Eric Alper:
But I also understand it that like, "Where do you go if your video on TikTok doesn't have a hundred million stream? Who cares at radio? Nobody blowing up," because they have tons of artists that are blowing up that they need to play. Whether it's 1940, 1960 or 2022, you have to make people want to work with you. You have to make use almost so desirable and so great that they can't say no. That's never changed.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with the computer can listen to our music. But 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 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.

Michael Walker:
All right, so I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Eric Alper. So Eric, for the past 25 years, has been at the forefronts of the Canadian entertainment industry. In fact, he's been named a Must-Follow by Billboard. He's the host of the top-rated SiriusXM show, That Eric Alper. He's got over a million followers across social media and he's been able to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time, including Ringo Starr, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Slash, Snoop dogs, Smashing Pumpkins, Sesame Street and many more.

Eric Alper:
I love it how you put that rock accent on, "On Sesame Street."

Michael Walker:
Having a new father of three kids under the age of four, I can tell you that the one that impressed me the most on there, totally Sesame Street.

Eric Alper:
Trust me, when I was working with Sesame street, those were the best days. As long as I didn't screw up the press release between GWAR and Sesame Street and Sinead O'Connor, I was really good. That was a good day. But Sesame Street, yeah, absolutely. Look, you go state to state, country by country and everybody's dream is told that they want to visit Sesame Street. It's like, "Where you going on vacation?" And then when somebody says, "I think I'm going to go visit Sesame Street." "Okay, cool. Enjoy yourself."

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Sesame Street, it's like the end destination. I think all of us want to end up on that street in some day and you've been there. You've been there and you've returned.

Eric Alper:
I've been there, I've returned and it's still a powerful presence in my life by whenever they have a video of Billy Eilish singing with The Count or today's artists performing with The Muppets. I always post it on my socials. You have to. It reminds you of how good and wholesome we should all be. And it's a constant reminder of the really good fun things that are in life. Yeah, you're never too old for Sesame Street.

Michael Walker:
It's true. No, it is. I love Sesame Street. I always love having it on in the background, I'm like walking around and hanging out with the kids.

Eric Alper:
Even when the kids aren't around, you just have it on. You're like, "Yeah, I think I need to refresher course on the ABC."

Michael Walker:
The confession.

Eric Alper:
"Go ahead, Cookie Monster." Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Confession. In my left earbud, I'm actually watching Sesame Street while we're conducting this at the same time.

Eric Alper:
Right, yeah. Do you remember The Electric Company?

Michael Walker:
Oh, yeah.

Eric Alper:
Do you remember that show?

Michael Walker:
It's ringing a bell.

Eric Alper:
Yeah, that was like a hipper cooler, more modern version of Sesame Street where they had more psychedelic sounds and music and ... When my daughter was born, we got a whole bunch of DVDs of Sesame Street and The Electric Company. And I really want her to watch Electric company again and she didn't get it. She wasn't really interested in that. Sesame Street, she got, but The Electric Company was a little bit too out there, too outer space for her.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, there's nothing that a couple hits acid won't fixed.

Eric Alper:
No, exactly. So parents out there, Michael is now advocated to keep your kid's LSD-

Michael Walker:
On the record.

Eric Alper:
Send all letters and notes and emails to Michael Walker and ... No, I'm only kidding.

Michael Walker:
Oh, man. I can tell, even from our banter at backstage before we hopped on here, I knew that you have 25-plus years of experience in the game. You're just very charismatic, a great conversation.

Eric Alper:
This is fun. Look, what I do for a living, promote music. It's like every day is the greatest day. Look, my worst day as a publicist is better than most people's best day ever and it's only because of just what I do. And I know I'm one of the lucky ones that I get to do what I've always since I was eight wanted to do, which is be around musicians and hang out and work with the media and tell stories about the making of music and finding that connection and just being a fan every single day.

Michael Walker:
So cool.

Eric Alper:
I'm also on acid right now too.

Michael Walker:
Okay, I'm glad we got that out. Yeah.

Eric Alper:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Cool, man. I'm really excited to have a discussion with you and talk about having been in the game for 25-plus years and really connecting with so many successful artists. Not that anything has changed in the last 10 years or so in terms of music industry and the internet and whatnot, but I feel like you've probably really been able to have a great perspective of the music industry as it's shifted over the last 25-plus years. And I would love to just have a conversation with you about really what you've seen like common patterns and trends and character traits around the most successful people that you've connected with so that we can help everyone who's listening to this or watching this right now understand what does it take to be successful in the modern music industry. Maybe you could share a little bit about yourself briefly in terms of how you got started and how you became the host of your show on SiriusXM.

Eric Alper:
Yeah, my grandfather has a bar in Toronto. The bar is still standing, but we're not a part of it any longer. It's called Grossman's Tavern. And it opened in 1943 and it was the first bar to mix alcohol and music together. It used to be just music and then they got the alcohol license and it took so long because the city thought that mixing alcohol and music would turn the entire city into Helena Handbasket and they were right. And so I remember as a kid in the '70s growing up around, a couple of memories of being in the bar, watching some of the musicians play and loving it and knowing that I had no musical talent. I knew early on, I wasn't blessed with an amazing singing voice, I'm so completely uncoordinated. That was the first time that I think I learned about and I saw all these different people and all these different members of the community of different sizes and shapes and cultures and backgrounds and race and all coming together around music.

Eric Alper:
And it wasn't like I was seven years old and I thought, "Oh, music is a good psychological weapon." It was just that's what it was to me. I never divided any music or people that played it in one specific style of music or box. And when I was 12, I got a subscription to Billboard Magazine because it was what I wanted. And because Billboard to me was like ... A couple of years earlier, I saw this movie called American Hot Wax and it told the story of the Cleveland DJ Alan freed who is noted for coining the term rock and roll and I was eight or nine. And I remember everybody else was a Hollywood actor except for on the big screen they had the real-life Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry performing their big concert at the end of the movie and I sat there in awe.

Eric Alper:
It was like some people describing seeing Star Wars for the first time or Harry Potter and having a lifelong love of that. That hit me square in the head. And so in reading Billboard Magazine a number of years later, that's where I got to learn about a little bit how the industry worked like, "What was a record label? What did a manager do? What was a booking agent? What was the job of a distributor? How songs actually make the charts?" and so a lot of behind the scenes stuff, along with interviews with whatever hitmakers were of the day. So I knew even more that I wanted to be a part of the industry. So it was like almost everything I did after that was to keep the focus on the fact that I love music.

Eric Alper:
And in high school, when you fill out those forms and it comes back to you and it says, "You are perfect to be an accountant," or, "You will do this," I got a DJ. And so it was great until I realized that I just didn't have a voice to be a DJ. I just don't. I stutter half the time. It's try to do what everybody else was doing. So when I graduated from university, I worked at the campus newspaper, writing music and meeting other publicists in the industry and saying, "Oh, this is a really cool job. You get to like share music and give people free concert tickets and give out albums. How bad could that be?" And I started my own record label. That became quickly a booking agent and then a publicity company.

Eric Alper:
And then I got a job working for a company called Koch and then they got bought up by Entertainment One about 10 years ago. But Koch at the time was the world largest independent distributor of music. And so everybody at the company, their job was to move CDs and cassette tapes and DVDs from the warehouse to the record store and that was it. That was the complete job and it was a really hard one, but the president had a really good foresight because all of these labels that they were distributing were American based or UK based and they didn't really care so much about Canada. We were like 4% of the world market to them. And so they were really just going to give us a box of CDs and, "Here's the 8 x 10s and go nuts and don't bother me until the artist comes and tours Canada."

Eric Alper:
So I started doing publicity for all of their artists becoming one of the very first publicists at a distribution company. So I got to work Smithsonian Folkways and the Woody Guthrie catalog and Pete Seeger and Hopeless Records and Victory Records with Thursday and Taking Back Sunday and GWAR and Bob Geldof, with Sinead O'Connor and Steve Miller and Ray Charles and Smashing Pumpkins and Snoop. And so I got a real great education being there for 18 years. And then the last couple of years before that, I saw the writing on the wall that everything was changing. Again, CDs were being on the way out, DVDs were on the way out, thanks to streaming services and I just thought there's ever a time when I'm going to be going off on my own, this is the time. So I left and started my own company and here I am talking to Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
Very cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing your story. And my first question to run by you and I would love to hear your perspective, having all this experience over the past 25 years of being able to connect with all these artists and you've alluded to the last few years, especially like you've been able to see the writing on the wall and looking at CDs on the way out and DVDs and streaming, what are some of the biggest shifts that you've seen, like in terms of trends that are happening right now that maybe are connected to some common mistakes that artists are making right now? What are some of the biggest mistakes that they're making right now because they might be thinking about the way it used to be versus the way that it is now?

Eric Alper:
Yeah, when you look back on the formats of music history, they usually last about 20 years, give or take a couple of years. You have vinyl records from '78, so then vinyl records and vinyl records had a pretty long 20, 25 years or so and then they moved that out to cassette, to then CDs and MP3 players and now with streaming services. But the fact is that it never changes with the importance of how good your song is and now you have to be great. It's not enough anymore to be local and concentrate local when there may not be a whole lot of infrastructure or media outlets or industry in your city anymore to help support it due to the consolidation of the way that the music industry is, the way that the entertainment industry worked and the way that the media is operating now where local media just simply may not have the time and space and wherewithal to cover those local artists like they did back in the early 1990s.

Eric Alper:
For instance, when I first got really heavily involved in the music scene, you could read about different scenes that were going on. That's how we end up with the grunge scene going national with a focus on what was breaking in Seattle. Here in Canada, we had a little bit of a scene going on in Halifax with Sloan and Eric's Trip blowing up, obviously Toronto with Drake and The Weeknd, but now artists just have to simply realize and I think they do more and more that their competition isn't another band from their own city. Their competition right now is Olivia Rodrigo and Harry Styles and Kanye West, but not necessarily Kanye West music but just taking the air out of the room whenever he decides to post on Instagram. Because not just the media, not just the industry, not just you and I, but the fanbase and the general public only has so much wherewithal and space in their brains and in their eyes and in their ears to concentrate on something.

Eric Alper:
That's why things are moving so fast right now where no slight to Adele and no slight to Billy Eilish or any of these artists, but Harry Styles' album came out a week ago and nobody's writing about it anymore. It's far from the days where Michael Jackson can be number one for 36 straight weeks on The Billboard Album Chart and every week there was always something new happening. It was a sense that this was an event. This was, "Everybody was watching Beat It. Everybody was watching Billie Jean. Everybody was glued to the television set in August watching Thriller." That stuff just doesn't happen. Even with people like Selena Gomez having 190 million followers on Instagram, it doesn't mean that she's selling 190 million copies of her album. She's barely cracking that, but the way that people are consuming their favorite artists are completely different.

Eric Alper:
It's not just about the music anymore. It is always about the personality, the connection that you're able to make. And so social media has taken over those gatekeeping roles where there used to be five people at MTV that if they loved your video, they could literally change your life overnight from walking down the street and nobody giving you a second look to, all of a sudden, the entire planet knows who you are like Duran did or Eurythmics or The Fix or Nirvana or Guns N' Roses. So that overnight success might still be there, but it is so fleeting that it's hard for anybody to grasp what is a career because of the so many minute details that artists now have to be doing.

Eric Alper:
It's interesting that you and I are talking about this now because last week there were a number of very popular artists that came to the forefront and said that their mental health is suffering a little bit because of the constant amount of pressure that they're getting to post on TikTok and that their record labels aren't going to release their new video or song until they go viral on TikTok. We're not talking about brand new artists. We're talking about people like Hasley and Florence and the Machine, artists that really deserve to have a little bit more respect for their careers at this point.

Eric Alper:
But I also understand it that like, "Where do you go if your video on TikTok doesn't have a hundred million stream? Who cares at radio?" Nobody and bless you're growing up," because they have tons of artists that are blowing up that they need to play. Whether it's 1940, 1960 or 2022, you have to make people want to work with you. You have to make use almost so desirable and so great that they can't say no. That's never changed.

Michael Walker:
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So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now and sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show, so don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now and let's get back to our interview. Oh, man, that's so that was so good, a lot of gems in there and things to dig into, but it sounds like one of the big shifts that you've noticed and it's something that keeps becoming more of a thing is around the way that we find and connect with new music and use the internet and social media to discover songs has almost shifted from maybe a more centralized form of media where it's like everyone had the same kind of TV set, there's less channels.

Michael Walker:
Therefore, it was more consolidated into centralized media authorities that could really bring everyone around a smaller number of outlets. And now with the internet, it's much more decentralized where anyone as an independent artist can essentially build their own channel, their own platform to be able to grow and-

Eric Alper:
And make a good living on it if they want to. Because for all that, I keep hearing about on a daily basis of artists not making any money and it's true. There's a lot of artists that aren't. The dirty secret of the music industry were that there always were not a lot of artists making money. They were signing the worst possible contracts and forget if you were black because you probably got ripped off tenfold more than a white artist playing the exact same music. But realistically, artists, you could be selling a million copies in America in the '70s, '80s, '90s, nineties and 2000s and have a really decent long career. I've talked to artists every single week that have sold a couple of million copies or hit number one on Billboard back in the day and they're still riding off of that. They're still on nostalgia tours and they're still getting laid on classic rock or nostalgia-type radio like Dave FM or Bob FM or Joe FM.

Eric Alper:
I don't think that's possible anymore because I think that there are just ... It's not easier, but I think it's so divided up that you could be selling a million copies or streaming 10, 12, 15 million times on Spotify and there might be 400,000 artists out there that are doing the exact same thing across the last couple of years, I think I saw something where, and I know my numbers are going to be off, but it was something like 60,000 artists last year cracked more than a million streams on Spotify. That's a pretty seriously high number. So it's not necessarily that you're just going to only collect that revenue. I think that there's more opportunity than artists ever had to sell merch, to sell different kinds of formats with their music, whether it's like the vinyl copies or even cassette copies or doing VIP guest lists for the shows doing ...

Eric Alper:
There's so many different ways that art can actually make money these days without having to go through the standard, "I just need to sell CDs," because I don't know what it's like where you are, but here in Canada, there's been over 300 clubs that have shut down since COVID and those clubs are not coming back. And we have a whole new generation of artists who, even though that acoustic guitar sales are getting higher and higher every year, the idea of playing coast to coast in North America and making your fanbase one person at a time playing live might be gone forever.

Eric Alper:
There's artists that are blowing up on TikTok now with an audience that they both have probably no interest in performing live. They don't need to. They may not be able to. So I think that the way that the internet has leveled the playing field where a guy that sucks so bad at playing music like me can have a song up on Spotify with the same speed as Harry Styles is astounding still to me. Because I don't know what it was like when you were playing, but everybody had a cassette when you were in a band and you were only getting to make a CD if you were really good and you can afford the run because it was like 25 bucks to sell a CD off the stage, as opposed to maybe $10 for the cassette. And now where do you even go to sell your ware?

Eric Alper:
So there's always that little bit of a weird disconnect between I think when artists are in a really great position and when they're in a really bad position. I think right now it's in both. It all depends on what side of the music industry you want to look at.

Michael Walker:
Interesting. Yeah, that stuff is great. And just earlier last week, we announced and opened up a new NFT marketplace for musicians, and yeah, it was something we might be able to talk about. And I know there's a lot of, I don't know, like hype and/or confusion and tons of town of the Wild West ...

Eric Alper:
there always.

Michael Walker:
... with NFTs.

Eric Alper:
Yeah, there always is.

Michael Walker:
But what I can say is I'm probably more excited about this NFT marketplace and the artists that we're bringing on right now than I have been this and our software as a service that we're developing are the two main things. And I think a lot of the things that you just pointed to around selling vinyls or cassettes and really having something tangible to monetize their music, I think music  are pretty interesting potential merch item/collectible/something that they can really use to, both give their fans something that means something that's tangible, that's real and also to monetize their music in a landscape where their songs have ... It's not like they've become worthless, right? Because clearly, music is life changing. Music is so valuable, but from an economic standpoint

Eric Alper:
It's at the bottom of the list. Oh, yeah. Look, when I send out releases as a publicist, very rarely do I actually mention any instrumentation whatsoever on the record about the song. And it's not because I want to devalue the musicians or anything like that. It's just that the media just doesn't really care because that's not what they're looking for. They're looking for, "Why does somebody need to care about this?" And I think indie artists, especially in the NFT world, could be, I think, utilizing this a lot more where the ability to connect with your artist is paramount.

Eric Alper:
Look, there's a reason why somebody like Taylor Swift is so great at social media. If you go on her Instagram, it's, "Here's me sleeping on a plane," and, "Here's me riding a horse," and, "Here's me with my lyric sheet. Buy my single. Here's me with my squad. Here's me wrapping a present for one special fan. Buy my album." And so much of what she posts about is about making that connection with her fanbase. When you love an artist, you not only want to see them succeed, but you're going to help them succeed. And we see that with the BTS Army. We see that with David Cassidy's screaming band. We saw that with the 5,000 people, mostly girls, who ended up at the airport waiting for the Beatles to land in New York.

Eric Alper:
And NFTs, no matter how big or how small you are as an artist, is another connection that your fans can make to help support what you're doing. And not everybody ... I think the NFTs, the only reason why it gets a little bit of a bad rap is because the artists seem to think they see stories about this eight drawing getting 64 million, which I've no doubt that it's like money laundering to some like country failing that. I have a couple of independent artists that have gone the NFT route, putting their stills from their videos up there and selling a couple of them, not a lot of them. But for me as a publicist, it gives me another reason to go back to the media and to the industry to show that this artist knows what's going on, that this is another reason to write about them. This is another reason for you to post on social media.

Eric Alper:
And going back to what we were saying earlier about the pressures of artists having to constantly come up with content ideas, this is it. The creation first announcing that you have an NFT, then the photo or video of you creating the NFT, then the interview that you can do on video for two minutes with the designer or the NFT and then the next video or post of you explaining what an NFT is and then linking a story to what an NFT is with somebody reputable to the actual launching of the NFT, to the actual reminder that the NFT is available, to the actual selling of the NFT. There is eight social media posts that you can get out of this. So I never want to hear from artists that they have nothing to talk about because all those things are interesting to the average listener and viewer who wants and little bit of an inside peek to the inner workings of being a musician. They like that stuff. They demand that stuff.

Michael Walker:
That's so true. So one thing that I would love to dig into because I feel like everything you're saying is so on point in terms of how the playing field has changed to the degree that we're not competing necessarily with other bands that are coming locally, but we're competing with the world and not just other musicians, but just the internet and the internet's a very compelling place. There's a lot of fun stuff that's designed algorithmically.

Eric Alper:
There's still 28 million people a year that visit MySpace. That's your competition. The moment that they're visiting MySpace, they're not listening to us. Good luck. Good luck getting them.

Michael Walker:
Salts in the wound. So that being said, it seems like one of the biggest challenges at that point is like, "Man, how do I compete with that? I'm an independent artist. I'm just starting out. I'm not special or spectacular. What is it about me? How do I get my voice heard or how do I actually start to establish some of those relationships and start building connections with new fans?" What would your advice be for someone like that who maybe they are a bit earlier on, maybe someone who's listening to this right now? Let's suppose that they've really taken the time to hone their craft, been playing music for a long time. They've invested into working with a really high-quality producer who's produced some other great artists that are successful right now, but at the same time they've created this, but they haven't really started to build their fanbase in a serious way yet. How do they get heard? How do they start actually building those relationships?

Eric Alper:
Yeah, they have to understand a couple of things. The first thing that they have to understand is that everybody started off at zero. Ed Sheeran started off with one fan. The Beatles started off with one fan walking into a record store and asking for a copy of one of their songs which led to something else. And the more that you talk to musicians, the more that you realize that the really successful ones didn't have a plan B. And I know it's so easy to say that now, but if you read up on how certain scenes were being created, how Kurt Cobain struggled for his craft, how The Clash slept on the floors of their fans on shows that night because they couldn't afford anything else, they did not have anything else to do.

Eric Alper:
And it wasn't because they had another offer to do law school three years from now, it was that they could either play music or they could die. And for many of them, playing music was the way out of their miserable horrible situation, whether they were still living at home, whether they were in poverty, wherever it was. Not thinking about having a plan B is certainly going to help and not everybody's going to do that, I get it, but know that for every moment that you're not working on your music, every moment that you're not creating something for social media, every moment that you're not trying to get better, there's thousands of other artists that are.

Eric Alper:
And even if you talk to people who are absolutely harassed by the fans in general public and media, artists like Nickelback or John Mayer or Justin Bieber, you talk to them and they'll show you their schedule on their off day that would put your and my working schedule to shame because they're still doing 15 things to help better their career. The main thing for artists that are first starting out or just finding their audience is that expectations are zero. I get asked all the time whenever artists want to sign up with me to do PR like, "What do you expect to happen?" I'm like, "Absolutely can't answer that question because a male artist who is white, who plays rock, is going to get something very different than a BIPOC artist from a small town playing R&B than an artist who is from the indigenous world playing hip hop in Los Angeles. They're all going to have completely different viable options at first glance to the media."

Eric Alper:
There's a lot of, there's a lot of musical communities that are punching well above their weight as opposed to what they were getting five years ago and it's a great thing. Members of the BIPOC community, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, the spotlight is on them finally after all this time. So if you are four guys from Arkansas playing in a rock band, your time might have passed. No slight to anybody that's playing those bands, the media and industry may not be focusing on them right now. There's a reason why women without a band playing pop are blowing up right now. We saw it in the scenes like I mentioned before. When Nirvana was blowing up, when Pearl jam was blowing up, the entire industry descended on Seattle, signing anybody with a plaid shirt.

Eric Alper:
And so now we're seeing that, they're looking for the next Olivia Rodrigo, they're looking for the next a little bit of a down tempo pop star who is not afraid to express their feelings or somebody that can create some really engaging content in 15 seconds on TikTok. So the expectations that you have on yourself shouldn't even be coming in the picture because I just think they have no idea what it's like out there. I think that they don't see that maybe Olivia Rodrigo was Universal's biggest priority for month to months building the stories, building the audience, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on boosting the post so that when she dropped that single of Driver's License, it may seem like it was an overnight success, but it was far from it.

Eric Alper:
The music industry has access to so much data right now that it is astounding. It puts those NFL analysts on Sunday afternoon to shame how much information they have. They know to a tee in the last 24 hours who has gotten over a million streams on Spotify in America or in New York or in Ohio that's not connected to a major label. And they can find that information really quickly, contact that artist really quickly, sign them to a $15,000 publishing deal, tell them that they want to distribute the next song. And if it works, you'll get to work the next one. And if that works, you'll get another shot and you keep going until you have enough for an EB. There's so much behind the scenes action that I'm not sure that your average musician knows about it.

Eric Alper:
It's not just for anything else other than it takes a lifetime to be as cynical as I am sometimes to realize that things rarely happen as they seem and fight for your expectations and they become yours, but I think you have to walk in there knowing there are artists out there with potentially and probably the best song I've ever heard in my whole life and I will never get to hear it. And that's a real-

Michael Walker:
Super interesting.

Eric Alper:
Present Michael and I your music and solve that problem.

Michael Walker:
No, I think it's so true and it's something that's easily overlooked that it's not like something just happens from nothing or it's just everything is ... It's almost like it goes back to Newton's laws of motion, right? An object in motion tends to remain in motion. An object at rest tends to remain at rest. And so if someone does have a huge viral hit or something that isn't just happened just because of nothing it's because there was a huge momentum, there's huge inertia, there was something happening and then maybe they happened to catch it.

Eric Alper:
And so much of it has absolutely nothing to do with you as an art. Once you start to ... There's a theory, a little bit of a fact that independent artists should start posting their TikTok videos and Instagram videos at 4:00 in the morning. Because if you see that there's something like 40, 45 million videos being posted at night, but then at 4:00 in the morning, normally Eastern Standard Time, those kind of hours, there's about 2 to 5 million videos. The chance of you potentially going viral and hitting the same amount of people as if you were hitting at 2:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday, if you hit that algorithm correctly through no fault or doing of your own and all of a sudden TikTok puts you on the main page for the [inaudible 00:35:04] and that begets more and that begets more and more.

Eric Alper:
That stuff happened because you have done absolutely nothing to cause it and then your competition could be spending money boosting that post that again has nothing to do with the success or failure of your video. It just happened that you're just hitting a wall because these 25 videos ahead of you have spent more money. The one thing that the music industry has taught everybody about data is that you can absolutely get lost in there. There's just no way. I know that booking agents are using it, are using social media data to figure out where the artist's biggest fans are. So maybe instead of playing Cleveland, Ohio, they're doing three nights in Dayton, Ohio because that's where they seem to have the most fans because maybe there's a couple of campus radio stations in Dayton that's playing them as opposed to trying to break a big city like Cleveland.

Eric Alper:
That kind of data could work for those independent artists too. I've got artists that have done live shows at midnight because it's 7:00 AM in London, England and that seems to be where some of their fans are. I have artists that have done not just the 8:00 PM acoustic show during COVID, but they had continued to do that 8:00 PM acoustic show even after COVID because we're seeing more and more marketing initiatives and marketing plans that have Zoom in it, that have the online presence of doing it. People are still at home, not as much as they used to, but the internet and your computer and your iPhone is having the greatest television/radio station impossibles.

Eric Alper:
The ability to do those kind of things, performing acoustically, doing videos, that will tell you where your fanbase is. Try it. There's lot ... I know if people follow me on Twitter, they know that I tweet a lot and I post a lot and it's about 50 times a day, but it's all set up in advance because I know that's certain things that are good for the west coast of North America to see. I'm going to post at 3:00 in the morning ahead of time because it's only midnight there and I know people are up. So maybe I'm not getting a tremendous amount of hits in New York and Toronto, but that's okay because I want the audience to be everywhere.

Eric Alper:
The ability for you to spend a couple of bucks on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter and find out what times work best for you. If you have a brand new video that's three minutes and 30 seconds, artists should be splicing that video up in 30-second spots and posting it during different times of the day. Go on Hootsuite or a site that allows you to post in advance for free. Post one at Monday at 9:00 in the morning, then the next one Tuesday at noon, then Wednesday at 3:00 PM and Thursday at 6:00 and Friday at 9:00, Saturday midnight, Sunday 3:00 AM. I will bet that nobody will ever even know that you're posting the same video twice because you're going to get a completely different audience for each time.

Eric Alper:
And maybe those numbers and that data will surprise you, maybe you'll realize that, "I don't have any friends who watch this stuff in my own hometown, so maybe I need to go elsewhere," or go find where your fanbase is. Boost a post. If you play rock music and you think that your fanbase loved The Black Keys, go after all The Black Keys fans in your hometown. Be that one degree of separation away. Be that new favorite artist that somebody that you may see at your next show will know who you are and help support it. So the data can work for the bigger artists, but it's okay to steal some of what the major labels are doing and use it for you too.

Michael Walker:
100%, yeah. Yeah, I think that's so amazing what we have available to us as independent artists online and basically using tools like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. They all have paid traffic that allows you essentially just to type in which artists do you want to target and you can test it out and see which artists resonate with your music or which fans resonate with your music.

Eric Alper:
And I know people are whining about that. I hear it. I see it. I get it like, but people always have to understand that if the product is free, you're the one that's being paid. You're the one that have to pay for it. And yes, Facebook change their algorithm, so that if you have a thousand fans on Facebook, you're going to be lucky right now with 50 to 100 people actually see that post without you boosting it. But it was always like that. You couldn't reach your like-minded bands to be in your city without taking a full page out of in your local newspaper or magazine. Sometimes people have a very, I think, short memory of what they're demanding or what they think is unfair when again, sucks to hear this, but it's always been unfair because there's more supply of artists than there is for the demand of it and only a couple people can get a shot at that brass ring.

Michael Walker:
That totally makes sense, yeah. And I think that, well, you can either ... If you're looking to gain attention for your music, then one, the ability to literally just type in and be like, "Here's the group that I want to target. I think that these people are going music because they're a fan of XYZ band," that's just amazing, but you don't have to pay for it. You could do everything that you just talked about in terms of spending your time and energy creating a bunch of different types of content and seeing what works and seeing what resonates with people. And maybe if you're lucky, one of them will gain more attention. It'll go "viral" and hopefully when it goes viral, it's one that actually relates to you and your music  the right people. That's you're either trading your time or your money to do it.

Michael Walker:
I love the point that you made, everyone starts out from scratch, right? Like Ed Sheeran started out with one fan and the Beatles started out with one fan. There's something really powerful about that, understanding that. And for anyone that's listening or watching this right now, they started out exactly, but they didn't start with a billion fans.

Eric Alper:
Yeah, they started out exactly like you. Anybody listening, nobody asked for the Beatles. Nobody asked for Jimmy Hendrix. Nobody wanted The Sex Pistols or The Clash. Nobody put a request in to have Nirvana. They just did and they did again because they needed to play and they resonated with the artists and with the fans and each other. And yeah, the scenes are different. Maybe there's not a lot of music conferences to meet other likeminded bands or industry, but that's where you just become crafty. If there's no bars or places that I will have you, go create your own. Play in a shoe store. Go play in a bookstore. Go play wherever there's people. Get arrested, but there's always spots to get great and there's just a lot of luck involved.

Eric Alper:
And a lot of people saying yes behind the scenes that you have no idea, so many things have to happen in order for a hit to become a hit, that it's actually amazing when it does. Have you ever watch a movie and you look at the credits at the end of the film and you're like, "What on earth do all these people do?" Any one of those people could have screwed up so badly to ruin your best loved and your favorite film of all time. It's amazing that anything works. We have disposable thumbs. Other than that, there's nature and this planet and so much of it is completely out of your control.

Eric Alper:
But the best thing that you can do is just not be lazy. Go talk to an artist that has actually made it or even somebody at a radio station or a TV station or your local campus radio station and they'll tell you for every person like them that has survived by or six or seven years, there's hundreds that found something else to do within three months and it just wasn't for them. And that's okay. Every day, you've got to know that you're really lucky to do this. You're lucky to be living in a time where you have the internet. You can play music without being persecuted. You can go out at night. If you have a car, you might be less than 100th of a percent in America that has a car, that you're right, there's so many things that are going for people.

Eric Alper:
And it's funny because whenever I think about stuff like that, I think, "What are people complaining about not being able to go viral?" It's just the fact that you have internet is a win in itself. And I know it's hard when you create something and you're looking at those minuscule amount of hits, there might be somebody out there that you are their biggest, most loved band or artist of all time and just try to figure out how to keep doing that. Every day that you get to do this is a day where you're doing something that you may not want to do.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's so true and it's so easy. I don't know what it is about the human condition-

Eric Alper:
It's easy for you, Michael, to sit there and say, "Yeah, I was in a band for 10 years and then we're not playing anymore and that really sucks," or you can look at it and say, "Holy smokes. I got to play in a band for 10 years," and know that you came out of it alive and well and that if you wanted to create another band, you could with all this knowledge and power and red flags to look for when things go bad.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. And also the band, we get together usually once a year to play some show. When there's not a global pandemic, we'll get together, just we are moving in different directions. But one thing that I want to zoom back in on, because you said something that was ... I think one of the most important life lessons/what it takes to be successful as a musician and I want to make sure that we dig into this because I know for us, this was probably one of the best pieces of advice that we ever got and it changed everything for us. And that piece of advice was around going all in and not having a plan B.

Michael Walker:
And yeah, I remember for us, it was when we were recording with our first producer who was not just us recording garage band and locally, it was like with a real producer and worked with some of our favorite bands and I remember we were just getting ready to graduate high school and we were at this decision point where it was either we could ... Three of us had full-ride scholarships to college and we were trying to decide, "Do we want to go to college and do the band at the same time or do we want to give up our scholarships and go all in on the band?" And we were leaning towards, "We can go to college and we'll do this at the same time. We'll go to the same, close by, so we can keep practicing."

Michael Walker:
And we had a conversation, his name was Jordan Schmidt, but now he's recorded several multi-platinum songs, he's super successful, but he gave us this piece of advice. He was like, "Look, guys, it really depends on what your goals are. If you want to be really successful, it's the bands that don't have a plan B it's the bands that go all in, which are the ones that are successful. And it's totally okay if you guys want to go to college and do it at the same time. But if you really want to be successful, then it's the bands who don't, they burn their bridges and they go all in."

Eric Alper:
You read, and all the time, whenever you read about a successful band, there's always one member who went off to college or one member who stayed at home with their girlfriend or boyfriend or wanted to have a family or there's always that one person that said for whatever reason, whether they didn't think that they could be all in or whether they think that they didn't have what it took or that they wanted to make more money in a sure bet, going to college and becoming a doctor or a lawyer, and you're meant to think, "Oh, that person did the worst decision possible. Look at how successful the band is." But that's just a human emotion that we don't know about all those bands that didn't make it and that one person who left ended up being more successful than the band, but you have to ...

Eric Alper:
It's just one of those things where the more that I talk to artists on the radio show and the more that I hang out with artists that I work with, how laser focused they were and how they went for broke. They had dreams. They had bigger dreams than most people and they thought that they could achieve it. Not necessarily like they willed it to happen, but I think when people say that like, "I saw the success ahead of time. I thought about what I was going to do and I did it," I think that stuff prepares you in your mind at least not to be scared when those moments come in. I think because there's no rule book to being successful in the music industry, it's all up for grabs, but I think because it's a human industry, there's always rules of engagement that work, that you can look at other businesses and say, "There must be a reason why that band worked."

Eric Alper:
Even if one of them inherited a billion dollars from their parents, you can't ram something down somebody's throat if it's going to suck. And the only way to get better is by just practicing it and practicing. And sometimes you land on it super early. Sometimes that one line and I know in saying that, I know people are probably think, a, "Boy, this guy can talk a lot," and, b, "How then do you explain somebody like overnight successes in their eyes like Olivia Rodrigo?" And to that, it's almost maybe that one time when Olivia Rodrigo thought about that one line for a song, she immediately wrote it as opposed to letting it disappear in your mind because you just didn't think it was good enough and maybe you second guess something to all those things.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, it's so good. And I've got one final question for you to dig deeper into that. As you're describing that, what came up was the little blue engine book so bring it back to these, it's like, "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." It's true and I'm-

Eric Alper:
And the music industry, you never get to the top of the hill. Never. Because even when you're at the top of that chart, that's when the pressure's on because you got to stay there and you have to replicate it again and again. There's something nice about being number 12 on the charts consistently.

Michael Walker:
One last question for you is around that idea of going all in and not having a plan B. I think it both is one of the most important decisions that someone can make if they really want to give themselves the best chance to succeed, it's jumping in a pool and it's like, "All right, I'm going to learn how to swim because either I swim or I die." That's how you learn how to swim. But what advice would you give someone who is on the fence and they have big dreams and they want to be successful with their music, they want to do it full time, they're maybe on the fence, they haven't gone all in? How do they overcome that internal fear? Really, it's just the fear like, "Am I good enough? Can I do this?" What's your advice be for someone who genuinely really wanted to focus full time on their music and build a life and a career that they actually enjoy but they're trying to get themselves to that point where it's like they can go all in?

Eric Alper:
When I first got involved with the industry, I was so worried about how I was being perceived by other people, how I conducted myself because I really wanted to do good work, I really wanted my parent to be proud. I wanted my grandfather to be really super proud of what I was doing. And when I got on Twitter all those years ago and I started off with zero followers, I post the exact same kind of things back then of what I do now with a million followers across social media. I still ask the same goofy questions. I show post memes that make me laugh. I show post stories from the media that I love and that I think are interesting for others to check out. And it's because I realized that nobody cares. Nobody cares what I do.

Eric Alper:
I could leave Twitter tomorrow and maybe 15 people will be like, "No, come back," and then the rest of them will go on to the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp story. Nobody cares what you do because everybody is so concentrated on what they're doing themselves. They're not thinking about you. If people truly realized how little they are thought of, I think people would do a lot more things that make them happy. And as awful ... If I put that down on paper, it would look really horrible, "What do you mean nobody cares about me?" It's, "Yes, your family does. Your four friends do. They care," but they don't care whether or not if you go into music or not. They just want you to be happy. They just want you to lead a very fulfilling life and do good and make sure that you do right by your family name and all of that stuff.

Eric Alper:
Sit on the fence, release a new song every day, release a new song once a year, nobody cares what you do. So go and do it. And if you happen to have all the stars align, if you happen to hit the right moment, then some people will care and then a little bit more people will care, but they won't care whether or not if you follow up. They may be sad if you don't release a new single next week, but they don't really care. That puts me in my little place a little bit, going back to the whole outer space thing. I'm never a philosophical guy. I've never metaphysical like, "We're all grains in the sand," but there's something really comforting to know that as long as I try to do right by everybody, not try, but as long as I can go to bed at night knowing that I've done the best job, I've worked really hard and I did right by the band, that's all you could do.

Eric Alper:
You try to write the best song in the world today, and if you feel like you don't, you try again tomorrow and you just keep going and you keep going and then one day we all die. And like Keanu Reeves said, what happened when we die? Keanu said, "The people that love us the most will miss us and that's it." Nobody's going to miss you if you ever leave the music industry. People may tweet. People like me may tweet, "Oh, no, REM split up and I'm sad." I got over it. It's okay. Life goes on. So just do what you want to do and write however much you want to write about and all the things that you and I have talked about. These rules are as of June the 2nd, 2022 and next year, it'll all be changed all over again. There'll be new rules. There'll be new platforms, new methods of ... There might be a chip in our heads that will call up any song that we're thinking of. Who knows? Maybe cassettes are going to come back, who knows?

Michael Walker:
Fantastic advice. It's so good and it's 100% true too. Certainly, you give me a lot of ... As someone with social anxiety as I was growing up who really thought a lot about what other people were thinking about me and it was really-

Eric Alper:
I still do. I'm the most introverted publicist you'll ever meet, especially in the last three years. I'm really comfortable staying inside and I always was, I always were, because again, I get in my own head. So I used to play the role of a publicist. I used to play Eric Alper, music publicist, and not knowing if this was actually real or not because I've read about how they should act, what they should say, what's going to happen next and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah until I just realized nobody cares if you leave the party early. So just go and have a good time. If you want to go say hi to the five people, go say hi and ignore the other 400 that are in the room. It's okay.

Michael Walker:
100%. Yeah, the idea that no one is thinking about you as much as they're thinking about themselves and their own lives, it's very true. And I agree with you. I think it's-

Eric Alper:
But everybody listening, Michael, is thinking about you. They want to make sure that you're okay.

Michael Walker:
That's why I do this for all the fame.

Eric Alper:
All the glory, all the attention and you have it, so there you go.

Michael Walker:
No. Hey, man, this has been so great and it's been really helpful to hear your perspective. Again, I think from someone who clearly has a lot of experience in the music industry and seeing things changed and has really seen the fundamentals, the things that don't change, which is what you brought up as it's really about connecting and building a relationship. It's your fans and about going all in and learning how to navigate the need that all of us have to be seen and appreciated and to recognize that life is too short to hold yourself back from doing what you enjoy. That was super helpful and I would love to be able to direct anyone who's listening to this right now who has really resonated with this and would love to hear a little bit more about what you offer and how they can connect deeper with you, where's the best place for them to go to dive in?

Eric Alper:
Yeah, they can go to the website thatericalper.com or hit me up on social media @ThatEricAlper on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and I read all the emails, I read all the direct messages. And yeah, I'm always happy to talk to bands and artists that are starting out or wondering where their next step should be.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yeah, so like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes and description for easy access, and yeah, man, I really appreciate you taking the time to-

Eric Alper:
Oh, thanks, Michael. It was so good to talk to you. You've definitely made my week so much better and I appreciate it.

Michael Walker:
Thanks, man. 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 their guests 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 I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends, on your social media and 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 who want to take the music careers to the next level. It's time to be a Modern Musician now and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.