Michael Walker: Alright, I'm here with my new friend, Rosa Weiner. Unfortunately, I don't have my normal YEAAAH cam set up here. I'm here, we are building our new Modern Musician Studio. But I still have, Rosa, you probably are all like, what is this weird YEAAAH cam? Usually I have like the YEAAAH there. But I'm really excited to introduce Rosa. 

A little bit about Rosa, she began as a solo artist and a session vocalist, transitioned into music journalism, and she's written for publications like Liverpool noise. She has experience in A&R and artist relations, has worked in the events industry, indie labels, and she's been responsible for looking for talent, assisting in the industry, as an artist, liaison, and marketing. And she's a digital marketing manager at Horus Music. She leads the marketing department. They focus on social media, B2B marketing, and digital PR campaigns for emerging global artists. So, we're looking forward to connecting with her today and talking a little bit about the state of the music industry as it relates to independent music artists and distribution, marketing, navigating what's a rapidly changing landscape. And so, Rosa, thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Rosa Weiner: Yeah, thanks for having me. Man, I mean, it makes me sound so impressive when you list off that many things, but, hopefully, I can give some good insights and be helpful for your community. But yeah, thanks for having me.

Michael: Absolutely. You know, one thing I forgot to mention too is that one of Rosa's favorite things in the world are giant spiders. So, yeah, if anyone has giant spiders they want to send to her house. Then, in the show notes.

Rosa: I think, definitely no spiders, please. But smiles and hugs are fine.

Michael: Awesome. So, let's kick things off. I'd love to hear a little bit about your story, Rosa, and how you got started and learned some lessons. That’s going to be, what we're gonna be talking through today.

Rosa: Yeah, sure. So, my entire music love started at a very, very young age. I started playing guitar when I was only four years old, believe it or not. Kind of established from that and just got into kind of gigging in my teens and realized that, okay, music was what I wanted to do. So, I went on to study at the University of Liverpool, I did popular music with a focus on popular performance, and then I spent a lot of time gigging in original projects, writing a lot of my own songs, kind of collaborating with other musicians, and that's kind of when I stumbled into music journalism. So, I was kind of writing for quite a few magazines at the time, and it was all digital print back then, it is all very exciting. I got sent to do quite a lot of reviews for bands like Cage the Elephant, Lapsley, and ex Seastar Island head. And it was great. I mean, I was a teenage, like, not a teenager, but in university and kind of getting to gig all the time and then getting to see these amazing bands. And at that point I kind of thought, okay, music journalism is definitely for me. I'm loving writing about all these people. This is so cool. 

And yeah, from there I finished university, realized that it's actually really hard to make it in the music industry, not just as an artist, but in the business itself. I started working as a general manager in a pub, as we all do. We kind of do that grind and do the kind of the fun bit on the side, if you will. I was still gigging at the same time, kind of funding the music stuff as much as I could and gigging, and recording, and played a couple of festivals and then it kind of all came to a head that I was like: “Oh, I really love this performing, but maybe I'm a little bit more suited to the business really.” So, I then started working at a music studio which offered lessons at the same time. There was kind of the more recording side of it, and then the kids learning, it was up to kind of, my oldest student at one point was 80, a really nice broad spectrum, but it was kind of getting into the kind of the education and learning side of things alongside the music studio that was running. I kind of went back to when I was, that little 4-year-old knocking on a door saying: “Please, can I have lessons?” And I really wanted to kind of develop kids at a year, an early age to kind of give them as many experiences as I could. So I created, a band program that musicians who were between the ages of six and 18 got in a professional mentor for them. We worked towards kind of writing original music. How does that all piece together? Which I don't really feel like was something I had that kind of got figured out when I got older. But it was really great to kind of do that. And then we do like performances for them with up to, you know, 300, 400 people granted. A lot of it was parents and family members who were coming, but for young children, that's a really fundamental experience and I was doing a lot of other events, the kind of record label side, a lot of PR for that at the same time. For some of the artists that we were working with, I got to go out and scout. So, it was a really, really varied job. 

But the problem was, it was very in person and hands on. Then, of course, COVID hit and like many of us, my job kind of just disappeared. At that point, I was like:” okay, well, I still really want to stay in music.” And I was lucky enough to stumble across the company that I work at now, which is Horus Music that was working in digital distribution. A lot of focused on just getting releases onto DSP. So, by that digital streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple music, and working literally just day to day with artists, self-solving their queries. Then from there, it just kind of expanded into marketing and, I'm just, you know, I already had experience in that and they needed someone. There I was, and then from there, I've kind of just been doing a lot of strategies, working with artists on their marketing plans, kind of higher caliber artists, and supporting them as best I can with their marketing activities. And here we are today.

Michael: Awesome. So, it sounds like, you know, you really had sort of a heart and a core and being a musician yourself and that's sort of expanded and blossomed into being able to serve and help other artists as well. 

Rosa: Percent. 

Michael: Yeah, I'm curious, having both. The experience of, on your own, learning how to distribute, market yourself, and working with a lot of other artists now as well. What are some of the biggest challenges or mistakes that you see artists struggling with right now, as it relates to marketing their music?

Rosa: Yeah, sure. I mean, it's very different from when I was putting out music. I mean, we're in this huge digital age now of social media and everything's got to be so instant. but some of the biggest challenges that I would say, I mean, there's so many avenues that we could go down this, but just kind of really into what my role is at the minute. It's kind of struggling to get heard above the noise. And by the noise, I mean, the amount of tracks that are being released every day onto digital streaming platforms, Spotify alone, there's a hundred thousand tracks every single day that are going live. So as a DIY artist, how are you meant to navigate and find your way in that space really? So that's kind of the biggest challenge that I think artists are facing. And with that comes things like burnout, it's lack of experience. It's feeling like they have to be everything for themselves, so their own booking agent, manager, social media manager, content creator. There's just so many roles that you have to play as an independent artist and it's trying to kind of breakthrough that noise, and find your own path, and find your fan base, not necessarily with the support of a label like we, the traditional model in the music industry would have been.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah, so it sounds like, where you're saying, it's sort of like the biggest challenge is sort of a lack of being able to cut through the noise. Just there's so much music, it's so saturated and gosh, with advancements in AI generative music as well, you got to imagine that that's just going to get more and more difficult to kind of cut through. And so, learning how to cut through the noise, how to connect with a fan base. and what have you found right now? There's some interesting ways that artists are able to approach that challenge, be able to overcome it and build the community and be able to cut through the noise.

Rosa: Definitely. I mean, the biggest thing I always say to my artists that I work with is knowledge is power. Every time you go into a situation, if you have a solid understanding and you have that education behind you, you can navigate anything. If you're going into something blind, whether it's just releasing for the first time and you click a button you've uploaded, and then it goes live and the ether, you're just going to get lost. 

So having that knowledge of how platforms work, how does distribution work?, how does marketing work?, what are the best things that I can do to really get myself heard?, there's so many different things that I could give you tips about what I think some of the biggest kind of things that a lot of artists often overlook are things like literally just. Keeping your Spotify up to date. I mean, it's the biggest platform. I'm only using it as one example. I know it's not everybody's preferred method, but as a blanket Spotify is the kind of go to, isn't it? Things like on there when you've got your bio, making sure that's on there. 

So, if somebody stumbles across your page they can read something about you, making sure that your social media links are on there so that if they want to go and find out a little more about you, usually it's Instagram, they can click and go and join your community and find out more about you and things like that, when you're looking at. Trying to get on a playlist, for example, is really key if a playlist curator is coming across and they go: “Oh, I really like this music” that you've pitched them. If they can't find anything else about you on your page, then they're probably going to overlook you a little bit, no matter how great you are. So, they're kind of like some really basic fundamentals that quite a lot of artists don't really realize. And on top of that, there's kind of spreading yourself too thin. That particularly comes into play when we're talking about social media. Obviously there's so many different platforms out there, Instagram, Facebook, X, which was formerly Twitter, TikTok, and artists kind of feel that pressure, particularly independent and DIY artists that they have to be present on every single platform because then they're more discoverable and more people can find you. But in reality, if you're not able to really populate those pages and really make the most out of them, you kind of flogging a dead horse to a degree because you're just going to end up not having that much content not feeling like you that present and the art, you know, the fans are trying to connect with you on those platforms are going to find it a little bit difficult. 

So, I'd always say kind of pick you on if you are a content queen that is great, absolutely go for it if you feel like that's what you can do and repurposing is also fine but I think. A lot of people are trying a little bit hard to be everyone's everything to everyone and it's not always the right way to go about it. And again, it loops back into that burnout that a lot of DIY artists, we are doing this ourselves, aren't we? So, it is a bit of a difficult one to navigate. So, I think a couple of the key challenges and kind of what I'd say and give some advice to people to do really.

Michael: Got it. Yep. So real quick, I just want to see if I heard you right. Did you say flogging a dead horse?

Rosa: I did.

Michael: Okay. Flogging a dead horse. I've heard of like beating a dead horse, but flogging is like new to my vernacular.

Rosa: You can try that.

Michael: Does flogging mean like beating it or is like, what does flogging mean?

Rosa: It's kind of like trying to pull it along, like keep something going when it's clearly not working. I think that's the best way I can explain it.

Michael: Got it. Yeah. Flogging a dead horse. I think I might adopt that way of saying it instead of beating a dead horse. Yeah.

Rosa: Let me know how it goes.

Michael: I'll do the giant spiders, flogging dead horses. I've got a little checklist here of things I need to like work, into my daily life after this meeting.

Rosa: Excellent.

Michael: So, it sounds like one of the first things you recommend is just really like having your foundation set up. So, making sure that the platforms that you're on, if you're using Spotify, for example, that you do have your bio set up, you have some of the basics, you have your link set up and making sure that with social media, you don't get too overwhelmed with being on every platform without actually like putting out content because then it's just sort of not really contributing, to your online presence. 

I think one next question would be around just like building an audience in the first place. Like, let's say that someone, hypothetically, they have sort of built a foundation where they kind of have their system set up to connect with their fans more and they have some initial foundation. And they're trying to figure out: “Man how do I just reach people who aren't just my friends and my family, but are actually like, fans of the music, and build a real relationship and a real community.” What are some tips or recommendations you'd have for them to help them to start to grow?

Rosa: Sure. I mean, the biggest thing that you'd need to start with is, who do you want your audience to be? Because you can't just pluck that out of thin air, you know what I mean? So, you've kind of really got to think, ‘okay, who do I want to be listening to my music? What kind of demographic likes my music? Is it going to be Gen Z or is it going to be kind of like older people? Who am I really wanting to resonate with?’ And I think finding your audience first, actually like who you want to connect with really helps you to kind of build on top of that. Especially with social media now, you can do a lot of things like using ads. And once you've kind of got that demographic down, it makes it a lot easier to find people. 

Say you're a singer-songwriter writing love songs and you want to connect with people who are ages 25 to 35. done. You know that's nice and easy. But I mean, having a clear direction of where you want to be and what you like, that also applies to, whether you want to be out gigging all the time, whether you're looking to get a sync license, whether you're looking to just be a ghostwriter and do recording for people. Again, having a really clear direction of who you want to be will then help you find your audience. You know, if what you actually want to do is be out gigging all the time, you're going to find fans naturally through that way, hopefully, as long as you've got a good live show. So that would be an organic way of going about it. But again, if it really just depends what your direction is and what you want to do. 

Michael: Got it. Yeah, so it sounds like a good starting point is sort of getting clear on who do you want your audience to be? Who do you want to be in your community? And if you know that, then you can start to have a clue in terms of where do those people congregate. If you're a live show, if you want to build an audience that's going to come out to your live shows, then one of the best ways to do it is by finding the people who are already going out to live shows and starting to connect with that community, opening for other artists at live shows.

How about, let's imagine kind of the next step, let's say that someone has identified what they think is going to be their community of people that resonate with their music. And yeah, I'm sure that there's a two-way kind of process where sometimes people might think like: “I think my audience is going to be this way.” And then it turns out: “oh, these are the people that really resonate most with the music. We kind of have that like two-way sync.” But let's imagine that someone has done that initial foundation work and they've gotten some clear ideas on what kind of people they just, they want to spend time with, what kind of people they want to hang out with, and they want to bring into their community. How do they approach those people and how do they actually build an initial relationship and take someone from being a complete stranger to someone that's really, really a fan of the music.

Rosa: Sure. I mean, there's lots of different ways that you can go about it. Again, what I mentioned before, just about ads, that's kind of an easy way of trying to attract people, particularly to your social media pages. You can look at things like tools that different DSPs have to offer as well. So, things like Spotify have the discovery mode tool. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's a tool that allows you to basically, an automatic tool that Spotify have integrated for eligible artists to add them to things like Spotify radio and also play. So, when you've finished listening to a playlist and some tracks come on after that, it's kind of like a suggestion, so that's a really good way to organically get people listening to you and find in who you are.

And then I think it’s also to do with the content that you put out. I think a lot of the time what we're seeing now is that social media is such a key tool for people. It's such a great way of connecting with fans. I mean, it does have its downsides, obviously, but for independent artists in particular, like literally just having content that's relatable, it all goes, feeds back into that lovely algorithm that we all love. I think that's a really good way of connecting with fans. But I think once those fans have stumbled across you, it's about how once they've kind of found you, whether it be through something like a playlist or they've gone to a gig or they've stumbled across your social media page. It's about what can you do then to keep them and entice them and keep them as long term fans really. So I always suggest to kind of the artists that I work with maybe do try and integrate things, like creating a community. So, things like maybe a newsletter, something like a Patreon's a really good thing, especially for DIY artists. It kind of creates that community element that you're kind of giving something back to your fans and having that kind of more engaging content that, I mean, it is all about content creation, isn't it, really, and what you're putting out, but I think, having something where they really feel a part of something does tend to work quite well. So, once they've kind of found you, making sure, okay, you're saying hi, a lot of people have, like, broadcast channels and things like that that you can join now. So that would kind of be my best piece of advice, like, make sure that when they found you, you've got something to say and something to give back.

Michael: Awesome. Yep. So, it sounds like, you know, a few ideas are there's actually tools built into a lot of these platforms like Spotify and with social media, where you can actually target and advertise your music to new people. And then once they're a fan of your music, then you recommend building more of a community around that relationship and having an email list and potentially having a membership area where you can connect more with those fans. It's probably worth me mentioning, we have a platform, a software as a service that we've been building called StreetTeam. That is a sort of like if Patreon and Discord and Notion had a baby, then it's sort of like a community type of platform that is really designed to help artists connect with their fans. So I'd be remiss not to mention that. 

Rosa: Plug it, man. Plug.

Michael: Looking to build their community that we've created this offering. Unfortunately, right now at the time of recording this, it's in a private beta. So, we're using it with our clients, but very soon it'll be available for everyone. There's this and this, and so, I can't wait to share that with more people.

Rosa: That's exactly what I'm saying. People, people need that. It sounds like you've built the tool that we're all after. Yeah. 

Michael: I mean, everything you're talking about just rings true because that's what we've heard over and over and over again as well from our artists as well. And so, part of what we built is so that awesome people like yourself and for the whole community can be able to build a community around your music and do it in a way that you have more ownership of it as well, as opposed to like on myspace or Facebook where you kind of have this external platform where you don't have that direct email list or that direct connection with people you know, maybe a good next question would be around monetization and making music sustainable. So, let's imagine that an artist has kind of done all these steps up to this point, and they've actually started to build a bit of a community and they actually have their first 300, 500, 1000 people on their email list and now they're kind of wondering: “Okay, I can see people are liking the music, but it's not really making any money right now. And so I'm kind of relying on a different form of income to like kind of pay the bills.” Do you have any recommendations for helping artists to generate your revenue with those communities or any interesting ideas or advice that you have for artists as it relates to monetization?

Rosa: Absolutely. I mean, I'll go into kind of some more, like merchandise that kind of ideas, but I think like it's really important again to go back to basics really, distributing your music you're automatically generating royalties, it's not a huge income depending on the number of streams that you're getting from different DSP's, but that is, Revenue is revenue at the end of the day. So, through your distributor, you should automatically be collecting. Another one that's often really overlooked is publishing. Within music publishing, people actually think that your mechanical royalties are only collected through your distributor. That's not true! We're here to mythbust! Your publisher is also collecting that, so what that means is every time that your music is streamed or downloaded, your publisher is actually automatically collecting royalties for that as well and your music publisher as well can collect things for like live performances, even for your set lists. So, making sure that your basic admin is covered and you would be surprised how many royalties you can uncover through having a music publisher in place. Yeah, and I will just give myself a little plug as well because we've just launched a new package at Horace Music, our new Horace Music Publishing service, and we've launched a Publishing Plus service as well, which is offering sync, but it is fundamental to make sure that your basic admin is covered, and that will give you a source of income. And then we can move on to, like I said before, things like merchandise is a massive one, even if it's just selling a t-shirt with your name on at your gigs you can actually integrate your merch sales into some platforms as well. And again, if you've got a little community, something like Patreon or your guys very exciting upcoming platform, that's another space to be able to offer your fans something that can go for things like vinyl and so there's plenty of different options of how to monetize, but my advice when I speak to artists of all levels is make sure that your basics are covered because you will be surprised how much money you can actually uncover.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, it sounds like a few of the big ones are foundational, like your streaming royalties, even if it's not a lot, money is money. So, you don't just leave it on the table, and that's great that you have publishing services as well.  Like sync licensing and having placements on TV and film, and membership, fan subscriptions and opportunity merchandise, a big opportunity, live shows, big opportunity, got it. One question I have for you in general is as it relates to Where things are at currently with AI and music and where things are headed, [I’m] curious to hear your general perspective on, at least at the time of recording this, it's kind of a hot topic and very controversial, because for the first time ever, we have the ability to generate very good sounding music just with a text prompt, and so I think there's a lot of concerns right now for artists around their livelihoods potentially being replaced with this AI generative music. I'm curious to hear your perspective on the current state of music and generative AI, and in your perspective, where do you think things are headed?

Rosa: Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of AI really, not in a kind of wider conversation but, I mean, specifically for music. I do think it's like you say, it's caused independent artists in particular, quite a lot of problems and that extends up the chain to bigger artists. You know, some people have been duplicated, it creates a whole major issue for artists of what is authentic, what's fair to generate royalties. We had this issue a couple of years ago with content ID services. And that it's so easy to, I don't want to say get away but, get away with uploading work that's not necessarily yours and earning a lot of money for that and taking a lot, a large portion of the streaming revenue and up really. So, I'm not really the biggest fan of it. 

I think, because it is still such a new topic, a lot of DSPs, obviously we're direct partners at Horace Music with most major DSPs, they're still navigating it and trying to work out what actually is and isn't acceptable and what's fair to artists. Because there has been such a big uproar and backlash against it that at the minute there is just this underlying uncertainty for everybody. Nobody quite knows what to handle it. But it's about having the right tools in place to be able to find out when something has been created with AI and also making sure that the artists that who are actually genuine, and by genuine, I mean, creating their music from scratch or without the use of AI, are still getting a fair share of the royalty pools. And I think that's kind of the biggest concern that we've seen. But yeah, it's not really for me, if I'm honest, in respect to music, I prefer just old school listening to someone with their guitar and singing away.

Michael: And you mentioned something about CDs too, you were like, I like CDs,

Rosa: I still collect CDs. My car has a CD player in it. I'm very old school.

Michael: Awesome. that definitely makes sense. And I think that it seems like a lot of the concerns are valid from a standpoint of it's like the wild West and we just don't know, how this type of technology long term will affect our roles, and it does sort of seem like, there’s similar wave when digital downloads kind of became a thing with LimeWire and with illegal downloads of songs. I think most people could kind of sense that like: “This is wrong.” but it was also like this technology was totally new and it was expanding the networking ability, it was just expanding what was possible to do with music, and so it seemed like we needed some sort of a regulatory, some kind of way to do it correctly, you know? and that's where the iTunes store found its footing and creating like an established, legitimate, authentic way to compensate people for their artwork. I guess you could argue, I know Spotify gets kind of a bad rap sometimes because yeah, the monetization model is pretty broken from a standpoint of you can't necessarily just rely on streaming for most people. It is possible that if you get like a lot of streams, you can, but it seems for most people, that's not really a sustainable way to make their music, 

But I wonder if there are, I mean, it seems like something that's got to happen kind of with AI, right? I personally, I feel like it's impossible to kind of go backwards in time or kind of like the cats out of the bag. Like there's this amazing new technology. So, I feel like it's gotta be used in some way. But it's gotta be like a path through which people can be fairly compensated for their work. And we can use it in a way that doesn't replace humans, but sort of augments our, our capabilities. I just have this dream of being able to sit at my keyboard and start playing a new, like a little diddle, a little song, and then like an orchestra starts to like come behind me as I'm playing, and I start singing and it starts to like harmonize with me in real time. I just feel like that would be so cool. But I wouldn't want, just to like to click a button, it's like I'm not involved at all. I feel like it needs to be an extension of our creativity and ourselves.

Rosa: Yeah, just like an extra, an added layer that just brings out the bits that maybe we didn't automatically hear ourselves or pick it, like you say, pick out that harmony line and layer that on the top nicely rather than being the center of attention and writing it for us. I do, I do agree. And I do think as I said before in AI, in terms of a wider outside of music, I do think has done and will continue to do some amazing things. But I do think within the music industry at the minute, we just don't have enough knowledge and we don't have enough tools and we don't have enough manpower to really monitor it and I think, like I said at the beginning of our chat, 100, 000 tracks a day are being delivered to Spotify, how many of those are AI, how many people can monitor that and have those tools in place to detect and make sure that, if that is being put up there, we're, independent artists in particular still, still getting their fair share. 

And I do think that's something that DSPs are actively trying to address, but it's just kind of a question mark of when the timeline will be that something solid is in place and protection for people is there as well. Because you know, it is tough out there, especially as an independent and streaming platforms at the minute, don't really pay a sustainable amount. Like we said, money is money, which is great, but it's not long term. So, if that royalty pool is shrinking even more than we already have, then it does cause a lot of concern for artists. So, yeah, I do hope, like you say, there's a positive light at the end of the tunnel and that it could do some amazing things. But at the minute, for me, it's a big question mark as to how it's going to go.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the honest answer for everyone like in life itself is sort of it's like a big question mark in that, everything is constantly changing and evolving and growing. So, you kind of have to have like an open mind and also, I mean, we sort of have the ability to shape our future and through the questions we ask and our focal points, it's your point that you brought up earlier around being intentional with your community design and kind of having a goal and setting it in your mind, like: “what do you want to create with this?” it's pretty great that we have, I mean, us as musicians and creators, we effectively can shape reality, and we can set goals and intentions. So, I'm glad that we can have conversations like this, and I know a lot of people are having conversations right now about, how do we shape the future of what we're building and how do we use these tools in a way that's congruent with our values and helps to compensate the creators as much as possible. yeah, it'll be an interesting journey.

Rosa: It definitely will and I think it's interesting as well because it goes back to the notion of knowledge is power and when we have that knowledge we can navigate it a little more but I think it feeds into you know other areas of music industry as well and what's been going on I mean there's a lot of kind of artists as well who we see that work with record labels and once they've signed to a label, they think: “Yay, this is it. I've done it now,” but that's actually not the case. 

I think we're seeing a lot more artists kind of take the reins and wanting to remain independent, particularly, you know, when they realize that most labels are gonna make you sign your rights away and that you won't actually own your songs anymore. I mean, we've seen that with Taylor when she released Taylor Swift, when she released all Taylor's versions, artists are kind of now being able to find out that information a little bit more and take the reins of their own career. I think it might not be AI related, but it's still that notion of ‘once we understand’ we can use those tools to the best of our ability.

Michael: Absolutely. Awesome. Well, Rosa, it's been great connecting today and talking a little bit about kind of the roots of building a community and building a music career, DIY nowadays, and touching on the landscape of AI and how to position ourselves to hold on to our souls as we also use the tools to extend our creativity. So, thank you for taking the time to be on the podcast today. And for anyone that's listening to this right now, who is interested in connecting more or learning a little bit more about chorus music and some of the services that you'd mentioned, what's the best place for them to go to connect more.

Rosa: Yeah, sure. So, if you want to chat or just find out more about Fusion Publishing Marketing, anything at all, you can connect with us on Instagram at Horus Music, which is H-O-R-U-S music or you can email us as well at social@horusmusic.global and you'll get straight through to myself and then I can help you in any way that you need. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute.

Michael: Absolutely. And for our next conversation, I'll make sure that I'm prepared with a lot more giant spiders.

Rosa: Thanks so much.