Kevin Breuner:
I start telling people, thinking strategically with a season of release. And so it's like you go into this mode of releasing a lot of music and you could get a lot of mileage out of 10 songs, and not just thinking, "I'm just going to put these 10 songs out. No, nothing happened." It's like, no, get strategic with it, and it can be a whole season of stuff happening, because you're going to be picking up fans along the way, especially if you're a new artist, everything you do is new to most people that are hearing your music. So don't give up on those songs when you've got lots of opportunity to get creative with it.

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

Michael Walker:
All right. I'm super excited to be here today with Kevin Breuner. He is the senior vice president of marketing at CD Baby. And you've probably heard of CD Baby before, but if you haven't, they're an online distributor of music, which means they release music on Spotify, Apple Music, and all these platforms. They are home to over 650,000 artists, nine million tracks, artists like Ingrid Michaelson, Twenty One Pilots, Macklemore, Bon Iver, Sara Bareilles, have all distributed their music using CD Baby. And also he's the guitarist of the band called Smalltown Poets.

Michael Walker:
And today, I'm really excited to dig in and to talk through some ideas for if you're an artist who, for whatever reason isn't able to perform live shows, whether that means you just can't travel very often or there's a global pandemic or something that's keeping you at home, how do you thrive and how do you actually build an audience to be able to release music successfully nowadays. So Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Kevin Breuner:
Thanks for having me, Michael.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. To start out, I'd love to hear just a little bit more about your story and how you got started with Smalltown Poets, and also finding yourself as the senior vice president of marketing at one of the biggest online distributors in the world.

Kevin Breuner:
Well, with Smalltown Poets, I went to Nashville to study music and music business. I went to school called Belmont University, and I'm originally from San Diego. So it was a big journey to go to college off on my own, but I really wanted to pursue music and music business and play guitar. And that alone was a life-changing experience, an eyeopening experience, I should say, just with the level of talents out there in the world and just amazing players and all that. But after my fourth year, or during my fourth year, I met the guys in Smalltown Poets. They were different band at the time, and they had been on a little indie label, and this was the mid '90s.

Kevin Breuner:
And so they were reforming, starting new, trying to make a more serious deal of it. They have been touring pretty much non-stop since they all got out of high school. They went to junior college couple of years, but then were just booking tours and playing like 100 shows a year, a lot for an unsigned band. And so they were reforming and I started playing with them. And by the end of that summer, we were signed. My first rehearsal with them, they were sending three song demo tapes to record labels because that's what you did back then. This is like, yeah, that's the only way you get a record done is with a label back then.

Kevin Breuner:
To make a very long story short, we had success. We were nominated for a Grammy. We sold pretty well and had a lot of markers of what look like success, but the band was pretty broke. Everyone was making money except us. In that situation, on the label, you're the last one to get paid. Your manager gets a cut, the label takes the money. And I'm sure there's plenty of tricks still built into the recording contracts these days, but back then, it was all these things, how the label could take extra money like the language that was based on back in the vinyl days, because when they shipped vinyl a lot would melt in the sun or break.

Kevin Breuner:
But in the CD world, that never happened, but they still took 25% reserve because of breakage and things like that, where you realize you're never going to get paid. And so after a few years, it was like three and a half years of just non-stop touring and we put out a couple of records, like I said, they performed well, all this started coming off the road and going our separate ways for a bit. And for me, I was from the West Coast, I wanted to get back to the West Coast and landed in the Portland area. It was just one of those things where I'm like, "There's got to be a better way." This was 2000, "There's got to be a way better way for artists to get music to their fans."

Kevin Breuner:
We were in this situation where we had music and there was music that even didn't even get released by the label that we're like, there's these people in this office deciding what our fans can hear or should hear." I'm like, "Just put it out. The fans should decide what they like and what they don't like, and it shouldn't be so hard." And so a few years later, I went through this big writing and recording phase, just all this creativity came out and I started a new band in the Northwest. And that's when I came across CD Baby, it was 2003. At that time, CD Baby was the only place I could find on the web that had information about independent artists getting their music out, selling it directly to your fans.

Kevin Breuner:
And the web was still relatively new as far as how we think about it today, as far as organization of information, and CD Baby was just a resource that had all that for independent artists. And so I started using CD Baby and then eventually got a job there. And my initial job was just helping artists every day, distribute their music and help them understand the process, distributing the iTunes was brand new back then, people didn't understand digital music at all and that whole thing. So a lot of what we were doing was just helping artists understand what they could do.

Kevin Breuner:
And also these new social platforms where emerging and ways that artists were getting very creative in building fans, especially without touring, because that was a new concept of, "I don't have to tour, I could use this new thing called YouTube or I'm doing this thing with social media and it's building an audience, and it's working." So having those conversations with artists nonstop all day long, I started asking them a lot of questions, and then eventually started the DIY Musician Podcast out of that experience. And also as a podcast junkie that I just wanted to have these conversations with artists and about music promotion and the changing landscape in a format where other people could hear and learn from it as well.

Kevin Breuner:
And then just over the years, I just worked my way up at CD Baby. And now I'm the SVP of marketing.

Michael Walker:
Awesome, dude. That's really cool. It sounds like really a lot of your growth is very organic and having all these conversations with artists both as an artist yourself and also seeing like, what are the common challenges? I think that gives you a lot of real, I call it being in tune. It's like you go up on stage, tuning a guitar so you can really connected. So that being said, you're having all this experience working with artists and you yourself as an artist. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that you see musicians struggling with on a daily basis when they first come to you?

Kevin Breuner:
Some of the biggest challenges, well, as a whole, I think one thing you mentioned being in tune with the artists, I think that's one thing that was very eyeopening to me, even working at CD Baby, I was in a music school with people that wanted to be in the music business because I was in the traditional music business, but there's a lot of misconceptions about who artists really are and what labels or that world, the traditional world thinks about the artists community. And when you're talking to hundreds of artists every day, there's a lot of themes that emerge to be like, "Oh, the artists community as a whole, we're not what a lot of people think we are."

Kevin Breuner:
And so, one of those things is, I think a lot of people think that the average artist is very tech savvy, especially these days. The music gets used in a lot of cool things like the cutting edge films with technology, but that doesn't mean the artists who made it are on the cutting edge of technology. And certainly, there's some genres now that lead more into technology and it's become a very critical piece of making music, but it still doesn't mean they know about file sizes and all these things that need to be uploaded and the digital process for music. So it's really funny to see that a lot of artists, they don't...

Kevin Breuner:
One of the big mistakes or problems they face is there's this clash when it changes over from the creative process into, "Hey, now I got to put a business hat on and distribute my music." I think there's this general lack of understanding still about the main business pieces that go along with music distribution and promoting your music and having a music career. It's come a long way, but the average artist still doesn't understand the difference between publishing and owning the sound recording and what different rights those are. And some of those things, if you're in the industries seem a little basic, but for a lot of artists, when they go to distribute their music, this is their first time ever encountering these things.

Kevin Breuner:
And so, that's still a big struggle and properly planning a release and understanding the opportunities that exist when you release music as opposed to just throwing it up there today and hoping something happens. So those are some of the challenges we spend a lot of time at CD Baby helping artists through like understanding that, hey, it's not just about getting those master files from the mixing engineer or the mastering engineer, if they knew about mastering, sometimes that's the new stuff too, but it's about having artwork that fits proper guidelines, it's having the right file types. It's understanding who contributed to the record and keeping track of that as you record.

Kevin Breuner:
And that all becomes metadata, which goes along with the tracks that helps people get paid properly. And it's super important to make sure that that's all done when you distribute initially, otherwise you can miss revenue or there's cleanup work later if success does happen. And so a lot of that stuff is just foreign to most artists when they start in this process.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. It sounds like what you're saying is that pick a common theme is with artists, they might not necessarily have the business skills or at least having learned some of those facets in terms of technology, in terms of how to promote themselves. And I think it is interesting how the revolution that's happening with indie DIY or indie musicians, how there really is this empowerment I feel that happens or that's happening with musicians where the tools are there, where they can take more control or have more guidance, or they can lead themselves in terms of connecting with their fans compared to relying on a record label in order to promote themselves.

Michael Walker:
And it does seem there's that lingering narrative from the old model where it's like, "You guys don't need to learn this business stuff, you're creators, you're artists. You know what, we'll take care of all the money stuff." And it does seem historically that's led to musicians start getting the short end of the stick. So I think it's awesome that you guys are really focusing on empowering artists to be able to learn those tools.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. I actually pulled out our record contract a couple of years ago before I was speaking at our conference, the CD Baby DIY Musician Conference. And it was frightening, stuff that was in there and the stuff that artists willingly sign. And it's not like we didn't have a lawyer, but it's not like we had tens of thousands of dollars to pay him to finagle this contract indefinitely or that we had any leverage for the record company to accept it. And so there's a lot of things in there that just aren't right, no one would enter into that kind of business. But artists just so desperately want to have somebody get their music out there to a broader audience, so there are trade-offs.

Kevin Breuner:
And now when an artist comes to me and says, "Hey, I've got this opportunity, the main thing I focus on are there's trade-offs, do you want to own your rights? And there are some contracts these days where depending on what it is, what label it is, where you may get your rights back after a few years, or you may retain your rights, and it's more of a rev share agreement or something. So there's options out there, but it's understanding what you're getting into because there's trade-offs. Maybe they do have an amazing marketing department and they are going to spend a lot of money and they are going to get you on some big stages with some of their higher performing artists. That could do some really great things for you, and there's just going to be trade-offs for that.

Kevin Breuner:
They're not going to do that for free, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They may love your music, but it's a business. And so ideally, you've got to think about not that state of playing on those big stages, but what happens after when that wave comes and goes, are you left with nothing? Are you able to capitalize on that to your own advantage and use it as a springboard? Or if the label loses interest and it all goes away, are you back to where you started, but only this time you don't own the music that you just created.

Kevin Breuner:
So I think with artists, you just have to think about the trade-offs in what you're trying to accomplish and what success looks for you, and when you're having success, how you're capturing that fan data, how you're turning it into long-term relationships, because a music career always has an ebb and a flow. It has its ups and downs. Some of it's by nature that music runs its course, you need to go write and record some new stuff. And so there's some downtime or it's just by nature of some things come in and out of style. And so you got to be prepared for the good times and the lean times, because that's typically how a music career works.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. For anyone who's listening to this right now who maybe is early on, so they've invested the time and the energy and the money into getting maybe the first EP, maybe they have five songs or they have a single, or maybe even an album. And now they're looking for the best way to get it out to people and to find people who are actually going to enjoy listening to it and to grow their audience and to build a list. What are some ideas that they could get started with in order to promote themselves successfully?

Kevin Breuner:
Well, if you're a new artist and you have a full album that's ready to go, I think this is where instead of just throwing it out there, this is where you can get a little bit more strategic. It's not even much extra work, and have a much better launch of yourself as an artist, just your initial album. What I've started telling artists is they need to look at their music is not a one-release day like, "My debut album is coming out on this day," or even your followup album or whatever, but looking at it more in a season of release. I know artists we've been trained, especially pre-pandemic, a lot of artists are trained that, "Okay. I make an album, I have album release show, and then what?"

Kevin Breuner:
Actually I played for a friend of mine, his album came out, I played for his album release show, and he's like, "Now what afterwards?" I'm like, "Now what? This is just the beginning. This is the start, not the finish." And for a lot of artists, I think that feels like the finish because the creation process is such a giant undertaking that there's not a lot left in the tank sometimes when we switch into promotion mode. But what I start telling artists is think about a season of release and having several releases planned to drop over a period of time that all build up and reinforce a bigger release, like in this case, an album.

Kevin Breuner:
What I would do is one, if I've never released music before, I would absolutely take just one song and put that out there, especially if you have a common like if you're using your personal name as your artist name and you have a common name, there's going to be some cleanup most likely on snagging years, Spotify for Artists accounts and some of the other, like Apple Music for Artists and Amazon for Artists, there might be some cleanup to make sure that you have access to the tools and it's aligned with the right account for your music. So we always encourage people to get one single out to do that cleanup work. And you can promote that single and so forth, but you want to get access to those tools and you won't have access to them until after you have music out there.

Kevin Breuner:
And so if you launched with single, did that, then a month later have another single from that album come out, now you're going to have access tools like the Spotify pitching tool that, yes, it allows you to pitch the editorial, which is a super long shot, but if you use it properly, it'll push all your new track to anyone who follows you on Spotify. They'll get it in the release radar, it'll help pop up in Discover Weekly. So it really just starts that discovery phase that the platform has really have built into them, especially Spotify. And some of the other platforms are following in those footsteps, but you want to take advantage of those tools because they're doing a lot of work for you and you don't want to just skip that because, hey, if they're going to push it to your fans, why not?

Kevin Breuner:
And then I'd follow up with another a month later, have the full album come out. And then again, you can pick another song off of that to pitch in that Spotify for artists pitching tool. So having a couple of singles set up the album, and then after the album comes out, this is where I think there's a shift in thinking in a digital space, in a streaming world that back when we were mainly talking downloads and CDs that artists didn't really think this way, but in a streaming world, it's really easy to get creative and do alternate versions of those same tracks.

Kevin Breuner:
So the idea being, how can I keep pushing music out and keep getting these songs in front of people, maybe in different ways or more ways that might be accessible to different audiences, whether it's, hey, we did an acoustic EP with all the acoustic versions of some of the songs, or we had someone to remix it, or we have live versions, or live in the studio if you're not able to get on a live stage at the moment. Just the idea that we don't have to stop there just because those songs are out and they're out in one particular form, doesn't mean that we can't get creative and release those songs in different forms.

Kevin Breuner:
So that whole album and those songs get a longer life and can find different audiences, especially with the playlisting, because if you've got a really catchy song, but it's rock song, do an acoustic version of that. You'll find acoustic playlist that might add that song. They're never going to add the rock version, even if they love it, because it's an acoustic playlist. And some of those acoustic and mellow playlists are massive, and it could be a way into audiences that might like your music because they hear the song. They're like, "I like this song."

Kevin Breuner:
So it's just trying to get a little more strategic with thinking about your music can find different audiences in a streaming world much easier than in the previous digital download era and before, where you were just trying to get people to buy it, where now you can look for how could this reach into a different audience that I know has a big following. I start telling people, thinking strategically with a season of release. And so it's like you go into this mode of releasing a lot of music and you could get a lot of mileage out of 10 songs and not just thinking, "I'm just going to put these 10 songs out. No, nothing happened."

Kevin Breuner:
It's like, no, get strategic with it, and it can be a whole season of stuff happening because you're going to be picking up fans along the way, especially if you're a new artist, everything you do is new to most people that are hearing your music. So don't give up on those songs when you've got lots of opportunity to get creative with it.

Michael Walker:
I love that. That's so good. It sounds like what you're saying is that one mistake would be just to put all the songs out at the same time, instead, if you think a little more strategically and you break it up, it's like breadcrumbs leading to a bigger meal. And so if you have a few different singles that you can release once... And I really the advice, you initially just get a song out, get a single out as soon as possible so that you can claim your artist profile and you can get the ball rolling there. One analogy that I use all the time when it comes to building an audience or releasing music, is that it's like starting a fire.

Michael Walker:
And you start with that one song, that one log, and then you keep adding logs to the fire pit, but if all you do is add logs to the fire pit, then that's not necessarily anything that's going to happen. You need to have a way to generate traffic, turn right flames. So I'm curious about from your experience, what are some of the best ways for a new artist as they implement the strategy of releasing a song every month or so, leading up to a full album, they have the season, the season of this release, what are some ways for them to basically connect to bring in new people who would be interested in the songs and to grow the audience that way?

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. That's the challenge. It's a little hard speaking in general terms, if I was working with a specific artist, and I know you work with artists as well, they're going to have things that are unique about them, they're going to have genre considerations and things that work in various genres that don't work in others. But for artists that are starting out, I think there's so much you can do with all of our phones are pretty much video like production computers. It's amazing what you can do, especially the lenses on these new iPhones are amazing. And video is very powerful.

Kevin Breuner:
I mention that just because there's so much you can do with just creating video, whether it's turning on a camera and performing live on Facebook Live, I know depending on the music you do, that could be very challenging for some artists, that's become a very easy way to start building an audience. Several artists tell me recently that they'd been using Instagram Reels over just regular Instagram. And clearly, Instagram is pushing that content, and they went from, I think they just had a couple of thousand followers to over 20,000 in a month just from using Instagram Reels. So there's a lot of these platforms that are helping push certain types of content out that I think artists need to look at, "How can I just get my music in front of people?"

Kevin Breuner:
And those do require you to be good in front of a camera, those couple I just mentioned, but there's lots of things that you can do. I think what you got to first start out with is understanding your story, your image as an artist, your persona, and start building that online, reaching out to people that have that similar interests, locating the artists in your area that would be a great artist to play or tour with, just understand what's going on in the community. Obviously we're not touring right now, but I say that meaning get connected to the people and creating a community that you're involved with as well, because then it's less so being a lone ranger out there.

Kevin Breuner:
But then you can start thinking collaborating with other artists that have similar audiences and say, "Hey, how can we build something together? What can we do together?" So I think that's a thing that most artists don't tend to think about. I know it's real easy, especially if you're thinking about a local scene, you look at other artists as competition because there's only so many clubs. And after this pandemic, there may be hardly any clubs, so high level of competition just to get a gig. And so we tend to start looking at our other fellow musicians as competition, as opposed to people we can collaborate with. And I think that's usually a good spot to start.

Kevin Breuner:
When artists were touring and trying to break into the local scene, I'd say, "Hey, find those artists and go ask if you can help them load in and load out or what you can do to help while their show's going like sell their match, or take photos or man a video camera." So you just show up as someone who wants to help them be a part of what they're doing, and then you build that relationship. Take them out to coffee or whatever, and say, "Hey, just tell me, how'd you guys get established here?" And really building those relationships because oftentimes, that's where a lot of the real big traction happens is through other relationships and not just random social media success, which can happen.

Kevin Breuner:
But I think that's one of the things that just finding those people that are going to be your go-to friends, that's when they start thinking about, "Oh, I need another artist to be involved with this. I'm going to go call them because we've built this great relationship. I love their music, we have similar audiences." And there's a lot of online collaboration tools that are popping up these days that allows for that kind of stuff to happen more fluidly.

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 we work with professionally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode your Fan Base 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 that's going to allow you to grow your fan base online in a system that's 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 to really see what's working best right now for musicians.

Michael Walker:
And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. 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 a 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 will 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 click on the Subscribe button.

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker:
100%. Yeah. In the analogy that I talked about starting the fire, I look at that as finding a fire that's already going, putting your locks next to the fire, and that's one of the best ways to be able to grow a fire. But a lot of times, you can't just be focused on me, me, me like, "What can I get out of this?" But taking the approach that you had of figuring out how can I provide value? How can I be of service? And build those connection.? And just in general, what you said that really stuck out, I think it's so on-point is just making a point to have as many conversations, to build as many relationships as possible, both with other artists that have audiences like your music too.

Michael Walker:
And also just with people who might your music too, just have conversations with them wherever you can, whether it's social media. I remember on MySpace when MySpace first came out being on there messaging, being the annoying messaging everyone, those conversations and ultimately is like, "Hey, check us out on..." But that's important, especially early on, you need to have those conversations, you need to get into and you need to hustle early on to build the community. So I think that that's a really good point that you brought up in terms of when you're just starting out, having those conversations, putting yourself out there, being willing to build relationships with people and not necessarily seeing similar artists as competitors so much as being in the same boat.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. One thing that I think social media has done to the detriment of the artist community is I think it's hidden the fact somewhat that the music business is still very much a relationship business, and being a part of a community is definitely helpful because I was in a different band here in Portland for a while playing the Portland scene. And at that time in the Portland, it was when the Portland music scene was exploding, and if you didn't have at least two people with beards in the band and someone playing banjo, you weren't getting a gig. My band was not that. My band was like Coldplay meets Radiohead type of band. And so it was a struggle in Portland.

Kevin Breuner:
However, what we looked at was, "Okay, there's all these opportunities..." We'd see these rock bands coming through town where they're playing like the 500 person club that maybe was known nationally, or maybe getting off the ground nationally, but still didn't have a big tour package. And we'd see these empty slots on the calendar at these venues and we'd reach out and say, "It looks you need an opener." And it ended up being a thing where we got a lot of gigs because there weren't many rock bands in town at that time. It was really weird. And so it's just reaching out and understanding what's going on in the community, what the community needs.

Kevin Breuner:
It wasn't like, "We want to play at this show." It was like, "Hey, it looks you need another rock band. We'd love to fill that slot and help you out and get the show settled, so you're not still looking for abandoned." And so we became known as the band that can be slotted in. Rock bands came through because everybody in town had banjos and beards, and it was just a weird thing going on here. So I think is looking for opportunities and seeing the needs in the community as well and how you can fit in. And sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but it's still very much about relationships. So you want people thinking about you or if they come through an artist and say, "Hey, can you play the show?" "No, but my friend's band would be perfect for it."

Kevin Breuner:
And that's why that community aspect is so valuable. And I know a lot of those examples were around shows, which aren't happening for most people right now, but someday it will.

Michael Walker:
Right. And I think a lot of them really pertain to the online world too, it really is... Just even social media too at its finest is about communities and building relationships. And there is a danger, I think of, they're obviously making us more disconnected or it can be challenging if we lose the roots of what is it really all about? It's really all about building relationships and having a community and expressing yourself and being who you are and resonating with the right people. Certainly a super power in and of itself, like what you're describing. And this is something, a common characteristic I see across everyone that I meet that has built a successful career, has accomplished worthwhile things, is that they always have this mindset of figuring out, what are the needs that I can fill? Or how can I provide value?

Michael Walker:
How can I find service? And first and foremost, they have that mindset shifts. And I think there's something really powerful about that mindset shift, where you're focusing on providing value or helping, or being of service compared to just thinking about me, me, me, which counterintuitively is a lot worse for you. So it's interesting to see that come up again. I see that happen over and over again, it's always that mindset shift.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. I saw that happen with an artist, specifically within the pandemic. His name, well, it was Henry and The Invisibles, but he dropped The Invisibles, I forget what he goes by now, but he's a one-man band. And he was doing these live streams before the pandemic, and it was just him with a lot of electronic. He had it all dialed in, he had a whole thing. It wasn't an acoustic guitar thing at all, he's a funk pop kind of guy, plays bass and has a lot of drum loops and things happening, and play some scene, stuff and anything. But when the pandemic hits and initially when everyone's like, "Let's have these Zoom parties." Now everyone's like, "Don't make me go on Zoom to do anything I don't have to."

Kevin Breuner:
But all these companies were doing these Zoom parties, and so he started reaching out saying, "Hey, I can provide a service to you to play for your Zoom party, and it'll add some excitement and energy." And he started getting these high paying corporate gigs to do these things. And it happened really quickly. It wasn't like he had months and months, and months of planning and strategically messaging all these companies and trying to convince them of this idea, he basically did it for a company and then just posted online, he would do it. And the main point being, he approached it as a service, these companies have a need, they're trying to make things feel real, social and fun this early stages of the pandemic, and it's a big shift for everybody.

Kevin Breuner:
And he made a decent amount of money and it really brought in a lot of fans as well. So it was just interesting because his approach was being a service to other people. It wasn't about him, it was about filling a need for these businesses that were trying to figure out what to do, how do you make a social event over Zoom fun?

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. That's really entrepreneurship at its finest. And what a great idea too, a Zoom performance for a high-end event. There's an artist I'm working with named Todd Herzog who did the exact same thing. He's booked several shows for over $1,000 where he does a virtual performance. And so I think that's definitely a good opportunity for musicians if you have any contacts or you're able to do something that, it could be cool.

Kevin Breuner:
I think a lot of artists tend to be music-business minded like, "I must reach out to people that are always looking for music or have some aspect of the music business." I know some of the venues in the Portland area here, we're trying to do some virtual things just to keep the venue, having artists plan their stages and whatever. And I think a lot of artists think about those opportunities, but they don't think about just the random corporate business down the street that has piles of cash for budget, and we'd never think of this. And you could present them with the idea and typically get a much bigger payday than you would.

Kevin Breuner:
And it's not going to be the rockstar show with sold out club, but it's a way to make money and build some fans along the way and fill a need as well.

 Michael Walker:
That's awesome. All right. What are some other... I'm sure that having connected with so many artists, you'd probably see a lot of the same themes, a lot of the same challenges. What are some of the biggest misconceptions or the biggest mistakes that you see a lot of artists making?

Kevin Breuner:
We talked a little bit about the release process, I think that's definitely one of the top mistakes is that they have gone through a big creation process, my fan's in it right now, our album is way delayed, it feels like it's never going to end. And by the time you get it done, you're just like, "Just put it out, just put it out." And the pandemic did impact some of our planning and I had this whole momentum built of all these releases happening in the fall that I was hoping our album would be out in February, it's not, and here we are. But I think that fatigue sets in and then you just like, "Just put it out there." Or they show up going, "I need to get it out today."

Kevin Breuner:
Or today's Friday, which is typical release day, but they'll show up on Wednesday saying, "I need this out by Friday." Like, "We can do that, but why would you want to? Why would you want waste this opportunity?" Because fans are just consumers in general are conditioned to anticipate things that are upcoming releases like, "Oh, this releases in two weeks." And so it builds anticipation, there's opportunities to drive engagement and excitement around that. And we see that with everything, movies, we even see it with products these days like with Apple products and things, people start lining up and get excited, but once it's out, that excitement goes away.

Kevin Breuner:
So there's just this condition we are about that we've had about anticipating something that's coming in the future. And that there's a lot of opportunity with creative marketing campaigns and just getting people onboard so when the music actually comes out, there is a bigger splash that happens on release day. And there's tools that help with that like doing Spotify Presale and things. We have a marketing platform called Show.co, which is free for CD Baby users. There's a link in your CD Baby dashboard that lets you access those tools for free that has things like Spotify Presale.

Kevin Breuner:
On release day, all that span activity that you've been getting awareness, getting people excited, it hits all in one day and that activity on release day happening in all at once tells those Spotify algorithms that, "Hey, this is a release people are interested in, and let me push it to the release radar. But two, I'm going to start pushing it to the Discover Weekly to these folks and people that have similar music preferences to these artists or these fans." So missing out on that is just a big mistake, plus the press and everything else. If you're looking for local press or bigger press, they're all conditioned to the story happens before the release, unless there's success or something interesting happening after the music comes out, but trying to get a feature, it's much easier if it's around release.

Kevin Breuner:
But beyond that and beyond release, I think one surprising mistake I see artists still making, especially artists that their biggest problem is obscurity, they act as if they have these highly valuable assets and go into protection mode, like, "No, I don't want it on that platform. No, I don't want it on YouTube. I don't want it over here. I don't want people to be able to add it on Instagram. I'm not getting paid what I think I should for that." And I'm like, "Your problem is not money. You would like money, yes. Your problem is you need to get people to care." And all these tools and platforms that have new ways of adding music and monetizing music, yes, it's different than what we experienced in the download era and definitely different than what we experienced in the CD era, but you want people to have the ability to do the promotion work on your behalf.

Kevin Breuner:
So if there's a song they're liking and they want to add it to a little Instagram stories, that only helps you, and the promotion opportunity is far more valuable than the revenue that you might make. So it's still to me surprising how many artists see these new methods that music gets promoted, pushed, especially something YouTube, there's artists that get really angry when fans add their music to a video, it's kind of just a head-scratcher to me, I'm like, "Guys, isn't that what you're wanting?" This is creating a demand for your music because it's social proof, it's validation. It's going out there and letting other people know, "Hey, I like this artist." And that's something when I started in the music business when it was solely buying a CD world, people would buy their CDs.

Kevin Breuner:
And yes you'd know what music your friends were listening to, but a lot of the listening just happened in the cars or in private, and it wasn't something that got pushed out so other people could easily discover it. And so to me, artists who still have this protectionist mindset, all these tools were intended to help you out in the stage that you're in and you should embrace them.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. It sounds like the biggest mistakes that you see are one, related to just the release process and releasing music too quickly because you're exhausted with... This much effort put in it, it's like, "Ah, just get it out." And then also just protectionists mindset and not wanting people to share it and not feeling like, "Oh, I don't want to be on these platforms because I'm not getting paid properly for it." Instead of really viewing the music as more of a promotional tool and looking for ways to increase discoverability so that you can build an audience and connect with people.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. One last little anecdote that popped into my head when you were doing that recap is that I saw a news article the other day, there's this, it was like a musician union or something that's been trying to rally artists to boycott Spotify. And yes, I want artists to get paid as much as they possibly can, but there is so much music out there you will not be missed. So removing your music from these platforms, it's not like, "I'm sticking it to the man. They're not going to get my music." They don't care. Your fans are the ones that are going to miss out because if they're on Spotify, they're not engaged with, or thinking about the compensation that artists perceive for how the music gets used.

Kevin Breuner:
They just know that, "Hey, if I want to listen to music, this is one of the places I can go. I can pay 9.99 a month and access it." Or, "I can use this other service over here and I'm going to listen to whatever's on those services." And so I think a lot of artists think that their fans will just follow them wherever... Especially if you're not that established of an artist, you got to go with the fans who are listening to music. And that's just the fact of the matter.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. 100%. I think for better for worse, streaming platforms are the place where people listen to music right now and you not having your music there, you're doing a disservice to your fans really difficult to discover. And if you're smart and you don't necessarily view the streaming revenues like the end-all-be-all and you have other ways to monetize your audience, then you can lean into it more as a promotional platform. One thing that I wanted to read or come back on that you mentioned I thought was really, really smart and important is, in terms of the release process and the difference between building anticipation versus just releasing something right away.

Michael Walker:
I think I heard about a study where they're looking at people's brains and dopamine release. And the takeaway was that the dopamine that's released, I think they were setting addictive behaviors. They're studying, what motivates, what drives behavior, what drives us to do things as humans. And what they found was that the dopamines are released for us when we're right before we actually get the thing that we want. So if you're going to eat a piece of chocolate, the feel good hormones, they kick into place as you're getting ready to eat it, as you're anticipating you're about to have it, then it triggers something.

Michael Walker:
And I know certainly for myself, when it comes to release dates and things like, I'm a video game nerd so there's certain games like Final Fantasy VII Remake came out, man, leading up to that release two weeks before, every day I'd be checking in and I'm like, "Are there new videos or new articles?" There's all this anticipation. There is something of an open loop or almost dissonance or just this feeling of anticipation for this thing coming out. And I think you're 100% right that you can be missing out on that. It's a like slingshot and having that anticipation built in is really smart as long as you have an audience of people who you're building anticipation for.

Michael Walker:
I also think that you could overdo it. If you're starting out and you have zero audience, you're trying to build the anticipation and it's like, who cares? No one knows about it right now.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. Well, in that case, if you have zero audience, I think that that anticipation phase is really about trying to get some things in place to get some followers on the Spotify, start that ground swell, even if it's just a handful of people, because so much of these platforms are algorithmically based, meaning that if you have an artist profile and literally no one's following you, sure, probably a couple of people have played some tracks, but no one's following you, Spotify has less data to understand who likes this, it's just an unknown thing. But if you're just thinking about, "Hey, it'd be better if I spent two weeks getting whoever to follow my artist profile, let them know that new music's coming and that it helps me out."

Kevin Breuner:
Especially if you're really starting out, that's when you're leaning into some of your personal relationships to help get things rolling and like, "Hey, will you follow me here? Would you post this on social media?" Let them know that your friends released new album. I'm just trying to get just some momentum, "I won't hassle you again next time around, just trying to get some momentum for this platform." And then each time, it grows and grows and grows, but there's still work that can be done, it's something that's coming up, especially if you have fans, it's like, you want the hunger to build up before you give them the nice meal.

Kevin Breuner:
And that's what you're doing, you're wedding their appetites, and getting them hungry for that new release. Now, you don't want them to drag it out too long where they just like, "Nevermind, I'm starving. I'm going to go eat somewhere else." Because I have seen some artists launch lead up to the release, three months in advance and like, "Talk to me in two and a half months. I don't care right now. I can't sit here for three months getting excited about your release every couple of days with an email or some new thing." It's a little too much in my opinion.

Michael Walker:
100%. That's one thing that we talk a lot about is the idea of building a street team, or having this community, the same way that back in the day we used to have this street team who would go promote you in lines for shows and hand out posters and stuff. And it's usually they're doing it just because they want to support you and help get your music out there. And they enjoy the community aspect of it and being able to connect with you. But being able to build that community and have a private Facebook group, or have an email list where you start building that and you start creating some traction with them and you have tasks or you have you gamify the experience for them so that you can really capitalize on a release rather than just like you're saying, starting out and just dropping it, building up anticipation for no one, but really to start by getting that facing together.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. I think one thing I would say mistakes artists make, this is probably a big one as well, and it lands in a lot of areas is not having any defined goals and objectives. I think everyone tends to think, "Oh, my goal is to be famous." I'm like, "That's nice. We all have that goal. That's great." Set that one aside, let's get some real actionable goals. Some that are maybe in a year from now, I want to be at this point, or on release day, I want to see this many Spotify followers on my account, or have had these many pre-sales. Really just tangible things that can be a stretch, but also just help you focus what you're doing, what are the things that are important that need to get done?

Kevin Breuner:
What would help you get to the next level if these things happen? Name them, write them down and go after them and ignore the other things. Because I think most artists, especially in the social media landscape, they just start doing a bunch of scattered shot stuff all over all these platforms that half of them don't even like using, or don't even want to use. And that doesn't do anything. It may make you feel busy, it may make you feel good that you're doing something, but it's really not. So I think naming some specific goals of things that will help you get to the place you want to be. And I think a year-out goal, I want us to be here, so how am I going to do that? What are the things that need to line up and the important things that need to happen?

Kevin Breuner:
Well, maybe I need to release more music. Maybe I need to get more focused around building an audience on one particular platform, or maybe I need to focus on getting my audience off these social media platforms in a format where I own the relationship like an email address. Maybe I haven't capitalized on my fans willingness to buy. I've been using Bandzoogle, and they have a commission free store that does all sorts of amazing things. You can sell anything, and it now has integration with Printful, which print on demand merge. So you don't have to pay anything until someone buys something. And it's like, there's could be revenue opportunities sitting there for you, you just haven't focused in on some of those things.

Kevin Breuner:
So I think a lot of it is naming those things, and artists don't typically do that. And so a lot of our efforts feel unfocused or random haphazard. And it's like, "I felt I was just going 100 miles an hour and 100 different directions, but didn't really accomplish much." And that's usually the reason is that we don't know what we're trying to accomplish, so why would you feel you accomplished anything?

Michael Walker:
That's so good. It's kind of the seven habits of highly effective people, the one start with the end in mind and just clarifying, coming up with tangible goals that you're actually aiming for. There's always a million different things that you could be doing and there's infinite potential to feel overwhelmed, but if you were to clarify it to the top three to five things, top three to five goals you're looking to accomplish, it seems there's been so many studies just on the power of goal setting and writing down your goals and how much more likely it is that you're going to be successful if you do that. So that's awesome.

Michael Walker:
Hey, Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time to be here and great conversation. And hopefully everyone that's listening or watching this has gotten a ton of value. For anyone who's interested in connecting more and diving deeper either with CD Baby or with DIY Musician, where do you recommend that people go to learn more?

Kevin Breuner:
Well, if they want to connect to me personally, I'm just @kbreuner, the letter K for Kevin and Breuner, my last name, which is B-R-E-U-N-E-R. That's my handle on Twitter and Instagram. Instagram is the platform you'll typically find me on if you message me there. Happy to help any artists. If you're interested in distributing music, just head over to CD Baby at cdbaby.com. And we do the DIY Musician Podcast, that's the name, wherever you listen to podcasts. It's in Spotify, it's in the Apple Podcast directory. Hopefully, I'll be back out on the road sometime soon with CD Baby and get to see artists in person again.

Kevin Breuner:
And if you want to check out my band, Smalltown Poets, we've been making music for over 20 years and we have a new album coming out, hopefully in a month or two, as soon as we can get those darn mixes done. But yeah, those are all the places you can find me.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Fantastic. You're talking about the CD Baby, do you guys do a conference in-person usually, right?

Kevin Breuner:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Does it like travel around?

Kevin Breuner:
It travel around. It'll be in Austin in 2022. It was supposed to be there in 2020, it was supposed to be there in 2021, but it'll be there in 2022. We also have done one with the partnership of Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain. We've done one there. We've done it three times.

Michael Walker:
What do you have against Orlando, Florida, man?

Kevin Breuner:
You know what, we looked at Orlando, we did look at Orlando. And you never know where we'll end up. We're supposed to go to Atlanta next, but COVID messed everything up. So we have plans to go to Atlanta next, but we like moving it around and making it accessible, but maybe we'll do something with Full Sail and partner with them and do something. I've been down there and spoke at their campus before, so I might pop up down there again.

Michael Walker:
All right. Well, you know I live about 10 minutes away from Disney World. So if you're ever down there, I'd love to catch up.

Kevin Breuner:
I'll book the flight, I'm a big Disney fan.

Michael Walker:
Nice. Awesome. All right, man. Well, thanks again. I appreciate the conversation and I'll talk to you soon.

Kevin Breuner:
Yeah. Take it easy. See you.

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 the guest today, and if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then that'll make sure you don't miss a 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 their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.