Jack Forman:
And I think the other big mistake is not thinking of yourself as a business person. A lot of musicians are very intimidated by business, I'm intimidated by it and I'm not a musician. There's a lot you got to know, but just having the mindset of, "I'm an artist, this is my brand, this is my livelihood, this is my business."

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution on today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right. I'm excited to be here today with Jack Forman. Jack is the president of BiCoastal Productions, which is a New York based company that specializes in booking concerts and theatrical performances. And one thing that I discovered when I was looking up your bio, Jack, was, not only do you book some of the top performing musicians, but you also book some comedy acts. So Colin, is it pronounced as Mochrie, from Whose Line Is It Anyways?

Jack Forman:
Yeah. Yeah, like you're making a mockery, that's how you-

Michael Walker:
Oh, Mochrie. Okay, there you go. Yeah, I saw his face and I'm like, "Oh, dude, I know that guy. I love that show."

Jack Forman:
He's great. He's really great.

Michael Walker:
So what that means is that he's specialized in getting artists booked at performing arts centers, theaters, casinos, fairs, festivals. And so today, I thought it would be really awesome to dig into live shows. At the time recording, we're around the corner when it comes to the pandemic, things have been closed down for a long time. I think they're starting to open back up, but there's a lot of uncertainty still just in terms of how safe is it to gather and what do live events look like now in this post-pandemic world? So I'm looking forward to having a discussion with Jack to have some of his insight in terms of, what do shows look like right now that we're approaching that point? And where do we think things are going to go in the future?

Michael Walker:
So, Jack, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Jack Forman:
Thank you, Michael. I appreciate you guys having me on.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So to start out with, I'd love to hear just a little bit about your story and how you got started and how you became the president of this company.

Jack Forman:
Well, it's weird for me. It was always music. It was always business and music. I have zero musical abilities myself, I don't sing, I don't play an instrument, but I've always been fascinated with the business aspect of concerts, especially. But I went to an art school in Chicago and it was all about artist rights, recording, royalty management and artist management, artist development. And I just became so enamored with it. And all of a sudden, I decided I was just going to try to go after every internship I could. I interned for a couple of record labels, spent some time in New York for a little bit and took a semester off. Interned at the Windish Agency in Chicago before it was a part of Paradigm. So really cut my teeth there and just got a ton of experience.

Jack Forman:
I started communicating around graduation with ICM Partners in New York, and they had a spot open for me after I graduated, so I basically had two days to pack up and move. I was living in Wisconsin at the time, so I couldn't move fast enough, but I ended up coming to ICM out here, spent a few months there working as an assistant to a hip hop agent there, which was great. Learned a lot. Wasn't really the right track for me and it wasn't the best time for me to be there, so I ended up just bowing out. I still talk to the agent sometimes to this day. He's great. But shortly afterwards, I met Ron Gardner and Fran Heller who founded BiCoastal, and I've been with them for now a little bit over seven years.

Jack Forman:
It's really been amazing to not only watch our company grow from the size it was to the size it is now, but also to be a part of that growth and to experience it more and more. I've always enjoyed the way we do things, and our artists rosters continue to develop and grow. And I've been very fortunate to have people that support me and believe in me, and not everybody gets that in a company they enter blindly. I was made president shortly after the pandemic broke out, so it was a kind of weird timing, but I wasn't going to say no and I wasn't going to not show my appreciation because it really has been an amazing year as well as a devastating, horrible year at times too.

Michael Walker:
For sure. Yeah, what a time to become the president of a booking agency, right around the time when everything's closed down, you have got to pivot and do all these unique style of performances. So now that you have this roster and you had gotten into this groove of booking the shows, I'm curious, what was it like when the pandemic happened, and what did you guys do to pivot? And what were the biggest challenges that you saw artist struggling with at the point that the pandemic struck when it comes to live shows?

Jack Forman:
Well, when it immediately struck, our concerns and focuses were on the touring shows that were out on the road at the time. A lot of our artists, they tour sporadically, they're not necessarily doing months at a time. But it just so happened to be during a time when we had two different international artists in The States on buses in the middle of nowhere in the country driving to their next shows and then dates just dropped left and right, it was like being on the stock market on a bad day. So not only did we have to worry about where we were going to put them and where they were going to be safe, we also had to worry about getting them home. So that was quite a week.

Jack Forman:
Shows just started to cancel left and right, cancel, reschedule, restructure. Basically, every agent that survived this had to learn to adapt, learn to be a whole lot better teammate. I think for us, the struggle was trying to modernize with the world that had already been developing on the back burner before the pandemic, that all of a sudden became super relevant. All of a sudden, virtual performances, virtual engagement became paramount. That was everything. So we had to not only embrace it, but we had to make sure our artists embraced it and that they had content and that they were going live, that they were doing all kinds of things. And we ended up starting to get into booking virtual performances.

Jack Forman:
Not that it was our preferred method, but we really dove head first into that. We partnered with a couple of companies. We became very friendly with a number of different streaming platforms. The one that we aligned ourselves with in the beginning most was a company called Veeps that was bought by Live Nation eventually, great company. But we really, surprisingly enough, banded together more with other agents, which is surprising because most of us are super competitive, but a lot of us got together and it's been a really good teamwork building back together, kind of a nice kumbaya.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Nothing like adversity and a challenge to bring people together. One thing that comes to mind is this whole ecosystem with Twitch and Twitch streaming. It was the kind of thing where if you would've told me when I was like 10 years old that it was possible in the future that I could get paid to play video games, then I probably wouldn't be here right now, I'd probably be sitting in a cave somewhere playing video games. But part of the reason that it's grown so much, it's just that they have such an interesting ecosystem and community of people. And one of the things that they do is, they do these things called raids, or it's basically like one streamer will be playing and then as soon as they're about to bow out, they'll be like, "Hey, let's go raid this other streamer," and they bring all of their people over to this other streamer.

Michael Walker:
And so there's this ebb and flow and this cross pollination that's happening. And in some ways, I feel like with the virtual performances, there's almost an opportunity for less competition because there is this being virtual, there's not as much limitation, at least in terms of local competition versus... There's a lot wider market. So it's interesting to think about the collaboration that can happen between booking agents coming together online. In some ways, there's such a big transition to go from really focusing on live shows in-person, to being completely virtual. What was the process like for artists, for adapting and going virtual? Was that challenging for artists and what was that like for them to go through?

Jack Forman:
Some of them, it was challenging, some of them were not as technically apt, but I think if a pandemic was going to happen, there's no good time for it to happen, but for it to happen in 2020 and '21 where the technology is there and it's very accessible, I guess that's one way of looking at it half full. A lot of artists really were very intimidated by it, especially older artists who are more traditional. A lot of them thought, "Well, nobody will ever buy that." Or, "That's not really a viable means of connecting with my audience." But you needed to do something unless you're somebody really, really big who can incubate for a couple of years and then come back and everybody's happy to see you.

Jack Forman:
A lot of artists on the rise really got creative, and a lot of stuff became super unique and they found ways of packaging it. We worked with a lot of artists in different ways. We represent an artist, Lee Rocker from the Stray Cats. He's this classic musician who's done it all, seen it all. What he did is he took a pre-existing special that he had recorded at Daryl's House, and he released it for free but he only made it available to theaters and theaters could release it to for free to their audiences so that they had content to put out. And then a lot of our artists followed suit with that. We have another act called Naturally 7 that we book here in North America, it's an acapella group, really incredible group.

Jack Forman:
And they did ticketed live stream events that run really well. They were reaching fans all around the world at different times and it was just something very, very unique. Every artist found a way of doing it. Sometimes we even partnered with theaters or partnered with a festival or a promoter and say, "Hey you have this audience locally in the other side of the country or the other side of the world even, that we're not able to reach obviously as well as you can, you're hurting, I guarantee you're hurting. So let's do something. We got nothing better to do other than reschedule shows and try to file for some grants and restructure our business, work from home."

Jack Forman:
There was really nothing to lose for a lot of artists and a lot of venues. And the ones that survived are oftentimes the ones who, if they weren't attached to a college or a city or a big corporation, they were ones who got super creative. I'm on the Jersey Shore, there's the Count Basie theater right near me, they were having outdoor concerts from the very beginning of the pandemic and were selling them out. And it wasn't a get rich type of thing, but it was keeping them going and keeping their employees paid. So stuff like that is really what got people through I'd say. It was hard, but people got it. They really did.

Michael Walker:
That's so interesting, and powerful too to see like the ingenuity that comes out of challenging situations and see how people creatively adapt. It sounds like what you're saying is that one thing that you guys did successfully was actually reaching out to theaters and places, venues that had... So, did they have a preexisting list, like an email list or text message list? How did they communicate? How did they reach those people? And then you were able to partner with them to do these ticketed events. I'm also curious what software you guys have tried out and gotten the best results with in terms of doing ticketed events.

Jack Forman:
Well, it depended. That was the fun part, was working on ticketed events virtually where these venues would have like a 10-year contract with Ticketmaster, and then all of a sudden you're bringing in this weird live stream software that has its own ticketing, and sure enough, Houston, we have a problem. Every so often we did it in a weird way, like Collin Mochrie, whom you mentioned at the top of this, him and Brad Sherwood, a frequent Whose Line Is It Anyway guest, they do a tour almost all year round when they're not doing other shows. And they did a bunch of Zoom improvisational shows with limited audiences.

Jack Forman:
And I believe some of them were partnered with theaters where they would share in the revenue. For some times, it would be a split from dollar one because that was the problem. It was such a hard thing to predict how well something would sell virtually. It's a whole new set of data that is alien to most producers. But for a lot of people, some would actually still use their stage, they would get a handful of cameras. They'd wire them all into do an interface via OBS or some sort of comparable software. And they would insert a stream key into OBS, Open Broadcasts. for those who aren't as apt like me, they would insert a stream key from whatever software they were going to use.

Jack Forman:
I mentioned Veeps before. Veeps made it real easy, they gave you the server and the stream key, and you hooked it up and you directed people to buy tickets. And there was a paywall. There was another company we worked with called NoonChorus that could literally embed the concert into any website. There was a lot of different ways that this could work and a lot of creative ways, but at the bare bones of it was OBS, just people doing it via Twitch. The best example that most musicians know about is this guy from the band Trivium, Matt Heafy, I believe his name is. Hafey, Heafy. He was on Twitch five hours a day, just streaming his life and he had millions of people following him, just watching him play his guitar and work out and do whatever he does.

Jack Forman:
It's amazing. Like you said, when we were kids to think about getting paid to play video games and just have people watch us do what we do, I still can't believe it. It still doesn't resonate to me.

Michael Walker:
It is crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. It's really robust, it's a hardcore community. So it sounds like what you're saying is that really, at the core of it, there's a lot of different softwares, a lot of different services that came up. And really, it's just about finding a way to distribute. You guys still perform, but to do it online, you can use a software like OBS. I know there's Wirecast Pro is a software you can use and a lot of different ones that you can do in different platforms, basically creating a paywall or a gate between where people can sign up and get the events. You mentioned how one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that it happened at a time where at least we had the internet and we had Zoom and we had like the infrastructure to not just be completely blocked off, which yeah, I can only imagine what it would be like 40 or 50 years ago, it would be so much worse.

Michael Walker:
But I also wonder, because as you were describing that as imagining virtual reality headsets, I don't know, like 30 or 40 years in the future as virtual reality becomes more and more evolved, what it would be if like. Maybe wouldn't even be affected at all, it's like, "Oh yeah, cool. I'll start my VR headset and I'll be at a concert and we'll just hang out and we'll have these VR experiences." I don't want to go down too much the rabbit hole, but have you seen anything in terms of VR shows, is that even a thing yet? Or is it still too early or it just isn't good yet? What have you seen so far around VR?

Jack Forman:
It's definitely a thing. And it's been a thing for a lot of years, but a lot of people couldn't fathom it. I'll admit first off, a lot of my shows cater to 50 and older crowd. We've gotten younger with our roster over the years, but we still have a number of acts that cater to a seated performing arts center type crowd. Those people aren't necessarily rushing to get VR headsets. But if you think about it, some of the best examples of alternate reality, I guess that's what they're calling it, AR, VR, one of the things they're doing is they were having the concerts broadcast into a video game where they would have the Minecraft Music Festival or they'd have the Fortnite Festival where an artist would literally be performing and they would put the performance or embed it somehow into the game, and then the players, whether it was VR or whether it was just watching on their screen, they could walk around the game as if they were walking around the show.

Michael Walker:
That's definitely going to be interesting. It's one of those things I think that for a while it's been pretty hyped up, VR and whatnot. And for awhile, it's been under... It's not as cool as you might think it was, but then it seems right now with Oculus Quest or some cool stuff that's happening, and in the future, maybe that is something that if we have another pandemic, heaven forbid, like 20 years from now, then maybe everyone will [inaudible 00:17:13] on their VR headsets and be able to tune in and experience shows like that. So, because VR isn't a super commonplace thing, what are some other ideas that you've seen, some creative, innovative ideas that the artists have done successfully in order to create a unique experience that brings people together?

Michael Walker:
I feel with concerts, so much of it's about the community and about being together and surrounded by like-minded people who are listening to the songs. So I'm curious on how artists have been able recreate that.

Jack Forman:
Well, the pandemic has accidentally offered every attendee of every type of event a massive commonality in that everybody is kind of pissed that they're not all there in-person together. So that's really something that people have had a lot of kinship and comradery about. But I guess the biggest thing that people have done that was the most hopeful for all of us were live performances, actual live, socially distant performances where you had pod seating or you had table seating where you were with your own group or tailgate seating. I literally don't think I can speak for anybody in saying that any of it was extremely profitable, but it was a business. It was at least able to break even in certain situations, and sometimes it was subsidized or sponsored so that it wasn't going to lose a ton of money.

Jack Forman:
That was probably my favorite, is when people figured out ways of doing it live and people were coming to it live. Now, as we're getting back, certain states, you can have all the people you want. They had 73,000 people in Cowboy Stadium two weeks ago for a boxing match. Do you ever think we'd get to that in 2021? So it's stuff like that that I... You've been along the way, even from the beginning, like Dave Chappelle doing his comedy specials in a cornfield in Ohio. That was really what I got a kick out of personally, and I thought, I think a lot of people who were able to do that are going to come back even stronger.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. I hadn't heard about that cornfield show. One thing that we had talked a little bit about was the future and this hybrid approach, now that things are opening back up, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the future of the live show industry now, that we've had this experience with the pandemic, and I'm not sure how long there'll be a sense of lingering fear or whatnot. But also I think that there's some things that we've discovered or new, innovative ideas that actually worked really well, and some interesting ideas that might just change the feature of live performing in general in terms of live streaming and whatnot.

Michael Walker:
So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what do you think is going to happen now that things are starting to open back up and how is this going to ripple out and affect the future of the industry?

Jack Forman:
They're going to have new measures that they're going to have to follow at concert venues for quite a while health-wise in certain states, other states are going to just go back to normal right away. And I've taken a stance of not judging anybody who's trying to get back to work at this point to each their own, whatever feeds your family, but when it comes to events overall, I have a feeling a lot more places are going to be offering a virtual component to their potential audience. They may be only able to sell 500 tickets, but they could open up a virtual audience to God knows how many. I have a show called The Silhouettes that I represent. It's a dance company actually.

Jack Forman:
They were on America's Got Talent a couple of different times, and it's a shadow dance company where they create the shapes and silhouettes behind a curtain essentially, or behind a screen. I have a show with them in Colorado that I just booked for September of this year and they are going to open up the auditorium for it to take the buyers, but they're also going to be streaming it to ticket buyers. So you can buy it as a pay-per-view style event if you live in another state, another country anywhere to experience that. And the venue has now opened itself up to a higher gross potential via a pretty affordable ticket scale for the streaming ticket. I don't recall off the bat what it was, but The Silhouettes have fans all over the world from their America's Got Talent appearances.

Jack Forman:
So they'll be advertising saying, "Hey we're performing in Colorado, but don't worry if you're somewhere else, watch us live, watch us perform live as we perform at this venue." So that stuff, I think you're going to see more and more of. Festivals, I'm sure we'll do it in some capacity, but I think that young people, the thought was, "Oh, everybody will get into this," but now as things are coming back, we're starting to see more people say, "I just want to be there. I just want to go, I have been aching, basically dying to go to a concert for so long." I'm 30 years old and you and I are both dads, we share that. I had COVID not too long ago too, when I thankfully recovered, but nothing will make me happier than being able to go out to a show again, and to be in a crowd again.

Jack Forman:
Not necessarily a raging crowd, but even if I'm sitting in a seat somewhere watching live music, that would make a world of difference to me.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah, man. This is going to be awesome. And I feel like at the time of recording this right now, is a beautiful moment. My parents just visited for the first time since Willow was born about nine months ago, my dad got to meet his granddaughter for the first time.

Jack Forman:
That's amazing.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. And it feels so good to knock on wood. I don't want to jinx anything, but it does seem we're turning around the corner and things are starting to open back up, but totally dude, in terms of the opportunity for doing a hybrid approach, that's one thing that as we've built modern musician that I've really come to appreciate, is just like this whole market and opportunity in terms of the online information space and building a business through digital assets. And I think that's one thing that's gone under valued or musicians are starting to catch on to is this amazing opportunity to package and sell digital currency.

Michael Walker:
And we have it with music, but also I feel streaming royalties, not really for a lot of independent musicians, haven't really been the thing that's keeping the lights on, but just adding in a component of, "Hey, if you come to live show, here's a box, you're getting a ticket for a live show, check this box for an extra $10. You could have the recordings and you can keep them for the rest of your life," I imagine just something like that is a really cool component and giving people the opportunity to have a virtual ticket where they can tune in for $10 or extra, they tick the box, they can keep the recording, they can download it for forever, they have a really high quality recording of it, I think there's definitely some really cool opportunities there to increase the revenue.

Jack Forman:
Yeah. Or you could pay a million dollars and have the NFT, which is a whole other rabbit hole that I'm not knowledgeable enough to go down, but that's really the truth. When you talk about owning a piece of digital history, that's it in a nutshell and you're monetizing it sure enough, but absolutely. I've a friend at the company, Royalty Exchange, and that's just one company that does it. There's tons of companies that do it now where artists will literally sell their catalogs for millions of dollars and it'll be like the stock market. They'll have the same types of investors. And those types of people were never considering doing that, at least not at this point in their careers, but you're reading about it every week that a new big artists just sold their catalog for eight, nine figures. And it's a lot. It's amazing.

Jack Forman:
So, I think they're only going to get more creative and I pray that it doesn't screw the people who don't have the knowledge necessarily of exactly how it works in all of its intricacies. It helps to have a coach for all of that.

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Michael Walker:
I know that you just said you want to be careful about going not too much level with NFTs and you're not an expert on it. I'm also definitely not an expert. I have had one or two conversations where I'm just starting to hear more about these and understand these, but granted and acknowledging the fact that neither of us is an expert at NFTs, I'd be curious to have to go a little bit deeper into that in terms of what that means. So it's non-fungible token. And so could you share a little bit about how NFTs work and what exactly they are?

Jack Forman:
Well, my older brother, if he were here, he'd give you the real definition, he's in the world of tech and business, and that's basically all everybody's talking about, is crypto and blockchain technologies. And essentially, it's a regulated protected form of digital currency in the form of a piece of art. And you own it. You own a moment of history that was recorded or somehow captured digitally, like the first ever tweet to have been tweeted on Twitter. Say that 10 times fast, was captured as an NFT that somebody paid millions of dollars for. And they own that and they've assigned a monetary value to it. Another good example, I mentioned that boxing match in Texas a little bit ago, they sold NFTs from that event.

Jack Forman:
There was a big knockout in the fight. They sold that knockout as an NFT. That moment in digital history of streaming that event is now owned by somebody or a group of people because thousands of people can buy in on an NFT. I think you got to be careful because there's a lot of stuff that is worth it and isn't. I could have my two-year-old doodle on an iPad and I could send it to somebody and say, "This is an NFT. It's one of a kinds, and give me a million dollars." But I think it really does have to be something that can be proven original. I have a colleague that I know who owns several pieces of '60s and '70s music memorabilia that have never been seen by anybody.

Jack Forman:
He's kept them in an archive. And it's pictures of Jimmy Hendrix that never got released. And he's talking about turning them into an NFT. So pictures of Jimmy Hendrix that never saw the light of day that can only be owned by one person in the world, somebody can assign a value to that, a digital value to it. And maybe they'll even send them the actual photo. But again, I encourage anybody who is intrigued by it to research it because it can be explained to you a lot easier by somebody who understands it a lot more. I think once you start getting beyond contracts and ticketing and touring and back line and all that good stuff, you pretty much lose my expertise.

Michael Walker:
It's super interesting though. It's interesting having conversations, I think that these are the conversations that everyone's going to be having with their friends and other musicians and whatnot. When you say ownership, ownership of this digital piece of history or this milestone, this moment, how does that ownership manifest? Does that mean that they have licensing, no one else can share that clip of that fight unless they have the license from the person who owns the NFT, that kind of ownership? Or is it more just this like trophy that they get to hold onto that's like, "Hey, I own this trophy"?

Jack Forman:
No, I don't think it's like that. It's like when you register a star, you don't own that star, nobody can prove that you own that star, it's a star, millions of miles away. But if you register an NFT, there's some sort of, and again, this is at least my limited elementary understanding of it speaking, there's some a unique characteristic to it that is only available in one shape or form digitally, and you own that via whatever platform you purchase it from. And it can't be found anywhere else, at least in that exact same form. And it's like Bitcoin, it's not like you can just invent Bitcoin out of thin air, the most famous cryptocurrency of them all. There was a finite amount of Bitcoin in the universe of technology and they were mined.

Jack Forman:
You had to literally mind the electronic coins, and once you mine all the coins, then there's no more Bitcoin, you're just messing around with and trading those that exist. So I think as you get into that world and you get more into the digital economics of it, they'll explain it to you better than that, but I'm sorry, I wish I could give you a better answer than that.

Michael Walker:
Jack, for someone who's not an expert at NFT, you'd certainly know a lot more than I do. I think it's really interesting having conversations like this. When we're talking about live shows, it seems like one of the things that makes live shows so valuable and probably one of the reasons that there's such a core at least historically in modern day before the pandemic, had been such a core piece of the revenue model for musicians comes from the fact that there's an inborn sense of scarcity around these live shows, these live experiences, you got to be there and if you're not there, then you might miss out. And it's a very tangible thing.

Michael Walker:
And one of the challenges with modern day music in terms of CD sales used to be such a huge generator of revenue, but now we have streaming and music almost feels free, it's like you can just stream it. So in some ways, it feels like we're missing that scarcity or missing that special feeling of, "Oh, I own this song and I'm going to play it for a friend when they come over. And this says something about me, this tangible thing." So I wonder if the NFTs can bring back a piece of that specialness and that tangible scarcity elements of it.

Jack Forman:
It's like a rare record. It's that same feeling of owning a piece of vinyl that they only made 400 of them in 1965 and you own one of them, and it's a physical piece of vinyl that you can hold in your hands, you can dust it off and you can put it on your platter, and you have a feeling I am listening to and holding a piece of history. And for me, I feel like an old man when I say this, but for me to feel like I own a piece of history, I feel like I have to be holding it in my hands to say I own it, or I'm experiencing it or I'm witnessing it. But for a lot of people, you're absolutely right, that's a way of reconnecting because so much of it is just existing in the cyberspace for everybody to use and everybody to stream and everybody to tap into.

Jack Forman:
But if you give somebody something super unique, they're going to feel that special sense and others are going to feel that sense of envy of, I wish I could experience that part of history, that incredible knockout that shocked the world in that boxing match. Somebody has that, has license to it. Again, I don't know how sports NFTs, how special that is, but if an artist releases an album or a single as an NFT that only a handful of people own, that's incredible, and those people are going to feel I own something special.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Another thing too that could tie in what we're talking about with live streaming, maybe something for people who are listening to this right now to explore is what if you created an NFT out of every live stream that you did. And so you had a weekly performance and it's like this is a very special performance, and this is only one of a kind and every single week, you just got into a good routine of creating an NFT for it and doing an auction. So you do an auction to your dear audience and say, "Okay, well, we're going to see what this goes for." And it's definitely an interesting thing to explore. It sounds like there's a lot money circulating right now and NFTs, it's an interesting dynamic.

Jack Forman:
Yeah. I made a big mistake not going into finance because there is a ton of money in that, and I think that for those who know how to trade it and have the stomach to go all in on it, and can really clean up on it. It's great. I don't know how long it lasts or how much value it will have because then you're competing. If you think about any cryptocurrency, you also have to think about our country and every country in the world who has their own federal reserve that is minting money on a regular basis whenever the economy requires it. And then there's this unregulated cryptocurrency out there in the world for anybody to grab on, to pick and choose, you wonder how many governments are going to put up with it for very long.

Jack Forman:
That's one of the schools of thought out there, so let's see how long it can last, but I wish I knew, I wish I knew much more about it, but I'm a simple booking agent.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Bitcoin as well, and I didn't invest in Bitcoin, and certainly at the time of recording this, it's fluctuated, it's gotten way, way up and people have made millions, probably billions of dollars on Bitcoin. So it's definitely interesting. I think for anyone listening to this right now, it would be something worth looking into. As a musician, as an artist, it'd be an interesting opportunity to explore it and tie it in with live shows and creating that scarcity or creating that tangible nature of owning, having ownership of it could be something really interesting. All right. Well, I feel like I've really pushed you here, Jack to go down this road.

Jack Forman:
That's fine.

Michael Walker:
I appreciate you sharing even though it's something that's still-

Jack Forman:
Learning.

Michael Walker:
You haven't learned a ton.

Jack Forman:
Are you on Clubhouse, Michael, the app?

Michael Walker:
Rick Barker invited me to Clubhouse and I joined_

Jack Forman:
He's always on. Rick's always on Clubhouse.

Michael Walker:
It doesn't surprise me.

Jack Forman:
The only reason I say it is because almost every room is about NFTs and Bitcoins. So if you have the patience for it, go on Clubhouse and you'll learn all about it. I just lose it. I'm so ADD about that kind of stuff. So just a tip from a fellow, a confused person.

Michael Walker:
I appreciate that. Maybe I'll have to give a Clubhouse more of a chance. I'm generally a social media hermit except when it comes to advertising, because I like being able to set things up and automate them and being able to leverage it as a tool, but definitely interested. If you couldn't tell just by the fact that I've really kept digging into NFTs, I think it's really interesting and definitely something worth learning more about. Let's get back to talking about live shows and other potential opportunities for artists who are listening to this right now, when it comes to things are opening back up.

Michael Walker:
What do you see are some of the biggest mistakes, after having worked with a lot of artists and booking shows for them, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that you see happening over and over again when it comes to musicians and performing live shows?

Jack Forman:
Just in general or post pandemic?

Michael Walker:
Maybe both, especially post-pandemic.

Jack Forman:
Yeah. I think a lot of folks think they're ready for something before they've really dug in and did the work or have done the work. And that's really the biggest thing you see time and time again at any phase of any part of this industry. You're an artist who wants to play a big 1,000 cap room, but have you sold out enough, 500 and 750 seat rooms to justify that? Maybe you've played a couple of 100 seat rooms and you say, "All right, I'm going on to the next one." And somebody has to take that risk on you, somebody has to invest their money in your concert to go there. I think the biggest missteps you often see are people trying to run before they can walk.

Jack Forman:
And sometimes they actually hit their stride and they can make it, but others sometimes stumble and bite off way more than they can chew. And I think the other big mistake is not thinking of yourself as a business person. A lot of musicians are very intimidated by business, I'm intimidated by it and I'm not a musician. There's a lot, there's a lot you got to know, but just having the mindset of, "I'm an artist, this is my brand, this is my livelihood, this is my business. I am this artist and this is my life. I have chosen to devote my life to this. I've chosen to bear my creative soul out on stage and on a record for millions of people to hear and see."

Jack Forman:
But if you don't think of yourself as a business, you're not only allowing yourself to open up to possible threats, you're missing out on a lot of opportunity to set yourself up for a proper future. There's a lot of people out there who can benefit from having some voice in their head, even if it's a friend, or an uncle, or somebody who knows the business or knows business period, having a lawyer in your corner, having somebody who can explain all this to you when you don't get it, because the worst thing you can do is sign on the dotted line and you don't realize what you've just signed away. We as agents are programmed to look at the nuts and bolts of every single offer, but we also are programmed to look at it objectively from either side.

Jack Forman:
And that right now is how it relates to the pandemic is that everybody is trying to get back. And if you just think about yourself and making money and being greedy and not the venue, and not the promoter, or not the ticket sellers, and all that, you're going to be one of the last ones to really succeed with it because everybody's being very collaborative right now thankfully. If you're working with a promoter whom you used to work with before the pandemic and they used to pay you a lot more for your shows, but now they've been so ransacked for the last years where they're asking you to maybe do two shows in one day for the price of one, a lot of artists are willing to do it.

Jack Forman:
They say, "Yeah, I'm already in Seattle, why not play two shows in one day? I don't care. I'm there already. It's not like I have to get in my bus and I have to travel another 100 miles. No, I'm in the same room. Maybe I'll drink some extra tea that night." And then the promoter is able to have two shows that can either be socially distant or they can be just contingent on one not selling as well or one selling really well. Finding those little collaborations and cooperations between various arms and legs of an artist's industry is what's going to keep people thriving and keep people alive is finding a connection with those who support the ecosystem you live in, or at least strive to live in.

Jack Forman:
And you'll have that ability to not only foster a great relationship, but also find new success while also supporting those who ultimately you need, whether you want to support them or not. There was all this talk about save our stages and it wasn't just because we want our live music venues back, it's that we want our music back, and where else are you going to get it other than your local concert house? And who has a better reach to a community than your local concert house? You don't. You don't know as many people as your local concert house has on their mailing list, so wouldn't it help you as an artist to partner with a local music venue somewhere you you're not? I could go all day with us, but the truth is, it's a collaborative measure.

Jack Forman:
And in addition to being smart with your money and with your decisions, don't be afraid to look at new things and be cooperative and collaborative in this day and age.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. It sounds like a couple of the biggest mistakes that you see both generally are one, just being willing to learn and start out and maybe have patience. You have patience to build things up before you're playing 1,000 cap, 2,000 cap rooms that you get really good at playing 100 cap, 200 cap rooms. And then especially in today's day and age, post-pandemic, that's really important to have an eye for collaboration and so really pay attention to how can I serve the other people in this community as well, it's not just about me, me, me, but also how can we grow together and support each other specifically.

Michael Walker:
One thing that you mentioned that I think it's a big opportunity, this isn't something that really registered to me, but I think anyone listening to this could really capitalize on this idea of creating strategic partnerships with the concert venues and with the promoters and with the people that right now you might be struggling to keep things going. So reaching out, figuring out how can we collaborate and do cool, innovative things virtually and tapping into that email list and that audience that exists within those concert halls, I think is a really smart idea for anyone to be listening right now to figure out, how can we partner with those concert halls.

Jack Forman:
Or anybody else, a record store. Don't forget about your local neighborhood record store that's been there forever. There's still a place for just about everybody.

Michael Walker:
Cool. All right. Well, Jack, it's an awesome talking with you and I appreciate you going... We've gone multiple different directions in this, and we've gone some places in the future. We talked about VR and NFTs. We've also talked about real world with like booking in the middle of a pandemic, post-pandemic, what that looks like. So thanks so much for taking the time to share some of the lessons, the knowledge that that you've learned. And for anyone that's listening to this right now who is interested in learning more from you or connecting, where do you recommend that they go to to dive deeper?

Jack Forman:
I love hearing from people, I'm open to hearing from anybody. My email address is jack@bicoastalproductions.com. Our website, bicoastalproductions.com, if you want to learn more about our roster, about what we do, submissions, we're pretty backed up and we're trying not to grow the roster too much, but talent@bicoastalproductions.com. I'm trying to be better with Instagram, according to my wife, I'm not doing enough there. So if you want to see a lot of cute baby pictures, that's where you could find them is my Instagram, jackbforman. But I really appreciate you having me on, Michael. It's been great talking to you. And I appreciate all you guys do over there for musicians and for any of those who are looking to develop their careers that much more. It's been a pleasure.

Michael Walker:
Thanks, man. I appreciate you being part of it.

Jack Forman:
Absolutely. Be well.

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. Any 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 new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends 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 career to the next level. It's time to be a Modern Musicians now, and I'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode.