this is room in the trees a podcast about living a creative life room in the trees is hosted by trent reynolds and me sabrina ward harrison
Trenton ReynoldsShow notes including pictures, links, video, and more for every episode can be found at roominthetrees.com.
You can follow us on Instagram at Sabrina Ward Harrison and at Trent Reynolds Art.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd now, here's this week's episode. ♪ Can I ask, Michael, would you be able to provide a soundtrack for Sabrina as she reads your statement? There you go. I love it.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonMichael Walker is leading a revolution in today's music industry. Having it personally reached 17 million views on YouTube, working with Grammy award-winning producers, and touring internationally to perform for hundreds of thousands of fans worldwide, Michael is one of those rare mentors who's actually walked the walk in their own methodology. Starting out with pure grass- Roots techniques he and his band paradise fears went from living out of their cars to selling 24,000 album Albums in six months and reaching number two on the iTunes alternative charts Taking his clients through a three-tier system artistic identity passionate fan base and revenue multiplier Michael provides artists with the tools necessary to create a lasting career in the music industry. I Welcome, Michael.
Michael WalkerThanks for the intro. That was fun. Yeah, we didn't really prepare that beforehand, but it worked. Yeah, we should do that more often. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me on here.
Trenton ReynoldsThere's this narrative that has always existed, I think, for artists that it requires a certain lifestyle, you know, a certain, like, there isn't stability. There isn't the ability to have... you know, a family life or meaningful relationships because it requires you to be mobile and totally engrossed in the art, you know, and giving up all kind of the comforts of sane living. But it seems like you have found. have fought against that kind of narrative and created something else. Is that a fair characterization? Or it seems like that is part of what drives what you've built. 100%.
Michael WalkerYou know, I think that really the main core behind Modern Musician is just like the movement that's happening right now in the music industry. You know, it's not just the music industry, really, like all over... the world, like all businesses of all kinds have really been revolutionized by the internet, right? And by the ability to connect with people and kind of remove the middlemen in a lot of ways. And the music industry especially was an industry that was really driven by record labels and by people who would maintain this narrative that for musicians, "Oh, you don't need to worry about that business stuff. You just do the creative stuff. You don't even care about the business. The business stuff is boring. You're not supposed to be organized." And I think because of that, a lot of musicians, they just, they feel like there's either something kind of yucky about the business side of things, or they don't really have those skills. And because of it for a long time, musicians have also gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to their financial gains and the things that, like getting what they deserve for their artwork. So that's one of the facets, I think, of the revolution that's happening right now with the music industry. But in another vein, I think part of the reason that we don't need to rely on record labels as much as independent musicians is because of the boom of the internet and this ability with digital marketing to be able to find your tribe, to find the people who are going to resonate the most with your music and with who you are and your message. And you can do that without necessarily having to travel and tour all the time like it used to be. So there's definitely some amazing opportunities for musicians nowadays that you don't necessarily have to rely on playing live and traveling and that whole lifestyle. And definitely don't need to get addicted to drugs and to kind of forfeit the forfeit of normal life and stable life in order to have that kind of connection.
Trenton ReynoldsCan you give us kind of a sense of your development or how you-- your background, what your story is, how you came here?
Michael WalkerYeah, so I started a band with some high school classmates in high school. High school classmates in high school. Not to repeat myself. And, you know, we grew up in a really small town called Vermillion, South Dakota, and there wasn't really like a music scene there or anything. And I remember when we decided that we wanted to pursue the band more seriously, we'd spent a ton of time and energy booking our first tour ourselves. We reached out to a bunch of local bands in other cities and planned out the routing and everything, and it took so much time. And when we finally did it, and we were about to leave, we thought we were super cool.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWe're like, "Yeah, we're about to go on tour. Like, we're rock stars. It's gonna be awesome."
Michael WalkerAnd we left, and we started playing these shows. And we quickly realized that you can't only just book the shows. You actually have to, like, get people to come out to the shows. And so, you know, we were playing these shows to the bartender in the back of the room. We were just playing, you know, empty shows. And at the time, we were living in our vans, sleeping in Walmart parking lots. I remember we would go into Walmart and get a big stack of flour tortillas and a jar of peanut butter. Oh, gosh. That was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sometimes we would throw a banana in there if we wanted to get really fancy. I remember my parents, too.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThey would call me and be like, "So, how are things going?" I'm like, "It's awesome. It's so good."
Michael WalkerRight. We were basically the definition of starving musicians. And the thing that really turned everything around for us was an idea that our lead singer had. So there's six of us in the band and his idea was, what if we split up into groups of two? And our favorite bands that we really looked up to, like Blink-182 and All Time Low and a lot of pop punk, pop rock bands. they were playing these big tours, and they would have thousands of people waiting in line to go into the shows. Sometimes they would wait for days in advance. And so what we started doing was we started to approach these people who were waiting in line and introduce ourselves. And I had a pair of headphones with some clips of our songs. And I was like a super shy, awkward kid. So when I was walking up to these people, I was like shaking and stuttering. And what we found was just that it worked really, really well. And I think the reason that it worked so well is because the people that we were meeting were like, the best kinds of fans to connect with because they actually go out to shows, they support music, and they actually care about the music. They're part of the community. And so we ended up selling like 24,000 CDs doing that in about four months.
And...
Michael WalkerBecause of that one of the bands that we were we were doing that on Heard about what we were doing and they decided to bring us on their next tour Wow, they had you know millions of fans and they were our favorite band of all time Sorry, we're being like backstage and just being a celebrity shock. Like it didn't didn't seem real. I And that sort of snowballed into a career where we got to meet a lot of our favorite bands and to go on tour around the world. We released an album that hit number two on iTunes. We had about 24 million streams on Spotify and YouTube. and really just got to have an amazing impact and to be able to connect with a lot of people with our music. But it was, at the time, we really did rely a lot on the live touring and income. That was a huge part of our music career and our success. And honestly, I don't wanna just rave along here forever. I know I'm talking a lot about myself. Part of the transition from me doing this now with Monty Musician came from being at a point where I was touring full time and I was gone for 10 or 11 months out of the year. And when I met the love of my life and I started thinking about starting a family, I was gone for most of the time. I didn't want to be a dad who wasn't able to be there for his kids or had to be gone all the time. And I wasn't really sure how I was going to provide for them, both financially and just by being present for them. And so, Then I sort of, honestly, like, that was one of the darkest points of my life, I think, where I kind of felt like a failure of a husband and a father, 'cause at that point, I just didn't know how I was going to provide for them. And I started looking for, you know, some ways to be able to, work from home and be able to, at the time, out of high school, I basically started doing this. I didn't have like a college education or really any other skill set for the most part, aside from touring full time with my band. And really luckily stumbled upon some mentors in the online business coaching space. And they helped me realize like, oh man, like you can help other musicians. You can teach them what you learned. And so I started learning, that's when I started learning a lot more about digital, digital marketing because really what I did for my business to grow was a lot of digital marketing and learning how to run Facebook ads and Instagram ads and creating lookalike audiences. And that was the first time that I'd really discovered that. And what I teach, what I taught people was mostly the live stuff. And over time, what I found is that more people are actually interested in the digital marketing stuff that I used for my business. In addition to, there's some digital marketing stuff we did with Paradise Fierce with my band too, but a lot of what we're teaching now is, funny enough, is actually from what I learned when I was starting Modern Musician now. It's kind of like a combination of the two.
Trenton ReynoldsI'm curious, before you, when you were just going to lines, people waiting in line for other musicians, was that the extent of your marketing efforts at that time, or did you go do anything else? Or was it that one idea primarily that was responsible for kicking things off?
Michael WalkerYou know, there's a lot of things that we did early on that didn't work very well. I remember I have some funny screenshots from like early on where we would try just like reaching out to people randomly like online and a bunch of people got really mad or like you realize like, like, like I hate you. Like, don't, don't. And I mean, I see that as kind of like the, it was kind of like gasoline for the fire. That was really kind of the biggest explosive growth. And it's something that still works really well today. Like one of the first clients that I worked with, there was two guys in the band, they went out and they did it, and they made $11,000 in about a month. It's pretty cool to see that it still works. But it definitely wasn't the only thing, right? That was a piece of it. And there's also building a YouTube presence at the time. We were one of the first bands that started doing covers of certain songs as they were up and coming. So we had a few cover videos at four or five million views. That was a big part of the strategy too. And some other things related to social media that kind of corresponded with everything else we were doing. But primarily I would say the touring, opening for bigger artists, and what we call tour hacking of actually meeting fans in lines was how we got our start.
Trenton ReynoldsIt seems like you tapped into a bigger principle, though, of not just arbitrarily going out and shooting, you know, blind at an audience, you know, on the Internet, but really tapping and focusing on specific audiences that would be more amenable to your audience. to your music and to that approach, right? 100%.
Michael WalkerYeah, you know, it's funny. The principles of what we were doing there, I've realized apply to literally every single business and every single creative business too. that in order to be successful with your business, you need to find the people who are most likely to get value from what it is that you offer. 'Cause they're hanging out somewhere, they're probably congregating somewhere. If there's really a market for it, then they're congregating somewhere. So first, step one, find out where they hang out. Step two, you need to introduce yourself to them. So you need to just go to them, find out where they are, introduce yourself in a way that positions yourself in a good way. And the way you introduce yourself is pretty important too because with anything, the way that... The way that you get people's attention is by serving them, by giving them value, by making sure that whatever it is that you're talking about benefits them. So you need to introduce yourself to the people once you find out where they hang out, and then you need to build a connection with them. You need to build a relationship, and the way that you do that is by having a conversation with them.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd how did you, as I think all three of us, I mean, I don't know if you feel like you're an introvert, Michael, but just, I think we're all, you know, as creatives and we feel the world deeply. And as you said, you didn't want to kind of put yourself kind of out there as hard or nervous when you were younger. Like, how did you, um... overcome some of those parts about, now I'm forgetting how I had that question phrase in my mind about like, really getting through that to that part of like, I have something to offer and I can put a price on it and stand behind it and really deliver.
Michael WalkerThat's such a good question because yeah, that's kind of the core at all of it, right, is how you carry yourself and what you believe about yourself. Because if you don't believe that you have value, then you're not going to be able to offer in a confident way and it's very unlikely that you're going to get paid for it. You need to have that well of belief and it's not always easy. And as someone who, I definitely was very introverted, especially in high school, I was like, you know, really awkward, had some social anxiety. So it didn't feel natural to me at all to walk up to people. I think what helped was a lot of self-development work that I was doing at the time that was about goal setting and about visualization and about, you know, getting really clear on who you wanna be. And, you know, a lot of that, A lot of that kind of spills into the way that you carry yourself. And then I think the other part was just like going up to strangers in line is a really direct way to overcome the fear of rejection because, you know, like it's... I don't know. It's difficult. It's one thing to talk about it, but actually walking up to a complete stranger in line and doing that is really scary in a weird kind of way. Our bodies tell us, don't do that.
Yeah.
Michael WalkerAnd so I think. just the practice of doing that, even though it was scary, was really helpful in kind of overcoming that fear and realizing, oh, like, you know, it's totally normal that I feel this way, but that's okay. Like, I'm going to do it anyways. And if anything, like, they're actually going to respect it. And it's going, and after I did it enough, I was like, oh, on the other end, like, yeah, sometimes people would be like, no, you can't talk to me or like go away. And that was, that was the exception. And if they did, then, you know, I kind of realized, oh, like rejection doesn't suck that bad. Like it doesn't feel good, but, you know,
Sabrina Ward Harrisonknow, life goes on. I don't know, Michael, you probably don't know my story of my journals were published when I was, my first book was published when I was 21. Kind of a surprising, like I was just in art school and I was just not someone who had huge dreams of, you know, being any kind of like performer or in the spotlight or anything like that. And I'm I had an opportunity to just go for it and try to make, you know, put together like a sampling platter of what the book I would have wanted to have found in high school or college that just was, you know, mixed media and full color and messy and honest and vulnerable and, you know, by someone who's just writing as is without any sort of answers, but just admitting the real feelings. And this was way before blogs or anything like there was, you know, maybe Anis Nin had written, shared her diaries, but there really weren't any young people that had put out their feelings. And it was the internet. This was 1997. seven. and it was picked up by a small publisher, mid-sized publisher in California. And then Random House came along and republished that, bought out the rights for it, and then published my next two books after that. And really interesting journey as someone who's pretty highly sensitive and not... to suddenly be going on book tours and speaking and reading about, you know, talking about insecurities and about the back of my thighs and, you know, like love and pain and acne and all the things. But then really developing this very, very, very connected audience, but it was, it was all before social media. So I didn't, not until in the past few years have I now am getting to know the audience who, who for them, this book, these, my books were very pivotal for them in their early twenties. And now they're going to going into their, they're in their late thirties or early forties and, and I didn't know the whole, because I kind of kept on with my life. I kept just, I didn't really embrace like, okay, I have an audience. I'm going to, you know, do something with it. So I would teach workshops around the country, around the world a few times a year, but I really didn't didn't want to be doing that all the time. So not until the past two years did I translate that into being able to teach online. So now that I have this kind of global audience that's been with me for 20 years without me really knowing it at the time, you know, so it's, it's, um, It's just interesting now to be, I wasn't really thinking about how it correlates to your story, Michael, but I think the part about being someone who feels deeply and also feels a responsibility to an audience where you can really be of help and of service to them.
Michael Walker- The way they transition from doing the live workshops to the online thing seems like, I mean, I guess it's no surprise. Everything is kind of like starting to happen online or there's this level of interconnectedness that could happen that's really pretty remarkable.
Yeah, yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsIt seems like there's, Michael, I'd be curious to hear you speak to this. Like there's two different, we're in a period of transition from old ways to new ways, right? There's a lot of upset and turmoil and things shifting. And it seems like you might be running across two different crowds, one that is used to the old way that has a certain amount of experience like Sabrina had an experience with these big publishers, right? Big distribution channels, big people taking care of all the business side of things for her. And that's kind of a group needing to transition over to a new way of thinking or a new model and new kinds of distribution and new kinds of marketing and outreach. And then there's this other group that hasn't known the old way and needs to be brought into the new way. And I think there's so much turmoil now that... that they probably still aren't being educated satisfactorily or know how to get there because there's just not as much standardization or, you know, clear ways of proceeding or clear paths to follow. Do you see those two – I don't know, those two groups of people and are they distinctive or basically are they going through the same process of having to just learn this new, new world?
Michael WalkerThat is really interesting that you bring that up. I think that there's like pros and cons to on both ends of being coming from the old way of doing it and just having no experience at all.
It's...
Michael Walkerprobably like a lot of, when you're learning a skill, like learning how to play the guitar or learning how to do something a certain way, if you learn it in one way and then you learn it the wrong way, then you have to completely unlearn what you got used to in order to kind of shift to the new way. So in some ways it can be really difficult, I think. A lot of the people that I've worked with that, kind of come from the old model, they don't move very quickly or they don't adapt because I mean quite a few people who kind of come from that mindset, they're waiting for a record label to like kind of come and save them. Like they're waiting for that person who's going to just take care of all the business stuff. And nowadays, like the record that doesn't exist, like they don't want to find someone who's just starting out with as no buzz or as no success. Because, you know, that's just like what they're looking for now is someone that already has kind of a thriving thing going that they can kind of pour gasoline on. And so I think that people who are completely new in some ways have an advantage because they don't have to unlearn any other way. They don't know the way it used to be. So they can really have kind of open eyes towards the lay of the land that it is right now and just kind of see things as they are as opposed to needing to kind of transition from an old model. And on the other hand, having a lot of experience in the old way of seeing it, you'll probably see some correlations. And if you look deeper at the roots of kind of the foundations of why the old way was successful, then not really. The roots haven't changed that much. It's really just like the tools and the ways that you go about doing stuff.
Right. Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsThat's really interesting. I see so many parallels just in terms of, you know, with Sabrina would be the publishers with musicians, it would be, you know, these big music companies or labels. And for visual artists, I come, my background is visual art. It would be galleries, right, or gallerists, you know, these big... these big names and artists, you know, you go through an art school and you are taught to For goodness sakes don't show your work in a coffee shop because then you're devaluing, you know right and you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do this and basically the end story is is you need to really figure out how to get yourself into a really high-end gallery so you can get, you know, command a certain price for your work and make this, you know, a feasible way to make a living, right? But then what ends up happening is all these artists are kind of working in their studios, making a lot of work, waiting for a gallery to notice them and trying to go to gallery openings and schmooze with people and, you know, so just so they can get found and recognize. And and I find myself and I suspect that a lot of our listeners find themselves in that situation where they're. we're almost paralyzed to show our work because we're afraid that it's not going to be quite the right way or not the right people are going to find it. Or we don't know if, if we're, you know, positioning ourself in a good way so that in the future, you know, we're on the right track. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsIt's so clear to me that all of these, that, you know, a creative lifestyle, all of these things are equally being influenced by the opportunities that are presented by the internet and by these new ways of communicating and distributing, you know? Anyway, I don't think there's a question in that. It's just an observation.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnother thing I think about too is how we're becoming the adults. It's our generation of... Back when we were younger, it was like the gallery owners were people that were just so much older than us and they held all this power, or the publishers and the editors or the music labels. They were just a generation above us and we're coming into that place where... we are the choosers and the creators of the culture now is it kind of the adults of this this time um that i i kind of like the feeling of we're more like i think about well my audience like i'm now if it was to be a gallery or something not that wouldn't be the same thing it'd be like the the people that run it probably are peers versus them being you know another generation that i had to kind of try to impress them or, you know.
Trenton ReynoldsMichael, where do you find yourself now in terms of your relationship to music and performance and creating? Do you have a practice or, you know, are you being creative or are you focused more on this other stuff that you're involved in?
Michael WalkerYeah, you know, that's been a really interesting journey. And in some ways, I can really relate to what you mentioned earlier with a lot of people listening to this right now and a lot of creatives in general have mixed emotions about, you sharing their work with the world and kind of being seen because they feel like it's not good enough. You know, they feel there's a fear of being seen fully because it's like, you know, maybe I'll be misunderstood. It's like the song Iris by Goo Goo Dolls. I don't want the world to see it. I don't think they'll understand. I think there is kind of that fear for a lot of artists. And, you know, for me, to be honest, when we were touring full time, it was an incredible experience. I feel so grateful. And like the kind of impact that, you know, you can make with music like on stage. I remember playing shows where there's 400, 500 people on the words all screaming the words at the same time. So one of the songs that we wrote and after the show coming up and showing me tattoos of our lyrics and in some cases telling me stories about how like one of our songs, one particular example, I remember a girl telling me, she showed me her tattoo and it was over her wrist and you could see scars underneath the tattoo. And she told me this story about how she was sitting in her bathtub and was was about to commit suicide and one of our songs came on shuffle called "Sanctuary" and that's really the song that our audience as a whole has really resonated with that's about kind of overcoming the dark times in your life and she told me that that felt like a sign and so, And so then she didn't take her own life. And so that's incredible, right? And artwork and music has this ability to touch people in that way. So I'm never going to kind of lose that connection. But when I was thinking about starting my family and I had been gone for – and I was trying to figure this out. I sort of had my... I felt pretty full. I felt pretty full of that experience. It was pretty exhausting being gone all the time. And I kind of felt like not as driven, I think, to create new music. And it was something that, like anything that you do over a long period of time, like you start to... When we were on tour, I'd start to crave, oh, I wish I can't wait till I'm home for a few months. I can relax. And when we're at home, it's like, oh, I can't wait till we're on tour. You know, the grass is always greener on the other side kind of thing. So I think really the last couple of years for me have sort of been a transition from, a lot of the reasons that I was touring, I think, came from, a feeling of really wanting to be recognized, wanting to be appreciated. And I didn't necessarily feel that as much when I started my family, but I did feel the need of like, I'm about to be a dad and I need to provide for them and I need to figure this out. So I was really driven to start this business. And I discovered like a huge passion for helping other artists who were a lot like me when I was starting out, who were craving that feeling of appreciation and recognition and sharing their music and making an impact. So there's a huge passion in helping other people do that. But I think in the midst of that, I did sort of neglect my own artwork and my own music. I was so passionate about the business side that I really didn't write songs as much as I used to. And it wasn't until more recently in the past few months that I've sort of been coming back to the music. I've started to write new songs and got a new music project that I'm working on. And a lot of the same fears that I felt at the beginning of the other stuff I'm starting to feel now. Is it good enough? Can I really put this out? And now, also, kind of-- are listening to the music and there's one person who changed his profile picture on Facebook that has like an album stuff. I haven't even publicly released it yet. It's just something, it's like my own little, my own little tribe that I'm building and it's, it's fun. So yeah, I think there's kind of comes in waves, like the, the creative energy in that way, at least with the music and now it's starting to come back.
Trenton ReynoldsI did want to mention to our community or I wanted to mention to our audience that my little brother just last week launched a or released an album that he's been working on for several years. It's of music that has been being refined since he was in high school. Some of the songs have been made and remade and pulled apart and refined and. just so proud of, of the music. And, uh, I know he, he feels really good about, uh, about what it is and what he's putting out in the world and proud of what he's done. So, um, I guess what I wanted to, I wanted to mention that to our audience because, uh, it's his music that is at the beginning and end of every episode. And, uh, you know, I want to also just, you know, uh, promote his work because I think he's great. But the question for you, Michael, I wanted to ask is using him as a case study. He's just coming out of college. He's got this album. He's been trying to make connections through SoundCloud and Bandcamp and Facebook and Instagram, and he's trying to do all the right things. Can you, if it's even possible, can you give us kind of a blow by blow on the kinds of things that you would help an artist like that do to market themselves or create more of an audience?
Michael WalkerYeah, 100%. So congratulations to your brother, first of all. What's his artist name?
Trenton ReynoldsHis band is called Venters Stag Motel, V-S-M. It's kind of an unusual name, but it is now streaming on Spotify and Apple Music and stuff. V-S-M, Venters, V-E-N-T-E-R-S, Stag, S-T-A-G, Motel, M-O-T-E-L.
Michael WalkerCool. So yeah, I think the way that I would recommend any new artist who's really honed their craft and has worked on getting a song or an EP or an album recorded and now feels really good about it. I mean, the first step is... I would recommend, a lot of artists, they record themselves kind of starting out, and that can be great. It's a great skill to learn how to do, and sometimes you'll produce with a local producer or something, but I would recommend starting out with one to three songs where you literally go and research who are the producers, who are the people that worked on the artists that you want to tour with, or your influences, at the really high level, like Grammy award-winning producers, who are those people? And starting to reach out to them, connect, and try to just record one of-- even just one song with those people, it's going to make such a huge difference. Like, I know for my band, the first album we ever put out, we found a producer locally, and, you know, it was-- at the time we're like, this is awesome. You know, because it was the best that we'd ever recorded. But now that we've worked with Grammy award-winning producers and we kind of look back, we personally, yeah, we improved as musicians, but we didn't improve that much compared to the first album. But we took the first album off because it's kind of embarrassing now. And, yeah. when you compare it to that. And so I do recommend like for anyone that's, you know, listening or just starting out, one, just getting one, one really, really high quality song that's just like amazing. And then what I would recommend is what we call virtual tour hacking. So it's kind of the same idea as tour hacking, which was, you know, walking up to people online and introducing them, but you can do it online using Facebook and Instagram advertising. And even if you didn't use advertising, you could just do this organically. But you just make a big list of 10 to 20 artists that you'd like to tour with or that you think would be a really good fit for your music. You think that they would enjoy it. Or just your own influences. Who do you listen to? Who do you like to tour with? And after you have that list, then one, you probably want to go follow them on their social media platforms, just kind of get a feel for how do they connect with people, how do they engage, maybe start interacting with their social medias. And two, then you probably want to start some sort of campaign for virtual tour hacking for those artists. So basically what you can do is, and you can probably find tutorials on how to do quite a bit of this stuff. I mean, this is literally what our business teaches, but I'm sure if you Google this, you can find out how to run Facebook ads. But basically, if you run a campaign, what we found has worked best right now has been messenger campaigns. And what that looks like is literally, it's exactly like the process we did for tour hacking, but done virtually. So what we found has worked best is literally a 15, 20 second long video of you just holding up your phone and talking to the camera and just being like... "Hey, what's up? My name is Michael. I play keyboard in a band called Paradise Fears. And I think if you're a fan of All Time Low or May Day Parade that you might like our music too. So if you're interested, click on send message and I'll send you a song." A video literally like that, where it's just super short and to the point. It's got your face to it. You're up close and personal. Then they click on send message and it starts a message conversation. And from there, we have something we call the InTune survey. It's about getting in tune with your audience. It's about asking questions. For example, some of the questions that we'll ask are, "Who are some of your favorite artists right now?" "What are some of your favorite songs and why?" And really the point of this conversation is just to start to connect with those people and start to understand who are their favorite artists and what kind of value do they get from the music. And it's a great way to connect with someone. If you ask someone, "What's your favorite song and why?" Then a lot of times you're getting a really personal answer and you're going to build a bond with them. And so then you go back and forth. Oh, the first thing you do is you share your song too, by the way. So you share the song and they listen to it. They let you know what they thought of it. And then you basically ask, if you could ask them a few questions, just to understand them better or to connect with them. And that's when you start the Intune survey. And so you have this conversation with them. You also ask questions like, do you go to a lot of live shows? And they can either answer like, "Oh yeah, totally," or maybe they don't go to live shows very often. So part of the purpose of the Intune survey is one, to connect with people, but also to be able to filter out people who aren't necessarily the right fit based on, for example, When we were tour hacking, the people that we met in line, they were quote unquote pre-qualified. They're people that they've already spent money to go to a show. They care about music. They are connected with the community. They're a really high quality fan. Just because someone likes a page on Facebook or Instagram doesn't necessarily mean that they're the type of fan that goes to shows or really cares that much about the music. And so with the Intune survey, basically you just ask some questions to connect with them and to figure out how high quality, like how dedicated of a fan are they? Do they really get a lot of value out of music? And you want to keep track of who are the people who are like. quote unquote platinum versus the people who are quote unquote bronze, just meaning that they just really didn't connect that much with the songs as opposed to platinum. They're probably going to, they're listening to the song and they'll be like writing like paragraphs and they're like super excited and they love the fact that you're talking with them. And then after you have, you know, a few hundred of those people, um, then you can create a look like audience based on the people who are your best quality audience who's really resonating the most. And that's going to improve your targeting significantly because you're basically going to be finding people who match the same characteristics as those few hundred people that were quote unquote platinum. So your audiences are going to be really targeted with finding the people who are most likely to enjoy the music. And so the next step from having those conversations is I would recommend building some sort of tribe, building some sort of private community. Right now we usually use Facebook groups for it. So we have like a private Facebook group that when you have this conversation with them, at the end, if it seems like they're a good fit, then you can basically be like, "Hey, so you're awesome. I'm so glad you like the song and thanks for sharing some of your favorite artists. By the way, I've got this private community that I'm building right now that is basically a place where I'm going to do some private live streams and I'm going to record demos and share behind the scenes things before we release new songs and videos. Is that something that you'd be interested in?" and they'll probably say yes, and then you can be like, awesome, you know, what's your best email address? I'll shoot you an invite. So then, you know, you collect their contact info, and they join the private group. In that group, you can start to build a tribe, start to build a community, start to do live streams, share some clips of demos and behind-the-scenes things. And what we found is, like, a lot of artists really appreciate having this type of private group because it doesn't feel as... What we talked about with the fear of putting themselves out there publicly, everyone feels that, especially when you're just starting out. This has been a way that artists have literally been able to grow 5, 10,000 people in their community and their tribe before they even publicly release something on Spotify. Because a lot of times also, the first day and the first week really go into account for whether you get on playlists or you kind of rank in the algorithm. So it's great to like, before you really do release something publicly on Spotify, if you have five or 10,000 people that can really give you a big boost in the algorithm when you,
Trenton Reynoldswhen you release something. Wow. I mean, I can, I can see some, I mean, not direct, um, I don't know, I can see so many ways that the principles that you're describing are so relevant to all creatives, no matter what their medium or what their background is. This stuff is where we all need to be heading, right? There's a quote that I wanted to read from your website that I found especially interesting. I don't know, powerful is the right word, but relevant and I would think very important to our audience here as well. And you say, one of the biggest mistakes I see artists doing is putting most of their resources into recording the album. What I recommend is an 80/20 split, 20% into the album or product and 80% into the marketing. Reason being, marketing is what drives your sustainability to allow you to keep making music. I see it a lot and it hurts my soul watching artists spend all their money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars into recording music and they are really proud of it because it's a part of the essence of who they are. But when they release it, nothing happens because they didn't budget enough. into marketing. I think this, perhaps, you know, the same could be said of visual artists, that we need to also be thinking about how to make this activity that we do and love, and how we make the art that we want to share with people and push into the world, sustainable. How we can make this practice sustainable, in addition to really being proud of our work, which is important. And it's what drives us, but we can't lose sight of the fact that we're not going to make any impact and we're not going to have any audience if we don't really put the effort in to grow it and create it.
Michael WalkerYeah, 100%. One of my favorite analogies is that marketing is sort of like It's like the engine of your car and the product itself is like the body of the car. So like the music or the art or whatever it is, you want it to be attractive and you want it to be great. But if it doesn't have an engine in it, if it doesn't have the marketing, it's not going to go anywhere. Like it literally needs that thing that puts it out there, that drives it in front of people.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThank you so much, Michael. It's really wonderful having you on as a guest.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah. So many great ideas.
Michael Walkerthings to hear. And so where can people find you? Yeah. So first of all, thanks. Thanks again for having me. And hopefully I wasn't like rambling just too much about myself. Hopefully this is valuable for your audience. And yeah, for anyone that wanted to connect, my email address is michael at modern musician dot me. And you can find us online if you Google search for Modern Musician, you'll probably find our stuff and we can connect from there.
Trenton ReynoldsYou offer a free workshop, right? A free...
Michael WalkerYeah. Yep. So we've got a free, what we call the free tour hacking workshop. So if you go to our website, which is modern-musician.com, then there's going to be a tab at the top that says free workshop. And that's basically a three-day workshop where we just share, like, we hold nothing back, and I share exactly how to do the tour hacking strategy successfully from start to finish. That being said, what we found is, like, a lot of our artists we work with actually are more interested in, like, the digital side of it and doing the virtual tour hacking. So we work with, like, a very small number of artists because we have coaches, and we actually do a lot of the, like, we build the systems with you. And so we have an application process for that. And so if that's something that you're interested in, if you sign up for the workshop, then there's basically gonna be an opportunity where if you go deep enough into it, then you can apply to meet with someone on our team. So if that's something you'd be interested in, then I would still recommend signing up for the workshop and you can go from there.
Trenton ReynoldsOne final question, Michael. Where can people find the music you mentioned, a previous band and maybe possibly upcoming music from yourself?
Michael WalkerYeah, so the new new stuff is definitely under wraps right now. But if you are interested and you want to become part of that private community, then you could just shoot me an email at michael at modern musician dot me. And you can join the private community. There's a few hundred people in there. So it is a very small, tight knit group right now. But the old music is called Paradise Fears and you can find us on Spotify or YouTube if you just Google Paradise Fears like you're afraid of something.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThank you. Thank you.
Michael WalkerThank you.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThanks for having me.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram at Sabrina Ward Harrison and at Trent Reynolds Art. And check out the show notes at roominthetrees.com
Trenton Reynoldswhere you can also get in touch if you have any ideas you'd like to share. If you like this
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