Graham Cochrane:
If you want something bad enough, you'll do what it takes to get it. And I'm basically saying that creating content consistently, especially on a platform like YouTube is a way to get the audience you want. It's probably the best way, especially if you can't tour right now.

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 slowly getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so they can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, let's try 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 am stoked to be here today with Graham Cochrane, who's the founder of Recording Revolution. Recording Revolution is one of the world's greatest resources for audio production, music production. And specifically, he focuses around how to create radio worthy songs from a home studio because nowadays there's such a revolution that's happened in terms of the ability to record out of home studio. And the most important thing is knowing how to use those tools that are more accessible than ever. So Graham has created courses with Grammy award-winning producers like Jacquire King. He has I think over 500,000 subscribers on YouTube now. Every time I talk with him, he has 100 or 200,000 more. So it's just growing like crazy because he really focuses on delivering a lot of value. And there's so much awesomeness that you can look him up and find it.

Michael Walker:
And specifically today, I thought that it would be cool to focus on because you can find his resources on recording just by searching him online. But another kind of key area of expertise that he really has is building a presence on YouTube. He has over 555,000 subscribers. He's built a really amazing presence. He's kind of learned the game of using YouTube and building an audience around there and generating value. And as a musician, there's such a huge opportunity to build a presence on YouTube and be able to create an audience and generate value. So I think that's where we're going to kind of focus today. So I know that's kind of a long introduction but Graham, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Graham Cochrane:
I'm pumped to be back, Michael. Thanks for inviting me back.

Michael Walker:
Oh yeah. So, yeah. Man, I'd love to start out with briefly a little bit about your story and kind of how you got started with Recording Revolution and then the kind of the main purpose behind it.

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, it's definitely not my plan. It wasn't my plan. I think I stumbled into it. I certainly didn't think I would ever teach people about recording music. I just did it for fun and then for a living. And then I certainly didn't think I would be making YouTube videos. I didn't even really watch YouTube when I started making YouTube videos. I stumbled into all of it during the last recession and we're going through an economic interesting time right now. And so a decade or so ago in 2009, I found myself after losing, I lost two jobs in one year, new whole departments were laid off.

Graham Cochrane:
So after my second job loss in 2009 and we had just moved to Florida, we just bought our first house, had our first baby. Now I was out of a job. I was trying to ramp up my freelance recording and mixing business. And I was just trying to get more clients. And I thought, I don't know anybody in Florida at the time. So I'm going to have to get people from somewhere else. I might as well be on the internet as well and put stuff out there. And again, this was strategic as I was. And it makes sense. I was like, if I don't put stuff on the internet, no one will know I exist, but if I put stuff on the internet, maybe someone will know I exist. And that was about as far as I got.

Graham Cochrane:
So I started blogging. I started doing YouTube videos, showing what I was doing in my ProTools sessions with client work, showing what I was doing to record my own stuff, hoping that it would create some connections and credibility, and the people would hit me up, email me, message me and say, Hey, I'll dude, I would love for you to mix one of my songs. I like what you were doing. And while I did end up getting some of that, what ended up happening was more and more people were interested in the content I was putting out and they wanted to know how to do more stuff in their home studio. And they had good up questions in the comments after a video, which gave me ideas for other videos. So all that to say, if I had time in between gigs, I needed to stay busy, to feel sane and feel productive and to not feel like a failed husband and father.

Graham Cochrane:
So I would just film videos in between gigs, just to help some people out. And at some point I realized there was a lot of demand for more videos and I wasn't making any money off of it. And I thought at some point I'm going to have to choose between client work and free videos. Is there a way I don't have to choose? Is there way I can monetize something out of these videos so that it becomes part of my business. And that just led me down a journey of trying to figure that out while trying to make better videos and long story short, it turned into the business that it is today that I actually really love. I love the business more than I actually even love mixing and recording music now, which is strange to say, because music has been my life, but it's been a crazy, crazy journey.

Michael Walker:
Amazing. One thing that you mentioned that kind of sticks out is how really for you, it wasn't something you necessarily planned on intentionally early on, but it was just documenting what you were already doing anyways. And then putting that online and kind of seeing what people were getting value out of. Obviously you work with a lot of musicians or you have a large audience of people asking questions and on the frontline, you have a lot of experience with what people are struggling with and what their biggest challenges are. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see musicians specifically struggling with when they kind of start getting into this world of trying to become a content creator and starting to build a presence on YouTube, for example?

Graham Cochrane:
One thing people struggle with in general, when you start to tell people you should make YouTube videos because depending on how you personally use YouTube, certain types of videos come to mind. Do you use YouTube to figure out how to fix your toilet when it's leaking, then you might think, why should I make YouTube videos? I'm not doing the tutorial, how to videos, or do you think of just the funny YouTube channels, a lot of the comedians, the people doing a lot of gags. I'm not entertaining like that. I'm not funny like that. Do you think of all the shock value videos? Do you think of all the, just the guru videos? There's a lot of ways people use YouTube. And so one thing to keep in mind is don't pigeon hole what you could be bringing to people through YouTube based off of what you see other people doing because YouTube there's no one right way to use YouTube. It's nothing but a content platform and a search engine. That's all it is.

Graham Cochrane:
So there's a million people doing a million different things on YouTube and using it differently. I don't even use YouTube from a business standpoint, the way a lot of big YouTubers use it. Short answer, meaning they primarily try to get as many views as possible to make as much ad revenue as possible. And while I make some ad revenue that accounts for maybe 2% of my revenue or 1% of my revenue, I use YouTube for discoverability and to sell eventually my online products that I own that have nothing to do with YouTube. They don't even exist on YouTube, so we all can use YouTube differently. So I think one of the challenges that people face is they're assuming they have to do something a certain way or they don't see how YouTube fits into what they're trying to do.

Graham Cochrane:
And then the other part of the biggest challenge is just the people are really freaked out about cameras. And they're freaked out about the tech, gosh, what camera do I have to use? Just like they are with recording equipment. Like I would love to record, but they just, it becomes a point of friction for them of like, I don't even know what to get. So they get freaked out about the tech and then they get freaked out about being on camera. It's really awkward for people. Well, when you're starting out most human beings, it's awkward to stare into a camera, whether it's a live stream or not, it's awkward.

Graham Cochrane:
Now I've been staring into a camera and talking to myself into a small room by myself for over 10 years. So I'm really used to it and I could do it all day long. But if you go back to my YouTube channel and if you search on videos and sort by oldest to newest, just watch my first few YouTube videos from 2010 and laugh at me and feel better about yourself. That's how I started. It was awkward for a variety of reasons, but most of it not even how bad the video quality looked, just me. I was just awkward on camera and that's normal. So I think people are afraid of that, but the good news for musicians over other people, because I coach people how to use YouTube for their business has nothing to do with music also.

Graham Cochrane:
The good news for musicians is naturally you're a performer. You already have a skill set that most people trying to leverage YouTube don't have, which is the ability to perform. You just have to realize that's all you're doing when you're on camera. You're not faking it. That's not what I mean by perform, but you are being on. When you play a show and Michael, you know all about them, you play shows you're on. You have to be on, you can't just technically play the music well. You have to just also have that energy because people are there to watch you. And it's the same with a camera. It's like, people want to hear what you have to say. Let's say if you're teaching something, but you also have to be on and most musicians inherently can do that. Whereas, normal humans don't. So I almost think musicians have a leg up when it comes to being on camera than normal mere mortals.

Michael Walker:
Amazing. So it sounds like the two biggest challenges that you see are, at least two of the biggest ones are, one, just seeing all these other types of contents in different channels and trying to fit and thinking that you need to be someone else or pigeonholing yourself into a certain category rather than just sort of using it as a platform to express yourself specifically for you. And this mirrors our experience too, with Paradise Fears. We had maybe 17 million YouTube views. And in terms of monetization for us, very, very, very little actual ad revenue.

Michael Walker:
Sometimes I hear from musicians who they think that their main source of revenue is if they get a lot of views on YouTube, it's just going to, the ad revenue is somehow going to be a lot. And for musicians, I think especially the ad revenue is not usually, doesn't add up to a whole lot because the kinds of things that they're advertising it's not the same as a business channel for example. But, it's a super valuable platform in terms of connecting with people and in terms of exposure, in terms of getting in front of new people. And it sounds like what you're saying is that using YouTube as a tool to be able to connect with people, but also to kind of bring them in different offers, different things that exist outside of YouTube can be a smart way to use it as a business.

Michael Walker:
And then the other thing that you talked about, and this is something I can relate to. And I know a lot of people watching this can relate to is the feeling of feeling awkward when you're on camera and not wanting to appear really awkward. And it's challenging because it's kind of like, there's no real way around it. I guess you can kind of practice, but it's like playing an instrument. When you first pick up the instrument, it doesn't matter how much you think about it or how much you try to plan for it. You're going to have to kind of stumble around and kind of learn how to play it. And it's going to feel clunky and awkward at first. And the more you do it, the more it starts to feel natural.

Michael Walker:
Eventually you get to a point like you're at now where it's just automatic. You don't even have to think about playing the song. It just kind of comes out of you, you express yourself and you don't have to be so self-conscious about it. But the challenge is sort of being comfortable with being uncomfortable in the beginning and allowing yourself to kind of get through those awkward initial videos.

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah. That's a great analogy. And no one likes to feel awkward. No one likes to feel, I'm embarrassed. When we're kids, we were actually more open to, this is awkward, but I'll just do it anyway and see if I get good at it. But once we grow up a little bit, we just want to be good at stuff. And I think that's natural. So I think people are more apt to at least, when they're talking to them about discoverability, they're like, I'll just post a social media a lot, just take some pictures or I'll share some clips on social. And maybe that feels a little safer. Maybe it's like, there's a barrier, full on videos, where you're having to upload video seems like too much and it's too awkward.

Graham Cochrane:
And I just think, and we're going to talk about it and that's the whole point of this session, I guess. But I just think YouTube is the greatest thing that has happened to anyone on the internet in terms of discoverability, that's the key word with YouTube is discoverability. I like social media as much as the next guy. I'm technically actually in a social media fast right now, I'm taking a year off. So I'm not on Facebook. I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on Twitter, but they're fun. They're fun platforms, but it's so bizarre to me, how everybody, musicians, brands, businesses, personalities, anybody. They all want big followings on social media. They think that's the new wave of the internet. And while social media has its place, it's a great connecting tool. It's a great way to continue to connect with your current audience, but it's not the best discoverability tool. You can get discovered on Instagram, but how.

Graham Cochrane:
Think about YouTube, YouTube is a giant search engine. People go there all day long to just look up stuff, funny stuff, news, music, anything. They are going there to look for something and it's all keyword driven. Why aren't you there? YouTube is where any brand or any musician should be. It's not that you don't do social. It's just that they have two very different purposes. And YouTube is much like Google. YouTube is the place to be discovered. And then if you want to push them to your Instagram or Facebook or Twitter to like keep up with what you're doing, that's great. And you can have a different side conversations there, but YouTube is what drives so much. Every brand knows it, musicians know it. They need to be there. So I think it's mislabeled as a nice to have. And I think it's the opposite.

Graham Cochrane:
I think social media is nice to have YouTube is essential if you want to constantly get discovered by new people. And we all want that. Especially as musicians, we need fans, we need to be discovered. So I just think it's a critical place to be. And it's worth getting over your fear of being on camera. And here's the good thing. I think we're over the age of slick, polished, perfect people on camera. I think the millennial generation, the generation behind it gen Z or whatever those are being called, we've grown up with video and online video and we're kind of over the people that look super slick and it's almost too perfect. We almost don't trust those people, which is funny because that's the opposite. That's what the 80s and 90s we look for professionalism. And that's what gave us the sense of these people are credible.

Graham Cochrane:
Now what we like, we're so used to streaming. We're so used to phones. We're so used to social that if it looks more real, if the person seems more real, we trust them more and connect with them more. So in a way, that's in your favor, if you're new to YouTube or new to being on camera, if you stumble over your words, if you don't have the slick studio background in a weird way, if you are cool, and if you are likable and if what you're offering and saying, or playing or performing is just connecting with people, they'll look past all of that other stuff. And they'll actually think, dude, this person's another real human being on the other side of the screen. And that's what we're longing for, is human connection. And especially right now in the middle of this whole coronavirus thing, but we're always longing for human connection. So there's less pressure to be polished or to say it right all the time or even look perfect. There's just a lot more freedom, I think.

Michael Walker:
Cool. So it sounds like what you're saying is that, now this actually kind of works out in people's benefit because people, we crave authenticity, we crave connection more than anything, and showing up and having quirks or making mistakes. It actually reminds me of one of my clients, there's a couple of different videos that we created for an ad campaign. And one of them was one early on where he was a little bit nervous, he was doing it for his first time. And then he recorded a new one. And in this new one, he actually started out by making a mistake. He kind of stuttered over his words and his friend recording was like, dude, just cut it, it's cool. And then he kind of recovered from it.

Michael Walker:
And the new one was the one that actually ended up, they went from 77 cents a message down to like 7 cents a message. So it was almost a 10 times increase in the effectiveness of that one ad. And it was actually more like, there was a mistake in the very beginning compared to the other one where there wasn't technically a mistake, but it didn't feel as authentic in the first one. It definitely felt more real in the second one. So it sounds like what you're saying is that right now it's okay if you're starting out and you're not perfect and people don't necessarily expect you to be perfect. We don't want you to be perfect, we want you to be you and YouTube in its finest form is really about you expressing yourself as an artist and starting to build, following around who you are and your message.

Michael Walker:
So let's say that someone watching this right now, they're kind of on the edge. They know that they should, they're like, okay, I should be on YouTube. I know it's a great platform, but gosh, I don't even know where do I start? Do I just start recording random videos? Or how do they get started on the process of building a YouTube presence?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah. That's a great question. Like a lot of things it works well if you have a plan and it also works well if you're flexible and you discover yourself as it goes. You don't want to just wing it completely. When you start to put out YouTube videos, no matter what it is, especially if you're a musician, you have to view yourself as a content creator, you are a musician. And what you want is to build a following or fan base and make a living, or just get more well-known or whatever your personal goals are. But the method that we're using to get that, that you want is to create content, a.k.a videos that people consume so that you can create that connection. And then once you have that connection and you build that audience, you can monetize that audience in a million different ways if that's what you need.

Graham Cochrane:
And so you are by definition, a content creator, if you put out a video and so you have to think like a good content creator. And a good content creator has a general idea of what type of content their ideal person wants to consume. And then a general plan of, I'm going to put out this amount of content this frequently and hit these types of topics. And so instead of just saying, I should just start putting out videos, that's overwhelming. How many videos, how often, what are they going to be about, too open-ended. And so people get crushed under the weight of, I just don't know what to do. It's too much. So I like to compartmentalize, at least helps my brain. So the way I view content on a few different channels and how I teach other people to do it is to have a content rhythm and then content buckets.

Graham Cochrane:
So the rhythm you would say is how often can you commit realistically to putting out a new video on YouTube? Is it once a week, twice a week, is it three times a week. I don't know. You get to decide what you realistically can do. I don't like to necessarily say you have to do a certain amount because everyone's in a different season of life. Everyone's world's got turned upside down right now. Like my kids are home. A lot of people's kids are home. It's harder to have time to film a video if you have kids or your spouse, or maybe you don't have access to a cool space you used to go to, whatever. So you have to be flexible, but the key with content is can you be consistent?

Graham Cochrane:
So with the Recording Revolution, I've been putting out one video a week on YouTube every week for 10 years. I mean, I just haven't missed. And sometimes I've done more when I've done certain mini series or whatever, but I'm consistent, I'm not amazing. I'm not unique. I'm not really that special, but I haven't given up and I continue to show up every week, like your favorite TV show, it's always there every Tuesday at 8:00 or whenever. If it wasn't there one week, you'd be like, where did it go? People need to learn your rhythm. So pick a rhythm that you could realistically commit to. Obviously the more videos you can make in a shorter amount of time, the better you have a chance of moving through the early awkward stages and getting some traction.

Graham Cochrane:
But I'd say minimum once a week, if you can do more great. So there's the rhythm. What can you commit to, and then what do you do your videos on? What content buckets? So typically I would say every YouTube channel or a person on YouTube should have four to five categories or buckets that all your content would fit under. So for a musician, one content bucket might be, your original songs. Either it's a music video, or it's a performance of one of your original songs. And so obviously if you're writing new songs, you're just doing a video of those every once a month or whatever. And then one bucket it might be covers. These are really, really important for musicians on YouTube. Because again, people aren't searching for you when you're starting out, because they don't know about you as much. They're searching for bigger named artists and more popular songs. So if you can do covers, then you can use those keywords, Taylor Swift or whomever, in the title of the video and the name of the song. That's how you get discovered when other keywords are being typed in.

Graham Cochrane:
So I think every musician should have a content bucket of covers. You shouldn't just, just do covers. That should be one fourth or one fifth of your content, at least. So that would be a bucket. What covers could you do and make them cool. Don't just do the same song the same way. I love when Chris Cornell from Soundgarden did Billie Jean by Michael Jackson and he slowed it down and made it this weird, sad ballot instead of a dance track, that was a creative cover of a famous song. He didn't use it to be famous, but he just did it because he thought he could do something fresh. But so your original music could be a bucket. Covers could be a bucket. You could do live Q and A's behind the scenes of your song writing process of the way you come up with songs of writing lyrics, you could just live stream rehearsals with your band or while you're just recording.

Graham Cochrane:
And then you can have another bucket, that's just stuff about your life. I don't know, but think about if I had to think of all the type of videos I could make or videos that other bands that I have liked make on YouTube, could I categorize them in four to five categories? That's a one-time kind of job. Once you figure that out, it becomes real simple. Like, okay, if I had four categories, I'm trying to do one video a week, that's about four videos a month. I want to have at least one of those types of videos each month. So if you map out a whole year of content in your Google doc with, look, I need 10 covers. I'll do those 10 covers. I'll do 10 of these original songs. You start to quickly map out six months to a year's worth of content on paper. And that just gives you a lot of confidence. Oh, this isn't really that hard to at least come up with the ideas.

Graham Cochrane:
And that's where a lot of people get stuck with the what, that's the planning part of things. And you just start to chip away at rotating through, one cover this week and then original, and then a Q and A and you balance out your content buckets. But then as you start making videos, you have to pay attention to what people like and what people click on to view and what videos get the most comments and what are those comments and what videos get picked up by the algorithm, which eventually they will, you'll have one or two or three that just YouTube likes and starts to send you disproportionate traffic. It's not going to be even across all your video that never is. You don't know what that part will look like. And that's okay. And that takes time of just consistently putting out videos and then listening to the feedback as it were just like any musician would.

Graham Cochrane:
You write a bunch of songs and you find out which ones your audience likes at shows, which ones they're streaming the most on Spotify. You don't know, you have a plan, but then you also pay attention. And man, then it becomes fun because you quickly realize where you can add the most value and what to adjust in your content plan. And heck YouTube gives you a whole suite of analytics that are actually really powerful. You can see what videos are watching, how many minutes are they watching? When do they drop off in your videos? Whatever you're interested in knowing about who these people are and what they like, you can find out for free to just then not reinvent the wheel and make more videos like what people already want. And once you do that, it's a feedback loop or you're giving YouTube what it wants and it's giving you what you want. And then everyone's kind of happy, but you don't know that until you start putting out videos and you have to consistently put out videos long enough to get some data that's worth looking at.

Graham Cochrane:
But I think if you have the content rhythm and the buckets, and then you just commit to putting it out, that will take some of the pressure off and just view it as it's work. I mean, being a musician is work. So this is just a new type of work. It's not glamorous. It's not quick, but I'll tell you, man, it pays off in the long run because YouTube content, unlike social media content is evergreen. It's always there. It's always searchable. I'll tell you today, I get most of my traffic and leads and followers. And I'm discovered most by videos that I've shot multiple years ago. I mean, my current videoshelped some, but it's, I did the video once I moved on and years later, it is still sending me fresh new leads to find out about me. Social media, your Instagram feed, that that video is gone. That Instastory is gone, that Facebook posts is gone. And so if you want to be efficient with your time, I can't think of anything more efficient than doing a video once and it paying dividends years and years later. So it is a strategy that works, if you're willing to build this pipeline of discoverability for you over time, you're laying the groundwork, giving it time and just making it part of your musician rhythm.

Michael Walker:
Oh, what's up guys. So quick intermission from the podcast so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public. They're normally reserved for our $5,000 clients that will personally. This is a presentation called six steps to explode your fanbase and make a profit with your music online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel. It's going to allow you to grow your fan base online in a systems designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you.

Michael Walker:
And so if that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that. And the other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating new podcast is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. And so that'll help us reach a lot more people. So if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast. This is blowing my mind. This is really awesome.

Michael Walker:
One thing that comes to mind in terms of what you're describing is that it seems like this strategy in particular is really kind of planting the roots of a tree. And yeah, it takes some time when you start planting a tree and you start nurturing it and watching it grow, it's not like the day afterwards, you're going to see a bunch of fruit blossoming, but it is something that's a really strong foundation if you keep nurturing it, if you keep coming back to it and you have feedback based on what's working, then eventually it does start to blossom and it starts to pay dividends and the fruits keep coming over and over again, years and years later, I love the two ideas that you kind of mapped out content rhythm, and content buckets.

Michael Walker:
So your recommendation is just figuring out what can you commit to at least starting out? What kind of rhythm can you commit to? Minimum once a week would be a good target to shoot for, of releasing a new video and in terms of actually creating the content for it, a really good place to start is by mapping out four to five buckets or different categories based on just ideas that you think that you'd enjoy sharing and that people might enjoy as well. Again, it's like at the beginning, you don't know for sure, what are people going to find most valuable? You'll get that feedback and you'll learn as you put it out. A couple of clues might be looking at some of your favorite artists and what kind of things are they posting? And then maybe categorizing them into four or five buckets.

Michael Walker:
There's one term that used that really kind of clicked. I'm like, this is actually, this is a good name for a concept for made a concept creative cover because for my band, covers were definitely a huge part of our YouTube strategy. One of our covers got 4 million views and it was a great source of discoverability. But the trick is, like you mentioned that you have to do the covers in a unique way and you don't want to just, it has to have something special to it. It has to be creative. It has to be a creative cover that kind of takes the original thing and kind of shifts it on its side so that someone listening to it, they kind of get this buzz of Oh, it's familiar, but it's also unique. And it's like, Oh, cool. That kind of shifted things about.

Michael Walker:
One example of a video that reminds me of is Disturbed, did a cover of Sound of Silence and Disturbed is a pretty hardcore kind of band. And my dad of all people, I remember him hitting me up and being like, have you heard this cover of Disturbed? Dad, why are you listening to Disturbed? Where's this coming from? And if you look on their YouTube, Disturbed is a pretty established band by far, it's not even close. I think it's somewhere in the billions of views is this cover of Sound of Silence. And I think a big part of it is because they took the song that most people were familiar with. They've heard the song, it's a great song and they really made it their own and they made it, it was a creative cover and it was very cinematic and the way that they did it was really cool.

Michael Walker:
So this idea of one of those buckets being creative covers, it seems like a really, that's a golden nugget is figuring out what are some creative ideas or creative takes you can do on other covers that are well known, even going to billboard and seeing what's charting right now and kind of doing credit covers based on that seems like a really smart strategy in terms of capitalizing on the amount of traffic that those new songs are getting off the bat. So those buckets that you talked about, so it was just off the top of your head too, but these are really good. I felt like the creative covers, original songs, it could be a lyric video. It could be a music video, which is original music. Maybe even a live performance could be one of the buckets.

Michael Walker:
The live stream is behind the scenes videos. Just kind of sharing your process of recording the song, sharing behind the scenes of what inspired the song seems like a really great bucket. So we talked a little bit about the fear and kind of the idea of, being shy and starting out, how that kind of holds a lot of people back. Are there any other challenges that kind of come up that are obstacles that get in the way of people staying consistent? It's like putting it out or?

Graham Cochrane:
Well, I mean, everything is going to get in the way. I feel like most YouTube channels, just like most blogs, just like most bands. They start with a bright flame and then they just die out. Most people aren't consistent and it could be because life got in the way and legitimately, they had to stop. It could be that they didn't enjoy it anymore. That's fine. But for it to work, it has to be consistent, even the Recording Revolution as a resource for musicians to record their music. I mean, I was certainly not the first, there's certainly more now, but some of the people that were really established when I was starting out, had big followings, that had brand recognition that people trusted and they did well, I don't know where they are anymore and if they don't want to do it anymore, that's one thing.

Graham Cochrane:
But I think a lot of people thought I could build some stuff. Let's say you do a cover, like Disturbed it. And it blows up. You're like, great. I've got all these views. Now I can chill, that's the kind of stuff that leads to channels dying out is that you have to consistently show up. So I think life is just going to get in the way. So that's why I'm more interested in you thinking through your real life, your real commitments, the other things that you do for both your music and your life and saying, what can I actually commit to? It has to be sacrifice. You have to sacrifice something, maybe go off social media, maybe watch less Tiger King on Netflix. I don't know, but give up something. Realistically, how much can you do? Don't assume, I'll do three videos a week and it'll be great.

Graham Cochrane:
If you can't realistically keep up with that, I'd rather you just do one video a week and be able to bang it out every week for years and years than to do three for a week for a month or two, and then fizzle out because you're sort of blasted from all the work and you can't keep it up. So it really is about committing, it's about discipline. And I wish there was a better answer than discipline, but if you want anything in life, you have to take action and be disciplined about it. If you want to lose weight, you can't just wish. You have to take actions consistently for a long time. We know this, it's the saying, how bad do you want it? This isn't hard. You don't have to be the best. I mean, the internet and especially in YouTube, in particular is the great equalizer. It's super democratic.

Graham Cochrane:
Even their algorithm recently changed. YouTube recently changed their algorithm to a weight, the size of your subscriber base on YouTube less than they used to. Meaning, for example, my YouTube channel half a million subscribers, let's say that used to really help me with search results. So if someone typed in vocal microphone or home studio, I have those key words in a lot of my videos, I have a big following. In theory, I would show up before a lot of these smaller channels talking about it, then YouTube got smart because everyone has an angle. Everyone has something thereafter. YouTube is after advertising dollars to get advertising dollars, they need you and I to watch YouTube all day long and never stop. So to keep watching all day long, they have to keep delivering up the most relevant content when we type up something. So we're pleased with what shows up in the search result is like, yes, that's what I was looking for.

Graham Cochrane:
Which means they're going to favor videos that people tend to click on and watch longer after they've clicked on it. Meaning that kind of confirms that it's what they wanted and videos that get lots of engagement, which means people are really in liking it. So that doesn't mean it's going to hurt me. But what it means is it's going to help the new YouTube channel that has hardly any subscribers, as long as people tend to like their videos, watch them for a long period of time, engage with them. So it sort of removed the old guard of wow, he's been around for 10 years. He's got more subscribers than I do. That's not as helpful as it used to be. I'm seeing fewer and fewer views. And I'm seeing newer channels with a lot of views, even though they don't have hardly any subscribers in my space.

Graham Cochrane:
So it forces me to keep making better content, which is what it should be. It's good for the end user, but it really benefits a new YouTube channel, even though no one knows who you are, you have a better fighting chance than you did a decade ago when I started YouTube because the algorithm favors you. As long as you find out what people are liking and you make more of it then that really should help you out.

Michael Walker:
Cool. So just kind of recap, it sounds like. Especially recently, they just made a new update to algorithm and what they care about the most is just relevancy. They want to make sure that people are seeing what's relevant to them. And if they're watching as long as possible, because that's how YouTube makes their money is they deliver value, they deliver attention. And one thing I want to kind of dip back into, because really, I feel like it's not necessarily the successiest thing but it's at the core and it really is kind of what drives success is the discipline and the actually just showing up and doing the work.

Michael Walker:
Like we know a lot of us know what we should be doing, but for whatever reason, we're not doing it. So you ask someone who has overcome that and has shown up consistently and keeps doing it. Where does that come from? How do you keep consistent and how do you keep yourself accountable? Do you have accountability that helps you? Or is it just you just sticking through with it and just having a grit or how do you set that up? How do you set up the circumstances to give you accountability and create that discipline to keep going?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, that's a good question. So when I started, the accountability was I just needed to make a living. I was accountable to my wife. I would go into my little spare bedroom. She had a little, one month old, two month old. And in between gigs, I'm like, I have to do something. I have to work. I can't just sit here and hope clients find me. I can't control a lot. So what can I control? And so I just needed to keep myself busy. And so as I was learning the business model of how content works, I didn't quite know it then, as I know it now. I knew all I could control was how much content I put out in the world and how consistently I put it out. And I figured, gosh, my videos might suck. But eventually after I make a lot of them, some of them got to suck less. And that's just sort of common sense. I figured eventually I would hit something that really people liked.

Graham Cochrane:
And so I think the pressure of like a, I need to just keep myself busy. I don't want to look lazy or feel lazy. And I want to be able to go to bed at night, feeling like I did all I could do, even though I can't control a lot of it, all I could do. And then two, I really needed to make money. And so that was what gave me drive in the beginning. And I think I was really blessed by that need. If I didn't have that, I don't know if I would have been as disciplined by nature. Now, knowing what I know that, although there's so much you can't control, you can't control the algorithm on any platform. You can't control life events in the world, or even in your own family, you can't control the economy. You can't control what people want or don't want, but you can control how much content you put out, how well you pay attention to what content people like.

Graham Cochrane:
It's not that hard to figure that out by the way, but you can't control those things but you can control how authentic you are. I think you mentioned that word earlier, Michael, and that's the key word is authenticity. You don't have to be anyone else. In fact, it won't work very well if you try to be anyone else. People, I don't want everyone to follow me. And you shouldn't either. There's a lot of people that can't stand me for whatever reason and they should leave. But I want people to really like me for me, because that loyalty is really powerful. And that connection is really powerful because then if I say, Hey, I've got a new album. I'd love for you to stream it. They'll go stream it because they like me and trust me. That's the power is in the audience.

Graham Cochrane:
So if you're just constantly putting out content and it's paying attention to what your audience wants and you're authentic, that's all you can control, honestly. I have seen now across two different brands of my own, and then the other people I coach that is the big difference, what you sell, how you monetize, what your financial goals are big or small audience. Those are all variables that don't really matter as much as what's consistently the case in all of these success stories is showing up consistently. And that takes discipline. So I don't know, if you're a musician and you got good at your instrument, you probably practiced a lot. And practice is probably half. Just because you know you should and half because you like to play the instrument.

Graham Cochrane:
In an ideal world, you'd be like, I practice just because I want to, it's fun. But we all know that, especially when you're starting out it is part just like I know I need to keep my shops up or to get better, or I'm really trying to get that drum fill. And you just know it's going to take a while of practicing. Dude, it's the same thing here. If you want something bad enough, you'll do what it takes to get it. And I'm basically saying that creating content consistently, especially on a platform like YouTube is a way to get the audience you want. It's probably the best way, especially if you can't tour right now. And so I would say, how bad do you want it? And how much are you willing to sacrifice for it?

Graham Cochrane:
You don't have to give it everything. I'm not saying you have to, I'm not Grant Cardone, I'm not saying 10X, everything in your life, that's not realistic. That's not the way my life, I want it to look. But I will say, what can I give it? And I will put it on calendar. And I just make it a rule of my life that I have to deliver at least one piece of content every week, rain or shine. And there's no one holding me accountable, but myself, I'm my own boss, which is good and bad, but I know it feeds the machine. And it works, even though it's not like a one for one, I do this video and then money comes in or audience grows. It's all fit in together. But if you're not disciplined by nature, maybe just trust what I'm saying. if you trust me, maybe make it a game and that's why it has to be content you care about, that's why it has to be fun.

Graham Cochrane:
And you get to decide what you want to do. You get to decide what kind of YouTube channel you have. Some musicians don't do a ton of serious performances. Most of their YouTube stuff is funny behind the scenes. And if that's what people like, that's cool, but do what you like to do and can do consistently it will pay off, but treat it like anything else you do in your strategy for writing songs or recording. Whatever you take seriously, you probably will block out time for, I know all musicians are like, I know we're flighty, but I'll take recording my album seriously, because I want to sound good. So are we doing drums today? Are we doing vocals today? It's the same thing. But you have to believe that this content stuff works enough to be like, yeah it's going to be part of my weekly rhythm.

Michael Walker:
Beautiful. So it sounds like what you're saying is that in your case, especially early on the discipline and the commitment came from a need and it came from needing to provide for your one month old and your family and needing to do something. And I can definitely relate with that as well, because I think that's a very strong need for a lot of people is needing to provide for their families. And ultimately your discipline, your ability to do things is related to your level of need that is either created for you because of circumstances or you find a way to manufacture your own accountability, your own need. One of my mentors, Evan Hagan talks about making things inevitable, making success inevitable and this is kind of extreme, but it's one way that you could manufacture the need or manufacturer accountability if you need to drive, is actually writing a check for $1,000 and sending it to a friend and saying every week I'm going to record a new video. I'm going to release it. If I don't release a new video by this date, then I want you to cash the check no matter what.

Michael Walker:
Making it whatever is enough for you to make it like, okay, it's more painful to have to pay $1,000 than to not create the video. Because there's going to be things that come up where life is going to get in the way. And then you have to be kind of weighing the decision, okay, is it worth $1,000 to not do it this week? Even if I just get something up rough and raw. So maybe that's why you can kind of manufacture it. But ultimately the people who are the most successful, the musicians who really make it, a lot of times you see them, they have so much drive and so much perseverance and they've needed to because they've gotten rejected over and over and over again. And yeah, but it's kind of like thinking about where that comes from. In some cases, I think it is needing to provide for a family. In some cases, it's comes from this deep need as an artist to express who you are, but ultimately setting up the circumstances in your life.

Michael Walker:
So that's what you want to have happen, happens automatically. Maybe having a coach, having someone who's going to hold you accountable could be really helpful, but ultimately you just got to find a way to make it happen and to commit to something that realistically you can do to believe in it and to believe in it even in the beginning, when you just planted the seed and there's not a beautiful forest or beautiful fruits blossoming yet, but having faith and believing, if I keep nurturing this, it's going to grow. And to do that, sometimes you need to listen to someone like Graham. And be like, okay, this is someone who's walked the walk and I can see the tree. Just tell me how to plant it.

Michael Walker:
Sometimes, it's taking a leap of faith and really believing in something, but then believing in yourself and being willing to stick with it and having belief in yourself, even when people around you, maybe they don't support you or they don't believe in you. That can be a really tough one. But it sounds like that's really kind of at the crux of a lot of this is having that belief, having the discipline, setting things up so that you do the hard work, even when sometimes you don't necessarily feel like it.

Graham Cochrane:
You said it perfectly. I love this practical examples and just kind of a thought here is, it's easy to say, Oh, I wish I had a million people following me on YouTube and watching my videos. Well, short of a few people that just got lucky. And I even have a friend, posted a random video and it just got lucky, went viral. That doesn't happen as often as people think it does. The people that have a lot of followers or a lot of views on any of these platforms when you wanted what they had, they were years before you working towards it. And it takes time. It does take time. So these people are relentless. They do have drive. Now, I don't have the same drive as others. There's people that have much bigger goals and ambitions than I do. I don't think I'm the most ambitious person.

Graham Cochrane:
But I have seen the power of consistency. And you can't in one breath wish you had a big following or wish people knew about you in the same breath. Be like, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to put up videos every week. You can't do that, it's not fair to yourself. You can't have one without the other. It no magic to any of this. But the great thing is if this were the 1990s, this would be so much harder, so much harder to distribute your own music, to have a fan base, to directly connect with people, millions of people all over the world, that would be so hard. You'd need a label. You'd need so many other middlemen that you'd have to pay or get paid somehow to do it for you.

Graham Cochrane:
You are so lucky that you have a tool that is free, like YouTube where you can instantly be where everyone else is, where they're typing up stuff, where you can be discovered. And it's not that hard, but it's not magic. It's just, you've got the tools and you just make a decision to either want it bad enough to do what it takes and it doesn't take much or be okay with the fact that you're not getting discovered. You can't have both, if that's what I'm getting at.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Graham dude, thank you so much for taking the time to come on here. I personally feel really inspired from this. I know we talked a little bit before we started the interview about Modern Musician as a business. Most of our business right now is kind of driven from Facebook and Instagram ads and traffic. It's a great tool and a great resource. But one thing that we've been talking about for a while is building a YouTube presence, starting to create more videos. So I'm personally going to take a lot of this to heart and do this for Modern Musician and for music projects too. So I really appreciate you taking the time to show up to things like this and share your experience because yeah, it is important to have someone that you see that has grown a wonderful tree full of fruits, and to have someone feel to guide people. It's an amazing service. So really appreciate you taking the time to be here.

Graham Cochrane:
Thanks for having me.

Michael Walker:
Cool. So our last question is, for anyone right now that they want to learn more about Recording Revolution or they want to connect more with you, where do you recommend that they go check you out?

Graham Cochrane:
If you want to check out more of the home studio stuff, the technical stuff and music production and how to make it sound good, even on a budget, then recordingrevolution.com or Recording Revolution inside YouTube. There's just a ton of content there. Whether you need gear recommendations or just, you don't understand how to use all the plugins and stuff that comes in your software. That's pretty much the go-to place for all that kind of stuff. And then if the content side of things and the monetizing, an audience side of things is really interesting to you, I have a whole other platform under my name, Grahamcochrane.com or on YouTube, including a podcast there as well, where I'm breaking down, sort of all of that stuff, sort of brand building online. And then that might be really, really helpful for you.

Graham Cochrane:
A bunch of free content to just sort of figure out how does YouTube or any of these platforms play a role in building an audience, which is exactly what musicians are doing. It's the same as brands. We all need to build an audience to then be able to serve them. And we can monetize that audience in a way that's beautiful and generous and everybody wins. So I'm talking about that at grahamcochrane.com every week too.

Michael Walker:
Amazing. And you have some free gifts, you have I think actually a free book that you let people download at Recording Revolution that kind of gives them an outline, here's how you record radio or the songs in a home studio. And it's awesome. And I think you also have a free guide as well for the Graham Cochrane side of things. So what we'll do is we'll put the buttons below this so people can go check those out if they want to learn more. Yeah, man, again, just thank you. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. And I appreciate you.

Graham Cochrane:
Pumped to be here, Michael, thanks.

Michael Walker:
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 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 or on your 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 who want to take the music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.