested, or you just want to have a casual chat. There’s never any obligation to buy anything from us. We're very happy to just give our advice and support and help wherever we can, basically. We understand that the music industry is a really confusing place for a lot of musicians and we're there to help. We really want to give back to the music community. 

Michael: Awesome. Well, like always, we'll put the links on the show notes for easy access. Bee, thanks again for taking the time to share some of your experience and wishing you the best with the delivery coming up soon. 

Bee: Thank-you so much. I will stay in touch. I really look forward to seeing what you're up to next. Thank-you so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed chatting to you, and I wish you all the best with this podcast. It's fantastic. 

Michael: Thank-you. Thanks for being a part of it!

Bee: Thank-you!

Michael: YYEEAAHH! 

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.