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!

Adam Lewis: It is definitely the leveling of the playing field, right? And like we were talking about in the beginning: anyone can make a record, anyone can have a hit, things can come out of nowhere, they can sound like there's a full band or whatever, and they can have a hit. It's just a question of can you sustain it, and can you have a career? 

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 my new friend, Adam Lewis. So Adam is the head of Planetary Group which elevates emerging artists like Arlo Parks and Soccer Mommy through radio, online PR, social media strategies. He handles all the publicity for Great Northeast Productions. Formerly with TVT records, he has worked with artists like Seven Dust and Snoop Dogg. [both laughing I’m so excited to connect with them today and talk a little bit about nowadays with digital media promotion and all of the revolutions that have happened in marketing, what are the best ways right now for an artist to build a community, build an audience and get their music heard? So Adam thank-you for taking time to be here today.

Adam: Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, it's great to be here. I mean, I wish I still worked with Snoop Dogg. I mean, he's having a pretty good couple of weeks over in Paris right now! [laughing]

Michael: Oh, yeah. I haven't seen it

Adam: Well, he's part of the Olympics, right? So, you know.

Michael: Oh, that's right. I saw a meme!

Adam: Yeah. He was walking around with a torch and it looked like a giant joint. [Michael laughs] But he stole the Olympics basically this year. So good for him. Anyway. Yeah, great to be here! 

Michael: It's good to have you here. I think the meme that I saw was something like: Snoop Dog has completed the most side quests in this video game of like, of anyone, and it was like him, like in the Olympics. It seems true. Snoop Dogg has so many interesting, fun side quests that he’s been on. 

Adam, for anyone that this is their first time connecting with you ormeeting you, I'd love to hear just a little bit about your story and how you got started with Planetary Group and working with artists like Snoop Dog.

Adam: Yeah. Listen, I mean it's my company. I started it. It's all I ever wanted to do was be in the music business. Right? So when I was in high school, I was reading Rolling Stone and Billboard all day, every day, going through the charts, studying it, just really obsessing over it. So when I went to college, I had one thing on my mind and that was to take over my college radio station as soon as I got there, and so by the end of my first semester, took it over, ended up running my college station for three and a half years. Took over the booking on campus, started doing shows in the student union and the pub and whatnot. I became the music editor of the school paper, put a couple of records out in my dorm room using the money I made from selling extra promos from the radio station. You know, I was really driven. It was really all I wanted to do, and I was just hooked. I was hooked very early, and I got hooked on… Growing up in Boston, great place to grow up in terms of, especially in the eighties, great music scene, great record stores everywhere, great used record stores. So for a kid with not a lot of money, you could go in and discover a lot of great music. I got hooked on reading the liner notes and just wondering who these people were. Billboard used to show all the photos of artists and managers signing deals with their labels, right? So you start thinking like: Hey, who are these guys signing these contracts? I want to be one of these guys, you know? So that's kind of what got me hooked, and I've been doing it ever since. I've never had a “real” job. I've never made a resume. I just started doing this and have never stopped. Like I said, I was putting records out of my dorm room. So school was kind of secondary. I did well, don't get me wrong, but it was all about kind of getting involved early, and those people I met in school that I started working with, I'm still working with some of those people today. Like, no one goes away in the music business. So that's been a great thing. As I started doing stuff and working records and getting more and more known, the company kind of evolved as that. People knew me as someone who really knew college radio, so they started offering to hire me to promote their records to radio. I then started one of the bands that we worked with early on. Did really well at college radio. They then asked me to manage them. As I started managing them, I needed other services for that band, right? So we then hired a publicist in house. I was renting a desk from another company in Boston who was an independent promoter. They saw what I was doing so they then had me start doing their PR and marketing for all of their concerts, which led me to Great NorthEast which, at the time, was the main competition in Boston as an independent concert promoter. They're most well known for producing all the fish festivals from Sugarbush, Lemon Wheel, Great Wendt, the millennial showdown in Florida, all the big summer fish festival shows. Some of the biggest concerts ever, right? I was a spokesperson for those shows and did all the media and marketing on that. It all just kind of evolved, and Planetary grew part of that. Great Northeast kind of incubated Planetary. Managing that band, all of their needs kind of grew Planetaries department. You know, we needed a press person at the time, we needed a booking person, we even had an in house graphics person, we had an in house sync person really early in the late 90’s. That wasn't normal then. So those are kind of the roots of Planetary. Now we're 28 years in of working with new artists and promoting them. I don't really do a lot of concerts anymore. Live Nation and A&G have kind of killed off that independent concert promotion business for the most part. Once in a while, I think we did one show last year, but Planetary still does showcase shows at all the showcase events, so we'll have a stage at South by Great Escape, and new Colossus in New York, but not so much on the show promoting front. Our world has always been about working with new artists and promoting them and getting the word out on them, and the company was definitely founded doing radio, but then obviously when the blog started, we started promoting to the blogs and as social media got going, we started doing that as well. I try not to do everything here because I think you end up doing nothing well, so we try to focus on those kind of 3 areas and leave it at that. But yeah, that's Planetary.

Michael: Awesome. Thanks for sharing, man. I mean, it sounds like your whole company in the past 30 years has really evolved out of the seed of just loving music!

Adam: Literally! I mean, I’m very lucky. When I was at college as music director, one of the people I talked to at Island Records, she was my rep calling me to play her records on Island in the late 80’s. She says: hey, you know I'm in a band! I'm like: really? Oh, that's cool. Send me your music! So she sends me a demo tape, of course. Loved it. Started playing it on my station, stayed in touch with her about it. They get signed, right. They got signed to network when network was an imprint of IRS records. They get signed. So then she calls me and says: hey, what are you doing this summer? I'm like, I don't know, I'm 21. I'm probably gonna work at the Stop and Shop stocking shelves, or maybe get a job at the local record store if I'm lucky, which I did. But she said: Hey, we're going out on tour this summer for 2 months across the country. Do you want to come and be our road manager? I'm like, well, what's a road manager? She’s like: well you load the gear, you drive the van, you book the hotels, all that stuff. And that's how I spent my summer vacation between junior and senior year. Unbelievable way to learn; unbelievable way to learn all the aspects of what it takes to do a tour, how it works, and we were out with Nine Inch Nails, House of Love, Squeeze. These were real shows! We were opening up for Nine Inch Nails on the Pretty Hate Machine tour, which is absurd looking back on that. Right? But, great way to learn because you're really involved in everything and you see and learn how musicians think as well. When you're sitting in that van and you got a 7-hour drive, and the label’s not returning your calls, and you get to the venue and your posters not up and whatever. Artie Fufkin from Spinal Tap. It's very real, and so you need to kind of learn that and learn how they're going to think and what they expect, and how hard they're working on that end sleeping on floors, 5 people in a hotel room if you're lucky, or you're staying at a friend's house so that you can appreciate that when you're out there promoting records 20 years later. You gotta kind of remember what it's like. But it was an amazing experience for me to do that. The next year, I ended up going out on another tour on a bus tour with a band called Alien Sex Fiend who are a gothic rock band from England, and they went all over as well. Great experience. I learned early that that was probably enough on that type of touring. I didn't need to go to the venues for the third or fourth time, but I'm glad I did it. I've been in almost every state in the US and been in most outhouses and shithouses out there, right? But great experience. Tour managing us a great way to learn. Then when I got off of that Alien Sex Fiend tour, I didn't have a job, right? So I just, I don't know how old I was, 24 or whatever, maybe 23/24, I just started Plentary, and probably too young to know any better, right? If that makes sense. You know, you kind of have to be young to start your own company; to be dumb enough to do it. Right? And the first couple of years are pretty brutal. You use all of your contacts and friends that you made and tell them what you're doing, and then you hope that that network starts to come through for you over time, and you have to continually build that network, and here we are. I'm very lucky to still be doing it all these years later. 

Michael: Good stuff, man. You used the phrase, I think, talking about your roots, and I feel like that's a great analogy to sort of describe the experience that you shared around surrounding yourself with the culture and the community of people that are already going and doing it and living life on the road. As you're sharing that, it was giving me memories reminiscing on when I used to tour full-time for about eight years before I started Modern Musician. Slept in our van, Walmart parking lots, peanut butter tortillas.

Adam: Yeah. It’s tough! 

Michael: It is tough, but also there's sort of an adventure to it and sort of fun. That kind of goes with the lifestyle of traveling and touring. 

Adam: Well those people that you do that with regardless of what happens with the band and you break up or whatever, you went through something together. You have that bond. They're my closest friends out there because we were, like you said, living on tortillas and peanut butter and booking a hotel room that was only meant to have 2 people in and sneak in the other 4 in the back door [both laughing], and all hijinks that you end up getting into on the road just trying to kind of survive and get through it. It's tough. It's tough, but it is how you learn and it is how you build that network. I remember sometime in my early twenties, I remember I was going out to a lot of shows in Boston and I remember looking back and looking at the calendar and going like: I've been to a show 28 nights in a row. [laughing] You gotta put the time in your 20’s and your early-30’s when you want to do it because, you need to, right? You need to, and, like I said, it's all of those people that I met that are spreading the word about Planetary now and that I depend on now.

Michael: I feel like there's a great lesson in there just in terms of how you start something, how you build something from scratch. It really being so important to have a network, to have a community, just to show up and to put yourself in the middle of it to start building those relationships, and not to take for granted the relationships that we just have around us all, all the time.

Adam: It's really true. Never take it for granted. Definitely always look around and realize... I mean, social media has kind of shown us this, right? Realize that you're often a lot closer to someone that you're trying to meet than you think you are, right? That someone could totally make that introduction for you if you just figure a way in, if you will. But yeah, during all of that as well, somehow I got hired working for a record company at the same time, by accident. I didn't know I was interviewing. So when I got hired for TVT. They flew me down because they'd signed 3 bands from Boston to TVT. I don't know if you know much about TVT. They've been gone 15 years now or so, but at the time, they were the “secretly” group of their time. They were the largest self-distributed independent label out there. They discovered Nine Inch Nails, they had those TBT greatest hits records; they had the TV theme songs on greatest hits records is where the TBT name comes from. Those are gold records, right? Nine Inch nails obviously did great. Sevendust did great. Mortal Kombat soundtrack. They had guided by voices, on their world during the whole born slippy craziness of Trainspotting. So, it's big records, but they signed 3 bands from Boston that couldn't sell out a phone booth, so the head of A&R flew me down to come and meet with them. I thought it was to hire Planetary to do marketing for their bands in the Northeast. I already had 4 employees at the time, maybe 5. We were only a few years in. I ended up sitting down with the label president. Weird guy. He was interviewing me behind his desk with his feet up on his desk with no shoes [Michael laughs] on so I'm literally looking at his feet for the entire interview, but the music industry is full of weird people that do things like that. So whatever, but I didn't realize I was being interviewed. I thought we were just having a chit chat. Somehow, at the end of the meeting he goes: Okay, you're hired. Start Monday, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said: what are you talking about? I've already got a company. I've got 5 employees, so they ended up hiring me anyway, and I worked for them for like 6 years or whatever. At the time, it was kind of a crazy time. This is again, kind of how it is in the music business and what it takes, I had 4 business cards at that time: I had the Planetary business card, had the TBT business card, I was doing all the marketing promotion for Great Northeast so I had a Great Northeast business card, and then I was managing that band that I was talking about, who we ended up getting signed to Atlantic. I don't know how I did all of that at the same time, but again, I was in my 20’s and early-30’s during all of that crazy shit. So somehow, you find the strength when you're young and add them all together to make a living, right? Because, again, it's just as much of a hustle as it is for musicians to kind of get the ball rolling, it's almost as much of a hustle for people trying to work in the music business, especially when they're starting their own company, right? It's one thing if you go get the corporate gig at a major label or whatever. That's a different thing, but everything I've built from scratch and so it's always been hand-to-mouth, and a hustle, at least the first 10-15 years. Not so much now, luckily, but it takes that time, just like getting a band off the ground.

Michael: That totally makes sense. Yeah. I mean, kind of back to that tree analogy. You know, you plant the seed and it takes time for it to nurture and grow and blossom for the network to build, and then eventually the fruits start to fall, but it kind of takes that nurturing phase for it to really start to sprout. I'm curious: for someone like yourself who's been in this business for 28 years now, you've probably seen a lot of things change since you first came in. Even when you describe just like the different mediums that music has taken. So I'm sure having witnessed these different waves as they've crested and passsed, and that kind of continually happens, and there's sort of a similar thing that like all of us kind of go through together as an industry whenever there's a big revolution or a big change. I'm curious what's your perspective around what's happening right now in the music industry, especially as it relates to things like AI and generative music and digital marketing with social media? There's a lot of fear and concern right now around AI and music in particular. That probably in some ways follows a similar curve to other revolutions that have happened, but maybe, in some ways, is different this time. So I'd be curious to hear your perspective on it.

Adam: I mean I'm definitely not an expert to be talking about AI, right? I mean, I do think it's a bit of an unknown and a Pandora's box in terms of where it can go and what's being created and presented as 

“real”, right? So that'll be very interesting, and to see how they deal with that. Listen, I think that it's not a surprise that we're at AI, right, because so much of what we're dealing with in the pop sense of things compared to before… It's getting to the point where almost anyone can make a record, and that’s what AI will really bring to the table is that the common person could make a record and then could have it go viral, and have a “hit”. Right?

Michael: In about 1/50^th or in 1/100^th of the time and budget.

Adam: Right, but also generate 1/50^th or 1/500^th of the money too, right? I mean, because now things are so are hits worth what they were in the 80’s and the 90’s in the earth owes, right? Because things burn so quickly and flip now and don't have the penetration, right? I mean, I come from an era where everyone knew what the #1 song was. I bet you if I went around my room in my office right now and asked everyone to name the #1 song, this is a room full of music industry people, I’d get 4 different answers cause everyone's kind of in their silo. Never have stars been so small, if that makes sense. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing, it's just a different thing. My first job at a record label going around to record stores and delivering cleans, which is free copies of records that you get the clerk to scan so that you can jack your chart numbers. [laughs] I mean, it's like literally a “records out of your trunk" type of thing, right? I mean, that's kind of crazy when you think about it, but I guess it's no different than fake streams, right? So the music business has always kind of had hustles to kind of prop stuff up, right? So it just is what it is. Listen, I don't know what's gonna happen. There's no doubt: we're not going back, right? It's just going to be a question of: do we start having to consume art and have it have a label on it that tells us it's real or not, or if it's made up of a composite of a lot of other things? [laughs] What do we believe, right? Who's actually singing? Are we aware enough? Are people aware enough these days to question everything? I mean, how often do we fall for something that we see on social media cause we see it instantly like: Oh my God, and then like a minute or two later you're like: Oh yeah, that's totally fake. So how are we going to deal with that with music? You kind of see it too. At the end of the day on the live side, things will shake out, because look at the Spotify 50 or whatever. I mean, most of those artists can't sell out a phone booth, but yet on the live side, we've got great business. Do you know what I’m saying? So like, the live entertainment business has never been better but on the recorded side of things, you we are not generating as many long-term stars as I think we would like to. But there's always bright spots. I mean, Last Dinner Party, Chapell Roan, artists like that are happening and it's exciting and doing well.

Michael: Yeah, it's super interesting to me just… Right now it is sort of like a Pandora's box where there's a lot of unknowns and it's evolving so quickly with AI, and that question around learning how to question what's real and are there gonna be labels. I think we're starting to see labels of “this is AI generated”, or “this used AI”, but then it's also just kind of interesting the question of what is reality in the first place, or what do we classify as real? 

Adam: [laughing] I don’t think I smoke enough weed to have that conversation.

Michael: [laughing] Wait, you didn't get the prep? You're supposed to smoke a joint before coming on here!

Adam: That's right. That's right. No, I mean, it's very true, but I mean, we see these problems. We've been seeing these problems for the last 8 years just in our elections. So I mean, now as that moves into music and culture and art and just all things on social media, right? All “art”. It’s a very real issue, and there's going to be people that don't believe. I'm sure Elon Musk doesn't believe in labeling anything. Let the consumer beware or whatever. On one hand, it's kind of scary, and are we educating people enough to question enough?

Michael: It's important. I mean, I think that this is like a discussion that we're starting to have now, we're going to have a lot of conversations around this. I think it's one of the reasons… I know there's like a community notes feature that they've added to Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it that is kind of meant to like, sort of provide a label that helps to encourage accuracy and truth. But then the question is who's the arbiter of truth, which is challenging. But the interesting thing I've thought about just this question of what is reality, what came to mind was, like Santa Claus and like the concept of Santa Claus and how Santa… gosh, hopefully I'm not spoiling anything, cover your ears, but Santa Claus, in the literal sense, like he's not real, but, in a lot of ways, he's more impactful and the concept of Santa has made me a huge impact. Kind of reality the question of like, what makes something real? Something can be real as a concept, or can be real as an idea. There's something there, right? There's an electrical impulse, there's ideas, or things, but there's also that question of an idea that is a symbol of something that exists in the material world, and if there's a disconnect there, where does AI fall on the standpoint of: if we can imagine I'm sitting here and I want to make a new song and I'm playing it on piano and I think this really needs a symphony in it. I just need an orchestra, and then it just pulls in behind [starts making violin noises] and then if I'm using like a neural link, and I'm like thinking and I'm wanting to play this orchestra is that, if there's a connection coming from the human or the human creativity, that's sort of like extending that and organizing that as a conductor, maybe that's the thing we need to figure out.

Adam: You're the musician, right? So, I mean you tell me. The ability for you sitting in your bedroom with your keyboard to be able to add in that orchestra to a song. That's incredible, right? That's a great piece of art, right? So that's great. You make this great thing. Then the downside is: there was no orchestra hired to make that. We see it here in LA, these big, beautiful, old studios that have been around forever that have made some of the best records of all time are literally going out of business because they're not needed anymore. Are we losing something? Is it less opportunities for those musicians to earn a living? I guess in theory, someone got paid originally to record that and then it just gets used over and over again, but I mean as a musician, this is why people are striking in the TV and film world because like scripts are being written but I do worry that we'll lose a little bit of something there.

Michael: Yeah, I think it's a valid thing to worry about and be concerned.

Adam: I wonder if a lot of people go back to tape now, right? They want to record on a real console, and they want to record on tape. So you wonder if maybe at some point, some people will be like: I'm not using that technology. I'm going to do it the old school way. Just kind of like what we're seeing now. I go to all these record fairs. I'm totally hooked on vinyl again, reliving my youth of digging through used record stores to find great shit. 50% are old guys like me, 50% are all teenagers, male and female I might add, who have only grown up in the digital world and want something more real. So you wonder, as much as AI will come in, you wonder also if there'll be a backlash of just people being like: Hey, I know that's fake because I grew up with it, and I want the real thing. It sounds better, just like vinyl sounds better, right? Will the real thing sound better than the AI generated? I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what balance they're able to put into that. There's always going to be people out there putting records out that are completely fake and have hits with it, right? I mean, the disco era was known for. It was a producer's medium of one guy just producing a record with a fake band name and there you go, you have a hit record and make a lot of money. So it'll always be there on some level.

Michael: It's super interesting. I think you're right to bring up that point of like: in a world where there's so much digital stuff and social media, it seems like it creates a natural tension/attraction to what's natural. Tthere's a lot of movement towards more human-to-human connections/experiences. That's probably why live shows are still so important and valuable. You gotta think that as more and more things become more digital and AI generated that there's also gonna be like a sort of a counter movement to that. I think I heard Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, answering a question. Something related to: in this post-AI world, what do you think is going to happen in the market, and what kind of businesses or products do you think are really going to thrive? I think he said something like he doesn't know because no one really knows, but his prediction is that we're going to see more of a premium on high value in-person human-to-human experiences. I think that's really interesting, especially as it relates to what we're talking about here, and for musicians: we really have a role in that world of bringing people together and experiencing community together. So it seems like something to really lean into, nowadays, is using the tools to be able to extend your creativity and get leverage, but also having high value experiences that you can offer for your community as a way to build real connections.

Adam: Yeah. I think nothing beats the live experience, as long as the artist is performing live, which is a whole nother thing. But musicians practice their trade their whole life to get to that point to get onto a stage where people want to actually see them. I think we see it in the ticket prices for the big acts, in that people are willing to pay for that experience, and that's not slowing down, right? It seems crazy, but the demand’s there, so people want that experience. I think he's right saying that. I also think it's kind of ironic that you've got a technology that's kind of trying to replace part of that, but then also driving that, if that makes sense. I'm not a musician, right? I mean, I washed out on that in high school because I wasn't going to put the time in to practice. My band was horrible, but if I'm a musician and I practiced all my life and I'm confronted with a technology that kind of wipes me out… God, that's depressing. But I mean, that happens in so many technologies, right? But I kinda like that history of those studios, right? When I walk in there and I just see them and knowing that certain studios had musicians like the Wrecking Crew or this or that. All that history and all those amazing musicians that could just kind of punch out a great track in one take. Let's go. Nashville is famous for that. And now it's all going to be replaced with AI? Like studio musicians: go away. Again, this is kind of out of my world. I'm just watching it as an observer and as a music fan and as someone who has to promote the records that come through that pipeline, right? But these are the things you think about

Michael: Yeah. I mean, what I appreciate about you sharing that and just this in general, I think that this is the question or the conversation that all of us, as music lovers, are sort of having right now. As musicians who've spent our lives learning how to play an instrument, or learning how to create music, I think there's a lot of really valid concern and fear around it. To your points of, there's many times that there's been revolutions and there's been tools and machines that have made previous labor-based things not necessarily as important, but a lot of them, they replace the things that aren't that fun. We're making music. It's like:  Oh man, like I actually like making music. I don't want to replace that. I got hope that…. We're still in the Wild West as early on, but I got to hope that the heart is really in like the creative impulse and the thoughts and the ideas, and that's where the magic is, and that's the part that we can use these tools to extend your creativity; We can use them to have ideas and think “I want an orchestra”, but have better maneuverability, as opposed to being like: I'm just going to click a button and it's just going to do everything and I'm not going to be a part of it at all. But if it's more of a producer-type role that you have a canvas in front of you and now you can just paint, but now you don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars to create all this stuff. You can just use your brain and just think it. That's amazing. But, I think the right question to ask is like: how do we build that bridge? Because there's so many people that their livelihoods depend on these previous roles.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. It's definitely an interesting thing. Then how do we market it? Because there's always going to be that producer that's going to make something, I mean, Frank Fabian was doing it in the 70’s with Bonnie M, and then again with Milli Vanilli and whatever. So, I mean, there's always going to be this kind of fake stuff that's marketed as something that it's not. I would hope that it becomes a supplement; it becomes a part as opposed to a replacement; it becomes the icing on the cake. That's what I would hope, as opposed to the replacements. Listen, the money is not there to have a 20-piece orchestra these days on a record, right? So you kind of need these things because it's either: you do it that way, or it's not going to happen. So then what do you do? Is it bad to have it? It's an interesting thing. What I don't like seeing, and I think what the industry is pushing back on, is the AI companies that are kind of scraping all of these recordings and kind of putting them all together into a pot and then selling that as what will be used, so none of that content gets reimbursed or acknowledged. None of those musicians get paid for that. That's when there's a problem, right? So there's no doubt that people are going to do things like that just because the pie’s so much smaller these days because records aren't as big as they once were. I get into arguments in my office all the time, again, because I'm the old guy. All my staff are in their 20’s. Hits aren't big anymore, but if you weren't there, you don't understand it. Even the biggest artists right now, with the exception of Taylor Swift, get her out of the mix, but everyone else, well people say: oh, they're so big! They're huge. Like, they're not huge. You weren't there in the 70’s and the 80’s, and even the 90’s when you had mass culture. Because now we don't have mass culture. There's very few things that… Even the Super Bowl is going down. So the pie is smaller, right? Not saying it's not a lot of money. It’s still a lot of money, but it ain't what it was. There are other ways of making money that we didn't have before, which is great, but in terms of everyone knowing who that act is in terms of being “big”, it's not the same, right? Of course people are going to use these technologies to save money. Some of the big studios here in LA, tthey're not doing those big recordings anymore. Their majority of their business is rappers coming in and filming their videos and photos in there and Instagram photos in this studio with the equipment but it's not actually being used at all. I literally had this conversation with a studio manager like a couple of months ago, and they're like: yeah, and it's a problem because the equipment's not getting used enough, so then when we do need it, we're not sure if it's working right or whatever, but we're literally renting it out for scenes, for photos, for Instagram, and that's how we're making our ends meet. [laughing] That kinda sums up the whole conversation and situation on that level. And again, things change and I get it. It's easy for an old man to yell at the clouds and say: change isn't good. Listen, change is good, but it's also weird so just have to kind of deal with it.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. That's so wild. Part of me kind of comes back to the part of the conversation earlier where we were talking about reminiscing on those days where we're staying in a hotel room with one or two beds and like 6 people in the room, and I was just like thinking: back then, if we had the ability to have a full orchestra at our fingertips and do all these things, there's no way that we could have done that as an independent band that's just getting started out. So it does seem like there's sort of a leveling to the playing field, but at the same time, there's just such an explosion at how many players there are now or how many people that there are that it seems like that's part of the challenge.

Adam: It is definitely the leveling of the playing field, right? And like we were talking about in the beginning: anyone can make a record, anyone can have a hit, things can come out of nowhere, they can sound like there's a full band or whatever, and they can have a hit. It's just a question of: can you sustain, and can you have a career? That's the hard part these days is the career. Not that it was ever easy, but when you had hits before, because they sunk in more and lasted longer, you could literally have a career off of one top 20 hit. You would always be able to play the casinos and the state fairs and whatever, and if you were smart about it, you’d be okay. Time will tell on some of this stuff now, because now stuff enters in the top 10, and then only goes down from there. I mean, it's a very weird time on that front. We used to build things slowly and that's how you would build fans. That's what's kind of neat about the Chapel Roan story, right? I mean, that album is a year old and just slowly word of mouth grew, grew, grew. Solid touring, smart management, commitment from the label, and it's kind of one of those rare cases these days, and it resonated. Those are the type of acts and those type of stories where it develops slowly, I think are the acts that win in the end and will have careers. The other thing I laugh about is my staff coming in with cassettes that they just bought. I'm just like, what are you doing? What are you doing? You were clearly not there the first time. Let me get you a pencil. [laughs] Yeah. The first time your favorite cassette gets spit out by your tape player, it will be the last time you’ll want it. Anyway, but yeah, it's funny how things change, but says the guy who goes to a record fair almost every weekend though.

Michael: Good stuff. Well hey man, I super appreciate this conversation. To come back to that analogy with like the roots and building it, you talked about how the artists that you see actually doing it the right way and building a foundation/building their roots, building their foundation root structure over the long-term. Those are the ones that stick around. When I see companies like yourselves that have been doing this for 30 years, and it started from this love and this passion for music and really in building a network and doing it one step at a time, it seems like when there are big storms or there's big waves, revolutions and AI comes, it's those trees with the greatest roots and the ones that have really kind of built over the long-term, built slowly that have that sustainability, and so I really appreciate the opportunity to connect with folks like yourself that have, honestly, just way more experience than I have. I've been doing this since I graduated high school. I'm about 30 years old right now. So real quick before we wrap up, I'd love to hear a little bit more about if artists are listening to this right now and they're interested in working together, or they're interested in learning more about what you offer, could you share just a little bit more about who are like the ideal candidates? What kind of musicians do you work with, and where can they go to connect more?

Adam: Yeah listen, we want to… I'm out there always looking for stuff. I travel to most of the showcase events all around the world, frankly, trying to find cool new stuff to introduce into the US market. So I am always looking for stuff. I listen to everything that comes in. So very, very approachable. One of the things that I hated when I was starting out was how standoffish the music business is. “Don't call me, kid, I don't want to hear from you, no unsolicited demos, please”. You know, I used to always see that in all the listing, so I really try to be anti that. So I try to have our website be really warm, and try to encourage people. And we have a lot of self-help articles on our site, just trying to be more of a bridge. People can always reach out to me. I'm Adam@PlanetaryGroup.com, my email. The website is PlanetaryGroup.com. There's a web form right on there to reach out and we get back to everyone within a day or so. In terms of what we're looking for, just looking for something good, and you know it when you hear it, right? I work with every type of music out there. I don't claim to be an expert at every type of music, but if I'm not, someone in my office might be. Style-wise, we work a lot of indie-pop, indie-rock, cause that's kind of the biggest genres out there. When it comes to like working stuff to radio: college radio, non-com radio, we can work with singers/songwriters, hip-hop, world jazz, metal. It doesn't matter because those formats are so diverse in terms of what they support. When we're doing a press campaign, a blog campaign, it's more limiting. The sites are definitely more indie-rock/indie-pop focussed, so we tend to kind of focus on that. When it comes to digital marketing, we can work with anyone. It's just advertising at the end of the day. The real key is the artist got something really good/great to work with. Do they have something to say? Do they have materials? Do they have a vision and a plan,and do they have a budget, and is there a reason to do this? I mean, that's always kind of the bigger question. A lot of times people reach out to us too early, and I'll just say: Hey, listen, there's just nothing here that we can do yet. You've got 3 followers on Spotify. We literally get calls and emails from people that have 0 listens. I mean, their mother's not even listening yet. [Michael laughs] So it's too early to hire someone like us to help you imost of the time in those cases, other than maybe doing some advertising or something to try to build something up there. I talk people out of doing press campaigns all the time: too early, not enough of a story to tell. I do push people to college radio quite a bit because it's just so supportive. You're not going to blow up from college. You're not going to become a star from it, but you start building some real fans at some of those key stations that will become advocates for you. It's not sexy. It's not shiny. It's not the new shiny thing, but it's a great little outlet for you to start making fans in a few new towns that you could then try to go play in and do something with that station and start building something with. So every artist is different. They all come to us at different levels, and if we like the music, we try to do something with them that makes sense for them at that time. I think that when you're hiring a promotions firm, that firm should be telling you what not to do as much as they're telling you what to do. I don't want to sell someone everything because it's as much as that is great for us, it very well might not be right for you. So you try to sell them the things that make sense for you right now, and try to build it from there. In terms of you asking some of the artists we work with, I mean we work with all levels of artists, right? All of our clients are listed on our website. It's a long list in terms of who we've worked with over the years. It's always a mixture of signed artists and signed to like independent and larger independents. There's always a few major label acts on there. We're generally everyone's kind of 1st or 2nd record. When people look at the big names on our client list, they're like, wow, you worked with so and so. I'm like, yeah well, but they weren't really very well known when we were working with them. You know, I don't take full credit for that. There's generally a full team involved. You can't hire one person and expect to blow it up. But our world is very much about finding stuff early and trying to present it first so that we can kind of have bragging rights, right? I mean, that's a big part of being an independent promoter. So we introduced Portugal, the Man. We introduced Courtney Barnett, Soccer Momm. Arlo Parks we worked with very early. These types of artists. Yard Act we introduced. These are great new artists. We're doing a band right now called Personal Trainer from the UK on Belly Union, which is a Simon from the Cocktail Twins label. Very cool stuff. Probably half of our clients these days are self released or really small indie projects, and you never know which one's going to pop or whatever. We try to just make sure that we leave them in a better place than we found them, and that business has really changed. You know, when I started in the early 90’s, the projects, it was kind of the other way around. It was mostly major labels, large independents, and then a few self released, and now it's the other way around, which is actually more enjoyable anyway. I’d much rather talk to the artists all day than talk to a bunch of suits that are afraid to stick their neck out. But it's really changed in that sense, and that's great. But yeah, we'll work with anyone as long as it's good and it's interesting and we think we can help you!

Michael: Awesome. Well, man, thanks again for the conversation. It's been really interesting exploring what's happened in the past 30 years and what's happening right now in relation to that. 

Adam: As much as things changed, it's kind of the same, right? If it's a good song, it's a good song, right? It’s just a question of of how quickly do we… Things move quicker, right? But other than that, it still comes down to a great song.

Michael: Yeah, man, I love hearing the perspective, because it does seem like in the analogy of all these new revolutions for like waves that crest and they go and they come and they go, but a wave is always a wave is a wave, and so there's similarities to everything that happens, so I always appreciate the perspective from folks who've been through those waves.

Adam: I feel like it's the same with just one exception: there's not as many characters. There's not as many kind of like… I miss the old school guys that were driving around in their Cadillac with records in their trunks, and playing that game. Now the characters are doing fake streams and shit like that, but I really miss those old school record guys that I just kind of saw. The beginning of my career was kind of while they were rolling/winding down. I remember one radio promoter I met who controlled the Northeast area. He had a cool record on his desk, unopened I might add. I said: Oh, that's a really great record. We have that at my college station. It's really great. You’re going to make that a hit, and he goes [gruffly] “listen, kid, I haven't listened to it. I'm working it. All I need to know is if it's fast, medium or slow, and then I can make it a hit.” [both laughing] I miss those guys. Now everything's data, and what's the conversion rate? You know what I mean? And all that type of stuff. It's all math. I didn't get into the music business for math, right? I relate to those guys a little more, you know? That's the way I see that it's changed, but at the end of the day, a great song is a great song.

Michael: “Great song is a great song”. Good stuff. Cool. Well, well, like always, we'll put the links in the show notes for easy access and Adam, thank-you again  for being on the show today.

Adam: My pleasure. Nice to meet you, Michael.

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.