Amplify Your Music Career: Finding the Right Artist Manager with Jason Spiewak

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone. Matt Ebso here with After the Master podcast, and today I am chatting with Jason Spewak. Jason is an artist manager running the record company called Noble Steed Music. He's currently working with Konstantin Maroulis, basketball hall of famer Chris Bosch and Grammy winning producer Craig Alvin. Jason is also the former president of Warner Music Distributed Label Rock Ridge Music and was one of the youngest label presidents in Warner Music history. Jason, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Matt, thanks for having me man, absolute blast to be chatting with you. So you've had a long career of working at various record labels and it seems like you started on the independent side and then kind of worked your way into the more formalized side of the music industry, on the record side. So tell me about your journey. You started in a group called BlueswedeGrew, am I right?

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yes, sir, yeah, five years touring from Canada to Florida we van and trailer. It Never graduated to the tour bus but okay, very, very proud of those years and you know that was. Those were challenging times too. You know it's like difficult to brush your teeth in a truck, stop and sleep in a van and all the things that go along with independent touring. That I learned a lot, Sure.

Speaker 1: 1:24

And so it wasn't that group that necessarily propelled you into the label side, was it? Or was there something else that kind of got you to transition from being a musician into your interest in the label side?

Speaker 2: 1:39

You know it was Playing in the band. I made some relationships that were introductory into the music business and then, through some people that I had met along the way, got an assistant job. I got an assistant job at a record company in 2001, artemis Records, and my first boss was a guy named Michael Krumper, who was still a dear friend, and Michael really taught me the ropes. And you know, I was the first guy at the office and last guy to leave. I just had such a tremendous a desire to stay in the business I was afraid every day for the first like three months that I was going to get fired. And you know, I just was super curious and so I read every piece of paper I could reasonably get my hands on and asked people that were more experienced than me what I thought were smart questions and just tried to figure it out.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Well, and it seems like you work your way up from there too. So I mean, what kept you in it? I know that there are some people who get burned out by working at labels and then just go back to doing the independent thing. Some people thrive in that label environment, so you're obviously still doing it. How did you get here from your early start?

Speaker 2: 2:50

I was very lucky to be mentored by very smart people. You know, I have to give a lot of credit to people like Danny Goldberg and Daniel Glass and Christina Zephyrus, you know who really took me under their wing, mentored me, taught me valuable lessons in the music business and you know how to figure out a path professionally in it. That was going to work for me because I you know, I the four people that I mentioned so far are all incredible music business players and and also each of them has their own personality and strengths and and so I had to figure out how to apply my strengths and found that path as an artist manager. But you know it took a while.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Sure, during all of that journey, did you always kind of have it in mind that you wanted to be an artist manager, or did you have another path in mind and you just kind of fell into the artist management side of things?

Speaker 2: 3:41

You know I took an impossible path to where I am now and also to label presidency relatively young. But part of that story is maintaining a passion for music. You know, when I was an assistant at Artemis, I also did some moonlighting playing session work. I'm a piano player and that's how you know, I got into the business and so I was paying my bills really by doing the session work and I was making, you know, 20 grand a year at Artemis in 2001, living in Manhattan, which is, like you know, really really difficult to, to, to make ends meet. And so, out of necessity initially, but then just out of passion, I continued to play sessions. And so, to answer the question you asked, you know it was really through a whole lot of forward momentum professionally, musically, artistically that you know I stuck to the wall within the business in ways that I wasn't even aware that I was creating for myself.

Speaker 1: 4:41

That's really cool to hear about that, and so it seems like now you're working with some artists that are getting some decent traction, Like Constantine Maroulas seems like there's a bunch of other celebrities and artists tweeting about his stuff. How much of that do you have a role in? How much is it? You know somebody at your company and how much is him on his own? I mean, show me the inner workings of what that sort of relationship and the promo and all that looks like when you're working with an artist in that capacity.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Well, I mean, first, it's a tremendous credit to Constantine personally. He really, you know, it's a pleasure to work with somebody who works as hard as he does. Constantine, yes, as a celebrity and also very much just like a hard hat and lunch pail kind of guy, like he works every day. He's committed to his craft. He's also over two years sober and so he's like not distracted by anything and it's a team effort really. You know, I'm fortunate enough not to work alone. I have three employees who are incredible and we're definitely a team, and so the answer to your question is a combination of the artists really knowing who they are and what they want. That's where it begins, for sure, because a lot of acts have tremendous talent but without focus it's really hard to direct that talent.

Speaker 2: 6:05

So Constantine is super busy. He's got the relationship with W ABC. He had a radio show that was on the air last year. That's now shifting to a podcast. We'll figure that world out. He's got a couple of interesting projects brewing on Broadway. Can't talk about those yet but you'll hear about them eventually. And he was just pre COVID. We're very fortunate. Constantine shot a ton of movies. He was in five independent films, all of which came out, I think, except maybe one since COVID hit, and so he's been busy in this perpetual press cycle etc. And so you know again and Constantine is also a dear friend we've been managing him for over six years now and it's going well.

Speaker 1: 6:53

When you are looking for new artists to sign, what does that typically look like at your label? Do people approach you and say, hey, check out my stuff? Are people having stuff submitted by their managers for review? Are you going out and finding people? I know you have a background in A&R and you do a lot of that stuff now. So how much is outreach and how much is inbound nowadays?

Speaker 2: 7:20

I mean most of the stuff that sticks are incoming calls, because fortunately, we have a reputation for delivering good work and we're not always successful. This is not the amount of effort that goes into delivering a new artist in this music market is like significant, and I know we'll talk a bit about that later. But we get referral business from other managers, from labels, from attorneys, from former clients who come back around. It's definitely a mixed bag, but we also keep an ear to the ground, and yesterday I had lunch with a former employee and he hiped me to a client that he's working with now, and I was just blown away by the music, and so I'm just always trying to learn. The one thing that I figured out in the business pretty quickly is, if you turn your ears off to what's happening in the marketplace, you're dead in the water, and so that is something that I really do pride myself on, and I take music recommendations for my kids as well. They're both teenagers and fully paying attention.

Speaker 1: 8:25

I suppose that's probably a big benefit to having teenagers around. Is there kind of it really plugged in with what the current trends are? Yeah, one of the few benefits, by the way.

Speaker 2: 8:38

And I love my kids there, the greatest thing in my life. Man, it is like it is full on.

Speaker 1: 8:43

It's a full time job. I'm sure it's nuts. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that quite yet, but at least there's some silver lining to that.

Speaker 2: 8:55

I'm lucky both of my kids have good taste and very different taste.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Well, I suppose it opens you up to a variety of what's going on now, and it seems like your label and your management is primarily engaged on the genres of music that still use traditional instruments.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yeah, for the most part, some of my artists incorporate electronic elements and programming and beats into their productions and that's all cool. But, yeah, my passion for acoustic instruments and all that is definitely reflected by the roster, but it doesn't dictate anything, I think, if you're going to be a true creative. My mother is a painter and so one of the things that I've learned from watching her work over the years is the more you're willing to take chances, incorporate everything and then subtract from there. It's a better approach than being closed off initially and say we don't deal with this, we only deal with that.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Yeah, that makes sense. I noticed on your website you had a slogan great music always finds an audience, right?

Speaker 2: 9:56

Yes yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:57

How did you come to coin that slogan?

Speaker 2: 9:59

Well, it's a professional mantra that I truly believe and I've seen it play out over and over and over. And part of the success of the mantra is that the terms are not specifically defined. And so, yeah, some of it is algorithmic now and, yeah, some of it is relative. And an artist who has a very, very large audience may play a concert where there's only a few hundred people attending and it's like maybe that's disappointing to them. Or then, conversely, maybe there's an artist who has only played open mics and then all of a sudden they're playing in front of thousands. And so great musical always find an audience is meant to just empower whoever is reading it to feel excited about the forward momentum of music. Now, it's not meant to be like this obnoxious, like only the great stuff will find its way through. That's not really the intention, sure.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Having been in the label side of the music industry for so long, you probably have some really good insights in the stages of a musician's career. So I've worked with a lot of emerging musicians or budding artists, I'll call them where they're really kind of getting their feet on the ground, they're establishing themselves, they're getting good recordings, they're getting good videos, they're starting to build some press and some social media presence and figure out their branding. And then I've had the opportunity to work with a few label side artists as well and I've noticed that there's very different challenges for those musicians at each of those stages. At least at the emerging artist stage, there's this kind of general now what question that pops up. They spend all their time and energy focusing on creating really good music and really good visuals and then they go ah, now what? Because there's all these things they could be doing.

Speaker 1: 11:50

There's social media and all the different social medias. There's playing concerts, there's touring. Do they make some merch? Do they try to set up a Patreon, do they try to find a label to help them with this stuff? And then, once they kind of get some of the stuff figured out on their own, a lot of them maybe do move on to a label. So I'm kind of curious what would you say, in your opinion, are the key stages in an artist's career, or the lifespan of their career, and what are the main challenges that they need to overcome at each stage?

Speaker 2: 12:27

I mean, I love everything about that question. It's so, it's huge. It's not one size fits all. I think that the most important stage that may get overlooked or not, given the focus and attention that it needs, is craftsmanship, initial craftsmanship, songsmanship there are probably better ways to say it but really figuring out what it is that an artist is bringing to the table and defining that in ways that are going to be coherent for people.

Speaker 2: 12:59

I think now especially and I don't blame artists for wanting to rush things to market, because there's so many different ways to bring things to market but 99 times out of 100, when I hear music for the first time from a new artist, it needed more time in the oven. And that's not even meant to say stupid shit like guitars being out of tune or vocals or whatever it is. It's not having a hair out of place creatively is sort of an obvious red flag. But having no sense of point of view or opinion, or what is this? Having a coherent, artistic answer to what is this? It's like, because there is so much music being produced, the stuff that really rises from the bottom to the very, using a boiling pot analogy, the stuff that rises from the bottom of the pot at all is the stuff that knows what it is. Also, I know we're just getting to know me a little bit, but, matt, I've been writing a song a week since November of 2011. It doesn't make me a great songwriter.

Speaker 2: 14:11

I got committed to the practice by getting an audition for Bob Schneider's songwriting group, which very famously, had like Jason Razz credits it with his career blah, blah, blah. All this to say, I was very lucky to get the audition. I'm grateful that I got into the group and so it set me on this practice of writing a song a week. My point is that so many new artists really don't put the time in, and maybe they're a great singer and performer and so they're just anxious to ring the bell the same way they did at karaoke last week with their friends. Everybody was freaking out about the way they sang, like that Dua Lipa song or whatever it is. So they're like all right, I want to do that, but writing my own stuff it's just not that easy, and I think music, especially for the talented, there's this illusion that it's easy, it's super, not.

Speaker 1: 14:59

It takes work. I've said it before not to you, but I've said it to many people and I'll say it again and again and again. I see this illusion presented by the entertainment industry, for some reason, that it's just an overnight thing that happens. There's movies about a girl with a guitar in her bedroom that writes a song, the right person hears it and suddenly the next week she's performing in front of millions of people. And maybe that's happened. I'm sure it's happened once or twice, but it's not the standard Right.

Speaker 2: 15:40

Well, part of the issue is shows like American Idol, and not to criticize Idol, by the way, it's the burden of television. They only have an hour to tell 20 or 30 individual stories and they want to present them successfully so that the show has forward momentum. That's not artist development.

Speaker 1: 16:01

Okay, so then I guess, speak to that. What does true artist development look like? Not the artist development that they show on TV.

Speaker 2: 16:11

Well, no, I think if you deconstruct the value of it, it's. There are so many individual shortcuts that are provided by a show like Idol. I don't need to pick on Idol, it could be the Voice or America's Got Talent or whatever. It is All of the effort that goes into coherent styling, how to have an appearance that matches with what your sonic might be. There are stylists and huge wardrobe rooms where you get to, you know, play, dress up for lack of better words. There are voice coaches that help you, maybe scrub small challenges out, and you get to skip several steps because they're trying to give you like a mercenary or a triage approach to your vocal. It's just like we're gonna get rid of all the problems and accentuate what you do really well all at once.

Speaker 2: 16:57

Repertoire selection like the songs that are chosen for these singers are done so by experts who understand, like artists in repertoire and pairing, something like so it's all of those sort of death by a thousand, cuts types of things where artists get set up for success really rapidly and then when the show ends, you know I've worked with a number of artists who have either been finalists on singing shows or gotten cut early by singing shows, and you know what I say to them and what I say to those who are considering going on those shows. It's still the same swim. But if you go on a successful reality singing show and you do well, you get to go into the pool from the diving board instead of pushing off the side. It's the same swim. And 18 months after the show, 24 months after the show, you're still, you know, challenged by the same obstacles that you would have had if you just pushed off the side of the pool pool.

Speaker 2: 17:54

But to answer your question about artist development, if you're not gonna be on a singing show, you know you have to figure out how to educate yourself, how to improve yourself, how to take incremental steps. Maybe it's YouTube tutorials, maybe it's networking, maybe it's co-writing with people, and that's not something you've done before, just challenging yourself. Because the single biggest error that I see from new artists is the illusion that they can do it themselves. You can't do it yourself. Even if you create all of your music yourself, that's awesome you can't do it yourself. You need help.

Speaker 1: 18:29

I think this leads us into a really good area of conversation. So we're kind of exiting stage one now at an artist's career, if they're really going to take themselves seriously and make it a career, not just a hobby, it's important to build a team or at least have somebody in their corner to help them out. So what does that look like? As an artist is transitioning from being independent to working with a manager or working with a label, what kind of things could they expect from a team such as yours?

Speaker 2: 19:02

Well, I'll answer that question in a minute, but I'll start with where does an artist begin if they're truly independent, maybe starting on their own? Having an amateur manager is a good place to start. Your friend who doesn't make music but seems smart and capable? Maybe talk to them about a partnership where they're going to help lead your career into its next area. Figuring out how to make connections with your peer group. Are there other artists who are at your level or maybe slightly higher that you can network with, learn from, collaborate with? Those are good ways to attract a team if you don't have one initially. There are also a number of or at least pre-code.

Speaker 2: 19:44

There used to be junior type of booking agencies or agents that are willing to help you book shows locally, regionally. It doesn't have to be William Morris or CAA or APA or any of the big companies. You've got to start sort of humble, and then so much of what I do is live, and so networking off of playing a local show is how I got a job in the music business. It was because of my reputation dealing with local promoters, local marketing people, local radio stations that I was able to make credible inroads within the label world. It still works the same way.

Speaker 2: 20:25

If you work with a local promoter, you know, ask them for their media list and then try to get yourself press. Ask if there are any radio stations they work with regularly. They're not going to play your record in rotation, but if you can get in touch with the like, the promotions manager, to show, hey, we're playing at such and such venue. I saw that your station has an event at the car wash down the street two days prior. Can I come and bring my acoustic guitar? Can I come distribute flyers? Find some way to add value for people and just make it a person to person exchange instead of expecting anyone to give a shit about the song that you wrote about a heartbreak you suffered two years ago.

Speaker 1: 21:05

I love it. So that's what kind of what it looks like for the really truly just budding emerging independent starting artist. And then as a transition to the next phase of a musical career. That's where you come in right.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Yeah, I mean, and that that's really about communication and ideas and always having a plan. You know, the thing that we pride ourselves on with our clients is having a long term plan, trying to figure out all right, we know what we would like to accomplish within the next couple of few weeks, what are we aiming for? And come up with definable, measurable benchmarks for either success or failure, not to say that if you don't hit a certain number or if you don't achieve a certain success point, that you've failed and you just go home and throw your hands up and that's the end of that. And then you can have an ability to say, all right, well, we wanted to get there, but we got 60%. Where did we fall short? What could we have done? Who did we need to partner with? That we didn't.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Did you know? Was it a lack of ideas? Was it a lack of money? Like to just hold yourself accountable so that you don't repeat the same failures. And then also, you know, trying to find a balance between you know, artistry and commerce. Like one of the reasons why I was a successful label president is I was good at answering the question will this make the record company money? What I've learned is I'm better at answering the question is this right for the artists? And as an artist manager, you have the privilege of answering that second question first.

Speaker 1: 22:43

Sure, okay, and so maybe it would be helpful to delineate a couple of things here too. So there's artist management, then there's having a record label or representation in that sense. So where do you draw the line between those two things? Because you do both, but maybe for someone who doesn't understand the difference, what are some of the delineations there?

Speaker 2: 23:06

Well, to first clarify what Noble Steed Music is. In its essence, noble Steed is an imprint and I think it's different than a record label in that being a record company is not our primary business. We do offer label service. We do compete pretty well with independent record companies, so well that a number of them have hired us to help them on marketing campaigns and digital campaigns and stuff. For me. We do that with our friends. But my point is an artist manager is really responsible for all of it publishing, licensing, merchandising, touring recorded music, all of the stuff and the things and your record company is really just responsible for exploiting your recorded music and getting you paid on those recordings and that's it.

Speaker 1: 23:58

And so sometimes those things follow under the same umbrella, but those are distinctly different roles.

Speaker 2: 24:06

Yeah, and sometimes they don't, and it's not to say that you are limited inherently by one or the other. It's all just about understanding who's actually going to do a job, and that's something that we talk about internally at Noble Steed Again. With a staff of four, one thing that we're very careful about is that we don't have two people doing the same job. We have people that understand what it is that they do and how to do it, and communicating throughout the process is really the key.

Speaker 1: 24:35

With everybody in their own specialized roles. What are some of the things that your team is doing for the artist you work with?

Speaker 2: 24:43

Right on, and so that's a great question. So, to focus on the record-making process we deal with and every project is a little bit different Some artists finish their record entirely on their own and then deliver that record finished, mastered, ready to discuss artwork, photography, label copy, publishing information, all of the stuff that goes along with setting up a record to put it out. We help organize that material, whether we're the label or not. Some artists want input on hey, I just recorded this demo last night. What do you think of it? Hey, I want to collaborate with new people and do some co-writing before this next record, and so that's part of what my team does. Once the album is done. We have relationships with press, radio, people at Spotify, people at Apple Music, amazon, et cetera, pandora, and so we collaborate on a marketing plan that my team executes a portion of, the artist executes a portion of maybe we have to outsource some help, so it's coordinating all of that stuff.

Speaker 2: 25:54

When the artist plays a show, we advance the show Few weeks in advance. Hey, what's the marketing? Who do we deal with? Do you have a media list? Blah, blah, blah. A week in advance hey, this is what we intend to show up. This is the hotel we're staying at, unless the venue provides a hotel Day of cool. This is where we load in. Who do we talk to? Are we bringing a sound guy? Is there a sound guy? All the stuff? So providing day sheets if there's no tour manager? And I'm just kind of riffing at this point, but it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 26:27

It's kind of I don't want to say anything and everything that an artist might need just to succeed at what they're doing, but it sounds like you're taking a lot of stuff off their shoulders so that they can just focus on what they do best.

Speaker 2: 26:42

In some instances and in others, artists like to fully participate and don't even want us to drive the bus. They want to be driving the bus. We just are going to shout, turn right, turn left. Whatever make suggestions, they make decisions. I mean, that's really that's a hallmark of how we like to do business. We always want the artists to be in control. There's no illusion that we know better or best. It's just a matter of how do you collaborate on decisions and how do you strategically make those decisions. I worked with a client recently who, prior to my work with them, was just kind of saying yes to everything which is good. Being opportunity driven is a powerful thing, and saying yes and is a powerful thing. However, there was no sense of strategy like zero. It was always just yes and to circle back around to your and then what? This is an artist who had a lot going for them, and having some strategy and applying that strategy to the opportunity was a big game changer on that project.

Speaker 1: 27:48

You can share the artist if you want to or not, but can you share any specifics about the things that they maybe should have been turning down or needed to think about more in terms of their overall strategy?

Speaker 2: 28:00

Sure, I won't name the artist because it doesn't matter, but turning down one show that was offered on the other coast as a one-off created an opportunity to be more strategic and include that market in a larger run of dates. That made way more sense. Also, having a strategy related to releasing new music created touring opportunities through a publicist because we were empowering other non-booking people to create booking type opportunities, because we were strategic about new music rollout. There's more, but again, I think strategy is the thing. Opportunity will come and go, but if you employ strategy, opportunity seems to come up more often.

Speaker 1: 28:52

And obviously, strategy is going to be different for each and every artist, but, as you are maybe sitting down and working with an artist to define the goals and define the strategy, what are some of the key things that you're thinking about?

Speaker 2: 29:06

What's really important, most important, is that the artist feels that their vision is being delivered. That's really where it has to begin and end. And then, once we understand what that vision is which sometimes takes some work or sometimes happens immediately then we can put the chess pieces in place. And what I try to do and not always successfully, but what we try to do is the team is help them understand that they're in the care of a doctor, essentially, that we understand what the variables are. We're going to try and treat the situation as effectively as possible, because in the world there's like I recently started rewatching curvy or enthusiasm with my wife and we watched the episode where, like, larry gets advice from the pharmacist and goes to the doctor and says I think I should try this drug instead.

Speaker 2: 29:53

Like the world is full of pharmacists, and so I tried to, in my relationship with my clients, reassure them that what they're receiving is an optimal care plan, despite or in light of whatever they might be hearing elsewhere. Because there's the cool thing about the music business now, that was not really the case when I got into it in 2001, is there's so much information about what's possible and so many opportunities and so much noise that it can be empowering. It's empowering if you know who to listen to and what to trust and how to husk fact from fiction and all that stuff, but it can also be overwhelming, and so that that's really why I have a job.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Makes sense. I mean, like you said, because there's so much information, it's empowering if you know who to listen to and where to go for that information. But if someone maybe hasn't had the experience to figure out who's reputable, who's not, and figure out if a piece of advice is the piece of advice they need right now, some of that's kind of difficult to sort through. You know, because you hear things like, oh, you got to develop an email list and you go, okay, we'll add that to the to do list. And you hear things like, okay, well, you need to sell merch because that's how you make money. You don't make money on streams.

Speaker 1: 31:14

You add that to the list and like you start kind of going through the things that you can do as an artist and suddenly you turn around and look at your to do list and there's like 30 things on there. It's like, well, ah, this is almost another. Now what it's like the. You know there's all these things to do, but what order do you do them in? What? What's the importance of each of them as it relates to your particular vision and strategy, and is it the right time to do any of these things? And so you help solve a lot of these things, it sounds like.

Speaker 2: 31:45

We try to, you know, and and I empathize with artists who you know again, as humbly as an artist myself, if I write a song on a Sunday, it's usually when I turn my work in that I'm really excited about. I'm like, well, now what? And it never matters, it's not how I make a living, that's not really my point, but the burden of the. Now what I think is it's heavy, it's like, well, I'm, I'm just a fucking piano player. I love writing songs. I don't need to become an expert merch designer. Why do I need to know how to register a song with sound exchange, like what's all this other crap? And part of that is, yes, why I have a job. But then also, as an artist, you realize that there is power in involving yourself in these processes. And so, again, if an artist wants to know every detail, we'll do our best to explain it. If an artist gives not a single fuck and just wants to get paid by sound exchange, we can do that too.

Speaker 1: 32:40

That's awesome. It's awesome. There's just a lot to unpack out there. Whether you're an artist or just running a business, there's just a lot that you can get added to a to-do list. That just seems insane, and I think people tend to experience I know this from my own experience there's a tendency to see it all and then just get paralysis by analysis and do none of it.

Speaker 2: 33:01

Yeah, and I know that's that's definitely a thing. And then on the other side, there are days like earlier this week. We're in the office and I'm running here, running there, this phone call, that zoom, all this stuff, blah, blah, blah, and drinking coffee and just like powering through and I was like, oh shit, I forgot to eat lunch. It's like 3.30. I'm like, ah man, that's why I'm so irritable. You know stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Yeah, so it's good to have a sense of direction to help guide some of that. In your opinion, what is the most important personality trait or strength? Someone would need to have to be a successful musician as their career no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 33:44

because no matter how successful you are in fact, the more successful you are, the more you will encounter those who think you've failed. And so it's all relative. And the more resilient you are as an artist, the more resilient you are as a human being in that environment, the happier you will be. Because success is relative but happiness isn't, and if you're happy in your life, it will propel you forward and keep your creative tank full and all the good things. And if you're not resilient and you take too much to heart and get frustrated and be burnt out by it again, to answer the question, resilience is king.

Speaker 1: 34:27

I don't know who said it, but I came upon this phrase once online where they were saying in a video game, when you encounter enemies, you know you're going in the right direction. That kind of reminds me of this right.

Speaker 2: 34:46

That's awesome. I mean, I don't know. My mind immediately went to Final Fantasy. I'm just like, well, yeah, that's super true. Oh man, I'm going to borrow that. Can I credit you or someone else?

Speaker 1: 34:59

You could credit me if you can't Google and find who originally said that, because I didn't come up with that, Rad.

Speaker 2: 35:06

I love that. I don't know where it came from.

Speaker 1: 35:08

It really hit me because I think about something even older, like halo. If you're going the wrong direction, you're just bouncing against the boundary of the thing You're going somewhere, there's no resistance, but you're not going in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 35:22

Word I love that.

Speaker 1: 35:23

Yeah, so you're in a pretty unique position in that you have your hands in a lot of different things that artists are doing, and you're engaged with artists who are doing a lot on the rail, but you're doing a lot for them, and so I'm kind of curious is there anything you see coming down the pipeline for the future of music marketing that maybe other people can't see yet, but you can?

Speaker 2: 35:50

That's a great question. So this week TikTok announced essentially a self-distribution mechanism where artists can put out their own music via TikTok exclusively and TikTok is the distributor. That falls in line with something that I had seen evolving. I'm not really answering your question. I'm more giving you the weather today or asking you what's the weather going to be six months from now, and I've always been kind of good at that, and what I would say is more of more movement toward the empowerment of independent artists to get paid directly, without interference from record companies. But what I think that's going to do is only increase and empower publishing companies and record companies to be more important, more impactful, because they will have the marketing relationships to really push a project through.

Speaker 2: 36:48

Like the challenge since the dawn of social media has been getting a bottom, like boiling up to happen, and that's not about you saying that you're great, that's about a lot of other people who aren't you saying you're great on socials and sharing your music and all that other stuff, and then pairing that with like a top-down marketing, like well, here's a big feature on a radio station, or here's a big concert that you play at, or here's a write-up in Vanity Fair or whatever it is. And so getting those touch points to meet in the middle and like broaden that's really where your audience is is that bottom-up, top-down. And what's going to happen, I think, in the next several years is that top-down is going to become less and less accessible for independent artists and the bottom-up is going to become wider and more powerful. And so what happens then? Some sort of correction and I'm getting chills as I'm saying this because I hope I'm right, but I don't know Like the Spotify-fication of music is actually healthy for music consumerism but unhealthy for music discovery now.

Speaker 2: 37:55

And so, as that sort of phrase and falls into whatever it is like, we all laugh about it on Myspace and since anything, and now Facebook sees it writing on the wall and it's becoming meta and it's all going to be like they're going to hope to displace porn as the new VR thing and like horror. The punchline to my joke is more artists will have more coherent audience independently, completely not like Lady Gaga, dua Lipa, coldplay nobody cares and nobody will fucking care. Nobody will care, but they'll have careers. And then there will be the U2, coldplay, bruno Mars, massive artist thing that will have hair and balls and muscles and all that stuff. But the gap between these two things I see it widening.

Speaker 1: 38:46

What do you think the consequence of something like that is? You call it correction, but in what way is it correcting? Well, what I hope?

Speaker 2: 38:54

is that more sophisticated artist development can take place, because the thing that's really happening within the disposable TikTok pop, kleenex approach to popular songs. It's not healthy for artist development and, in a way, success like lightning in a bottle. Success is the worst thing that can happen for a project that is like very carefully and modestly growing audience to a point where it's becoming a thing, and so hopefully, as the gap widens between the Bruno Marses and the anonymous artists, artists will realize that it is about that incremental growth and being able to go from selling 200 tickets to 300 tickets and going from 10,000 streams in one month to 12,000 streams in the next month. That's really where a career lies and that's what real artist development will continue to look like.

Speaker 1: 40:02

I love that, because there's a lot more to a career in music than just being famous. Amen, yeah, there's fame and then there's sustainability, oh yeah, and sometimes those go hand in hand, I love.

Speaker 2: 40:21

Constantine Merule is a great example of that, as we were talking about earlier. He has fame. He's famous. Most people who know who he is, he likes to. He says he's your mom's favorite American idol and hey, whoa, I love you so much. Being a household name to within a certain universe, it really isn't worth anything. The value is in the work, and he continues to work and do it, develop new projects. He released an album last year like dude is good. He understands who he is and what he wants to do.

Speaker 1: 40:52

Yeah, it's been. It's really good to have that work ethic behind all that, I'm sure Cause if you do get that lightning in a bottle success, one hit wonder, overnight achievement. People are going to ask, naturally, okay, well, where's the next song?

Speaker 2: 41:06

No, that's it. And look, the phone does ring. Like we get offers to do private events, corporate stuff, bar mitzvahs, birthdays, whatever it is. Sometimes people just want Constantine because they love them in rock of ages or they love them in American Idol and I think that that will fortunately exist for him as long as he wants to do it. But the growth that we've seen for him and like adding the radio show and these new projects developing on Broadway, it's all because he continued to stay committed to the work.

Speaker 1: 41:32

Awesome. So coming back to you for a second, what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned over your career?

Speaker 2: 41:40

You know, I was told early in my career that being a jack of all trades is not a good idea because you have to become expert in something, and for a while I was pegged as an online marketing expert. I contributed a chapter you know, a how to guide for online marketing for a book called the Future of the Music Business, which I think is accidentally hilarious. I written by a music lawyer that I love, steve Gordon. He's a very smart guy. But over the course of my career what I've realized is that my level of expert is not really what is important. What is important is that I can reach experts.

Speaker 2: 42:22

I know who the experts are and so it's not because laziness, I love learning shit, but I don't have the time to do a deep dive on what it means to have search engine optimization efforts taking place. Now I could speak to it in 2004. Like I did the search campaign for Pitbull when I was at TVT, when I started working the first Pitbull record in 2003, when you Googled Pitbull, all you got was shit about the dog and six months later, pitbullmusiccom number one in 2004 on Google. And that was work. And that was, like you know, link reciprocation and all the other 101 HTML garbage that went into SEO in 2004. Now, I have not a fucking clue, no idea about search engine optimization, but I know three people who live in that world.

Speaker 1: 43:16

Sure, and maybe the two. That's the difference between being the CEO of an artist management company versus the employee of the artist management company, sure yeah, yeah, but I learned from my employees.

Speaker 2: 43:29

I mean, we collaborate really heavily and in our company the good news bad news about a good idea is you have to now try it. We all agree that something is a good idea. Even if it's my good idea, I gotta go try and figure it out.

Speaker 1: 43:47

How do we do that. Sure, at the end of the day it's all an experiment, you know, you gotta try it, see if it sticks and if it doesn't, abandon it and try something new, right?

Speaker 2: 43:55

to a certain degree, that's true. And then there are other like mechanical aspects of the business, like publicity, like radio, where it's just a path to follow and you're trying to strategically navigate. Remember those old wooden skill games where you're trying to coax a ball along the path without it falling into a hole. Yeah, that's what radio and publicity is. It's all this like shit. Npr, ah, crap, whatever.

Speaker 1: 44:22

And then so you just kind of pick up where you left off and try again. That's it All right, I love that. So we've been chatting for a while and I have a few questions that I've been asking every guest I have on the show, and so I wanna fire a few of these at ya. Great, what question do you wish I would have asked and how would you have answered it?

Speaker 2: 44:42

Oh, why did I retire from basketball at the age of 45? I mean, I've won two JCC championships, but I've got a bad back, and so I just I gotta hang them up. Dude, it's sad, sad, but true. I don't know how my team is gonna replace both points per game that I was contributing, but they're gonna have to pick one without me.

Speaker 1: 45:02

Oh, it's gonna be a sorry loss to not have you on their team anymore.

Speaker 2: 45:07

Yeah, they're gonna lose a lot of body, hair and sweat, everything else.

Speaker 1: 45:11

I don't know. It's definitely the funniest response I've had to that one. I like that. What one piece of advice would you leave our listener with?

Speaker 2: 45:20

Stay curious, you know. Always continue to learn. If you feel like you've accomplished it all and learned it all about an area of this business, then you're just not paying attention. There's always a new idea and new opportunity and new collaboration and new conversation, and it is a business of relationships. And just always stay curious.

Speaker 1: 45:44

I love it. All right, final question for you. Don't have to think too hard for this one. Where can people find you online?

Speaker 2: 45:52

Noblesteadmusiccom and I'm very accessible on Instagram. Last name, first name Jason Spiewack. No Spaces or Hyphens. We're also on Instagram as Noblestead Music. You can tune in to see final construction on our studio project. We're building a studio in Muscle Shoals, alabama. Very, very excited about that.

Speaker 1: 46:12

Oh, I did see that. Actually, I guess I'm gonna ask another question then. So tell me about the studio, what prompted the build of that? A very long story short.

Speaker 2: 46:20

Craig Alvin moved from Nashville to Muscle Shoals. In the pandemic he had been in Nashville for 15 years and prior to that in many other places, just always making records. And there's a renaissance happening in Muscle Shoals for sure, and Craig's move was the initial impetus for exploring it. And we bought a building, we're renovating it and hope to be opening our doors next month at Noblestead Studios and Craig's got all the best gear and we're very, very excited about that. Looked like you had some really nice stuff.

Speaker 1: 47:01

I saw like a newspaper article or something that was written about the studio.

Speaker 2: 47:06

Yeah, we've had the benefit of some community support in Muscle Shoals for sure, and there's been some great music coming out of that area for many years, like Jason Isbell Drive by Truckers came out of the studio and Drive by Truckers came out of Muscle Shoals, and some great studio musicians that have been traveling back and forth to Nashville to play sessions. But we're hoping, as more studios open in the Shoals and more producers bring projects to Muscle Shoals, that those studio players will be able to stay local, Nice.

Speaker 1: 47:33

get out of the hustle and bustle of some of the more congested music cities.

Speaker 2: 47:39

Oh man, nashville is. You know, it's a wonderful place, but they just did not design it properly. The highways it's like three highways all merging right on the outskirts of town, and it's always a disaster.

Speaker 1: 47:50

Oh that's rough. So maybe Muscle Shoals will be the next music hotspot, huh.

Speaker 2: 47:55

You know what? I love it just the way it is. We'll take the growth incrementally. I'd rather it not explode like Nashville. Don't get me wrong. I love a good pedal tavern Like that is cool and fun. But a color me old fashioned. I'd rather just sit in a bar and have a drink while sitting still.

Speaker 1: 48:14

You know I'm with you there. I've done the pedal pub thing and it's a lot of work. It is it's like it's real.

Speaker 2: 48:21

you know shit, I mean why and you can't even drink like a nice flavorful, rich beer.

Speaker 1: 48:27

When you're doing that, you have to drink like the hard seltzer thing because you're pedaling hard. You have to drink something refreshing, otherwise it's just heavy in the little.

Speaker 2: 48:35

Yeah, you need to give me the splash of citrus man, I really yeah, you're not drinking Guinness while you're doing a pedal pub.

Speaker 1: 48:42

Not, unless you want to vomit.

Speaker 2: 48:43

I mean, that's what I? Yeah, I'd rather decide not to buck it.

Speaker 1: 48:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Jason, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 48:51

My pleasure, matt Great, talking with you.