Tools for Distributing, Marketing, & Managing Your Music with Laura Catana

Matt Ebso: 0:07

Howdy hey podcast listeners. Welcome to episode 6 of After the Master: A Musician's guide. In this show, we help musicians and independent artists find clarity about their next steps to succeed in the music business. I'm your host, Matt Ebso, and in today's conversation, Laura Catana and I discussed the tools independent artists can use to distribute, market and manage their music even without a manager. We recorded this episode in March 2022, so there's one major update to Laura's bio and work history I want to mention before we begin. Laura started working as marketing manager at Symphonic Distribution in 2023. Everything else in our conversation should be accurate and relevant for artists in 2024 and beyond. So grab a mate gourd, sit back and get ready to be inspired. Let's dive in.

Matt Ebso: 1:01

Today, I'm chatting with Laura Catana. Laura is the head of artist relations at IndieFlow. She's a trilingual, first generation New Yorker who is passionate about leveling the playing field for independent artists in the music industry of today. Laura dove head first into the music industry in 2015 after beginning to manage an Afro-Cuban pioneer of electronic music and co-founding Cuba's first urban indie music label, guampara Music. Based in Havana, cuba. She has comprehensive experience as a professional artist manager, label manager and live event producer. Currently, she heads up artist relations and sales at IndieFlow, a music tech company that provides a suite of online tools for independent artists to manage and build their music career, all from one central dashboard. Welcome, laura, hi. So I got to start off by asking a question that is mostly selfish. If I ever go to Cuba, what is the best place to listen to live music?

Laura Catana: 2:03

Wow, what a question. I mean. Probably the best answer is man. Havana has one of the coolest venues that I have ever been to in my life. It's called Fábrica de Arte, fac and it is kind of a warehouse maze. There's like several different stages and it is just a real special place, great place to hear not just Cuban music but anything that's kind of passing through the island. Like I said, it's just one of the coolest venues I've ever been to, so that should probably be your number one.

Matt Ebso: 2:43

All right. Fábrica de Arte.

Laura Catana: 2:44

Yeah, and it's FAC because it's the Fabriga de Arte Pueblo, which is that's where the FAC is.

Matt Ebso: 2:50

Okay, got it got it All right. Yeah, very cool. Tell me about your musical background. How did you get into music from travel?

Laura Catana: 2:59

Yeah, well, actually in a past life, before my music business career, I was actually a landscape designer, which nothing to do with music, but also very cool. My music background, honestly, I came from a musical family my mom's a musician, my grandfather's a musician but never really got into music, mostly because of the way life kind of turned out for me. I ended up circumstantially and taking over my family business, which is how I got into landscaping. Okay, so after college I just went straight into being a landscape designer and never really took the moment to be like what do I want to be?

Laura Catana: 3:40

When I grew up and it was on my travels Basically bought a one-way ticket to travel the world for a year to then decide what I wanted to be when I grew up, and that one year turned into five. That's how I ended up in Cuba. That's how I started working with all these artists, and it just was the kind of thing where I'm like oh yeah, this is what I should have been doing all along. This makes sense. I love to be involved in music, but I'm not the musician per se, I'm the let's get shit done kind of person, which is an important role, I'm sure, as you've discovered, working with musicians, oh yes, oh yes, I think extremely important for the.

Laura Catana: 4:23

It's a good compliment, let's say, to the musician brain.

Matt Ebso: 4:28

Yeah, it's like I had a client who used to always refer to our roles together as a creative team, as left brain, right brain.

Laura Catana: 4:38

Yeah, that's a great way to think of it.

Matt Ebso: 4:40

Absolutely, I'm trying to remember if I could be wrong about this, but I think right brain is like the creative side and left brain is the organizational. I could have that flipped. I think you're right. Yeah, he always referred to me as his left brain guru. That complimented his scattered creative side. He needed that idea wrangler, someone to take the ideas and funnel them into something tangible and go okay, let's ran it in. And so it sounds like that's what you and IndieFlow do on a professional level, right?

Laura Catana: 5:10

Yeah Well, and IndieFlow is actually a really cool role for me. It's the kind of position where I'm like, oh, everything I've been doing in life has prepared me for this role. So it's a pretty cool space where I get to kind of flex a lot of my manager skills artist development, kind of music business. But I also I do sales, which means that I talk to people all day, which is awesome because I love to talk to people. So, yeah, it's IndieFlow has been a nice kind of. You know, being a manager is so difficult. It can be such a thankless job and, you know, manager means really your business manager, babysitter, nurse, mom there's a whole lot of roles you play psychiatrist.

Laura Catana: 6:01

Psychiatrist that's a big one Life coach, you know. So this is kind of a cool way for me to still get to be really involved with artists but to maybe not have that. You know, responsibility of what is my career is in your hands you know Right, okay, very cool.

Matt Ebso: 6:19

We were talking before the show about how musicians tend to leave the studio with something that they're really proud of and then go. Okay, now what? And that's what this whole show is centered around. So I kind of wanted to focus on, I guess, two things. So how have you personally worked to solve that? Now, what conundrum for artists. And then how is IndieFlow approaching that same? Now, what conundrum. Okay.

Laura Catana: 6:45

Well, let's see me personally. Personally, I just I love to learn, I'm constantly learning. Any masterclass or marketing course, anything that comes across my path, I've just I eat it up and also I mean it's it's such a you know, the industry is constantly changing, so I think it's also important to kind of stay up to date with what's happening. So, yeah, I'd say I mean, when I got into, you know, into the music industry, which was just I started managing a friend, which is, I think, probably how most people start managing artists and, to be honest, I really had no idea what I was doing, which I think is also probably pretty, pretty normal for beginner artists.

Laura Catana: 7:35

I had a lot of friends that work in the music industry. So I just really I hit up my network, I asked anybody that would sit down and chat with me and let me ask them some questions, and I got a lot of help from people. You know, I was pretty shameless, no ego of like I don't know what I'm doing. Can I ask you some questions? I had definitely that natural, you know. Okay, I can get things done. I know how to be a productive human being, but had a lot to learn. So that's how I got my start as far, so then repeat me the question as far as indie flow, what do we do?

Matt Ebso: 8:16

Yeah, so the same question then, the same focus, would be how does indie flow work to solve that? Now, what conundrum for artists.

Laura Catana: 8:25

Okay. So the way that indie flow does that, I mean, look, it's really lonely. I think being an artist today, right, you're kind of basically expected to do, you know, 10 different roles. You're basically expected to be your own label and if you're not in a band, it's can you know, feel like it's you against the world. So what we do at indie flow, the idea of our platform, is that it's, you know, it's a suite of online tools to help you organize your music business and to help you learn the music industry.

Laura Catana: 8:59

Okay, what I tell artists all day, every day, is that if you don't understand how this industry works, you are not going to know how to play the game. You know, I think a lot of artists, it's a little hard to kind of make that distinction between, yeah, I'm a creative and this is my art, but to then also understand this is still a business and it's not just like, oh, I'm gonna make stuff and see what happens. I mean, sure, you could do it that way and I can take a guess as to what's gonna happen and it's probably not much. But if you really take the time to learn and to understand what is a strategy, what kind of a plan. What are my goals? How am I gonna make a sustainable business? What are my different revenue streams?

Laura Catana: 9:44

Just that alone can really make a big difference. So what we do at IndieFlow, we've got a lot of organizational tools, project management, release templates, tools to help you really make that transition from I'm just kind of winging it to no, I'm making a plan and having a strategy. And then we also offer a lot of educational resources. So we have artist development workshops once a month, which are basically like master classes, lots of weekly opportunities to pop into what we call office hours, which is an opportunity to chat with one of our artist relations managers asks questions specific to what you're learning, to what you're working on, and we're just really trying to teach you the way show, give you the tools so that you can continue to be independent but have a little support along the way.

Matt Ebso: 10:46

That's really cool. So IndieFlow is somewhat of a combination of different things. It sounds like there's like a bit of like a CRM or a project management software cloud-based tool, and it sounds like there's also the educational component that goes along with that. So it's not only just a tool but it's education and saying hey, here's how you can use this tool within the context of how the music industry works and how you can use it to further yourself and your goals Totally totally so we're actually.

Laura Catana: 11:15

We're not a CRM, but definitely what we are. We're a distributor. We help make sure you're collecting all of your royalties, because most artists are not. We've got some great project management tools that are made specifically for musicians, so lots of little bells and whistles that'll make your life as a musician a lot easier. And also, collaborating with a team, we help with marketing. We've got some cool booking tools, but yeah, you're right, it's our suite of online tools plus a community and a team to kind of support you along the way. I like to think of our platform kind of like a virtual manager, not in the sense that we're not doing the work for you, okay, but a manager in the sense that will help guide you, support you, give you the building blocks and the organizational tools to learn the industry so that you can go forth and prosper.

Matt Ebso: 12:13

Sure. So it's really kind of gathering all the necessary information and tools and putting them in one place for someone to succeed at, kind of moving from that amateur musician into the more I would call it emerging artist or semi-pro musician, right that's exactly.

Laura Catana: 12:34

It doesn't that sound great? Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Matt Ebso: 12:36

Honestly, I wish I had known about this years ago. How long has IndieFlow been around, cause? This sounds amazing.

Laura Catana: 12:43

Yeah, I mean we're still a relatively new company. We've been around the platform's been active for just over two years. Okay, we're you know still, I would still call us a startup, which means that things are improving and we're updating all the time and, yeah, where we're going is pretty exciting.

Matt Ebso: 13:04

Very cool as you encounter all these different artists, as you're talking to them during the sales process and as an artist relations manager. What do you think is the number one problem modern independent musicians face when it comes to getting their music out there?

Laura Catana: 13:24

Marketing. I think most musicians have no idea how to market their music and I think a lot of musicians don't even understand that they have to market their music. You know it's the days of like oh, if my music's really dope, people will find me. Those days are long gone. I mean, maybe somebody will stumble upon you, but I certainly wouldn't build a business around that. There's so much music being made today, which is incredible. You know, it is so accessible to make music, but if you're not marketing your music, you are not gonna break through the noise. And when I say all the time also, you could have the best song in the world and if nobody hears it cause they don't know how to find it, it doesn't matter. Maybe, maybe not.

Matt Ebso: 14:10

It's very true. I've had artists that I've worked with ask me some things to the effect of well, what do you think Is this song gonna be a hit? And I say, well, that depends largely on you. You know, I've worked with artists who I think have amazing music that never really sees a light of day, and I've worked with artists who I don't personally like their music but I could see how some people would like it. And it does really really well, because those artists know how to or at least have some grasp of how to market it and get it out there and put it in front of people's faces and their ears and then also monetize that process.

Laura Catana: 14:55

Which is also exactly. I mean, that's the artist that understands that you're not just an artist, you are an entrepreneur. And if you understand that, like, okay, this is a business. I gotta treat this like a business. It's a game changer. You know, to your point, I always use as an example Lil Nas X. He just, you know, joined the billion club on Spotify, whatever billion streams. Look, I respect the hell out of him. Is he my favorite musician? Absolutely not. Do I think he's the most amazing musician in the world? Absolutely not. What he is excellent at is marketing himself. He's excellent at social media. He found a little niche, he found a hole in the market and he ran with it. And that exactly. You know, it's not just about being talented anymore, it's okay. Yeah, your music still needs to be good, obviously, but you've gotta have a firm grasp on that on the business side, otherwise you're just, you're not gonna keep up.

Matt Ebso: 15:59

Okay, so here's a good follow-up question to that then. I know a lot of artists feel intimidated by the music industry on the independent level because of some cultural factors, one of them being this notion that the majority of people who succeed are industry plants. Right, I think there's this idea that some artists think, oh well, I'll never be successful because I need to be an industry plant to be that way. So what's your perspective on that? Is there some truth to that, or is there kind of a wide open space for independent artists to still thrive without that fabricated support like a label?

Laura Catana: 16:41

Good question.

Laura Catana: 16:42

So I think you can't really compete with the major label formula you know Like and my gosh, I've seen there's I don't wanna mention names, but an artist that I saw at the very beginnings of, absolutely, you know, 400 followers on Instagram and he just via a DM on Instagram, which is another thing I tell artists all the time Everybody in this world is either a DM or an email away. You have nothing to lose, right? That's an important thing also. But anyways, he ended up getting signed to an offshoot of a major label and I'm watching as he rolls out these songs with his you know major label marketing budget and each music video gets more than a million streams, which it's like your views, and I'm like, yeah, cool, If you have a major label marketing budget, that's not that hard to do, right? So can you compete with that? Is there room? Look? I think that's. Those artists are always gonna be on another level, but those artists are also usually pretty formulaic.

Laura Catana: 17:48

You know there is a formula, and the reason there's a formula is because it's a business, right, the labels are basically banks and they know, okay, if we do it this way, x, y, z we know that this is gonna work and it does, because they've, you know, they've done their research, whatnot. So can the independent artists compete with that? I don't know, probably not, but there is absolutely, I think, still room for the independent artists to have success, okay. But that also kind of brings up the question what does success look like? What does success mean to you, right, to me, yeah, the fame and celebrity that is gonna obviously be easier to reach with a label, but if you wanna, if your version of success is a sustainable business, you don't need the label to do that. You absolutely you need to think of your different revenue streams and all you need is a core group of fans that really believe in you. And it is not. I mean, getting to your first $100,000 is not that crazy if you have a strategy behind it.

Matt Ebso: 18:59

So it sounds like you're probably pretty intimately familiar with the Thousand True Fan Theory.

Laura Catana: 19:04

Yes, absolutely. You need 1,000 fans to spend $100 on you a year, which is like eight bucks a month, and that is not that hard to achieve.

Matt Ebso: 19:15

Yeah, and then you could just have a pretty comfortable lifestyle making music if you just have 1,000 super fans really true fans yeah.

Laura Catana: 19:26

And you're your own boss. You're not a slave to any label. You haven't signed your life away. You put out music when you want, you do what you want, and that's the entrepreneur lifestyle right.

Matt Ebso: 19:38

Which is a very different track, I suppose, than that celebrity status, and so it's probably important for artists to at some point decide what do they value more? Do they value the celebrity, or do they value being able to just have a sustainable career as a musician?

Laura Catana: 19:55

And for whatever it's worth. I would say 90%, if not 100, of the artists that I know that have signed with a major label have all regretted it. It's been a terrible experience for everybody.

Matt Ebso: 20:09

Okay, so spill the beans on that one. I wanna hear more about that. Reason I ask is because I chatted with a couple of people from a very label-heavy background recently who said basically that there's not much of a way for artists to succeed without a label. So I'm curious to hear the anti-perspective to that.

Laura Catana: 20:35

Well, again, what's your definition of success? True, you know, I spoke a couple of weeks ago, I spoke on a call, with an artist, an emerging artist, who I wouldn't say had his shit together, but his whole, what he wanted was 3 million streams. That was his success. And I'm like, okay, do you know how much 3 million streams pays? What is it? A million streams is like $4,000. Yeah, that's all you want. No, that's okay, I wouldn't. That wouldn't be success for me. But cool, it's a little bit of cloud. So again, yeah, can you look, it has happened historically that the you know, an independent artist has gotten to. I mean, you know there's lots of case studies, I don't know Russ, right, the rapper, russ is a pretty good example. Can you? Can you get to that point?

Laura Catana: 21:34

Yes, but most artists who are independent and achieve that success, to be honest, they do usually signing to a label or at least a distribution deal, right. But when you get to that level, with some cloud already, then you come to the negotiating table. I mean it's a different game. You know, you are coming with your demands and either the labels meet it or they don't, and you have that power to walk away or not, whereas if you come to the label without anything yet they are your owner and you are. I mean you have. It's a very, very different situation.

Matt Ebso: 22:13

There's a lot of business books that talk about walk away power. It's kind of what you're talking about here, where you basically don't have any power in negotiation if you don't have the ability to just say no and walk away Exactly so I guess another way of kind of like looking at what you're saying is basically, if you establish yourself and you have a lot of cloud as an independent artist and you have a steady career already as an independent artist, at that point nothing beyond that is just icing on the cake, it's yeah, they want you, yeah, they, you're the artist.

Laura Catana: 22:47

You bring all of the. You know you're coming with all of the new, exciting, whatever. And they. You know you do have the power in that situation.

Matt Ebso: 22:55

If you're thinking of being a musician as being a business, you could almost think of it like building a business to sell it in that case where, like no, no Fortune 500 company wants to buy, like the single person to start up in a garage. But if you have, if you, if you've got a company that already has lots of revenue and lots of customers, then they might consider buying you out at that point Exactly. Same idea Exactly.

Laura Catana: 23:24

So yeah, I mean, but. But then the other thing is on. You know the flip side, if you're just doing your own thing, you've got, let's say, your thousand or more super fans. I mean, you are your own boss, and to me that is way better any day than I mean. The way I see it, it's like just selling your soul to the label and then you just have to do everything they tell you to do and, like I said, I've mostly seen that turn out poorly.

Matt Ebso: 23:53

So that's why Indie Flow focuses on the indie side of music and helping musicians to get that independent success without label backing.

Laura Catana: 24:04

Right, exactly, and I mean it's just look, most of the artists that I talk to, the vast majority of them, just have no idea about the business side. And I completely understand why. But you know, it's just they're at such a disadvantage and I see it all the time. People are like man, you know, I keep putting out music and nothing's happening and nobody's listening. And then you internalize that and you're like does my music suck? Should I stop doing this? And it's like no dude, just you know you got to learn the other side of things and how to be in the industry, how to be in the business.

Matt Ebso: 24:44

Sure, yeah, it makes total sense. So walk me through what are some of the specific things that Indie Flow offers in terms of tool sets.

Laura Catana: 24:54

Okay, so let's see. First thing I'll start with is distribution. Okay, this is one of the coolest things that we do. Now the distribution market is super saturated. There's a million distributors out there. There's something that we do differently. That is a game changer in my mind. I also say that as a manager who usually gets stuck with doing a lot of the boring business back end. So what we do with distribution is that we streamline the process of getting the track registered in each of the places it needs to be to actually collect all of your royalties.

Laura Catana: 25:34

Okay, so a lot of artists think that yeah, I'm collecting all of my royalties because district kids says I keep 100% of my royalties. Okay, that's not all your royalties and okay, I'll explain a little more. So the way we explain it look the simplified version is there's three different places you need to register each of your songs to actually be collecting all of your royalties. So you've got your performance rights organization, your PRO ASCAP, bmi, csac or whatever country you're from. Then you've got your publishing admin, like Song Trust, who I love to bits, and then there's sound exchange to collect your neighboring rights. Okay, so most artists have no idea that there's anything beyond ASCAP or BMI, right, right. So what we do? Just by distributing your song, we will automatically register it with your PRO, with Song Trust, with Sound Exchange. You literally don't need to go to any extra website, you don't need to do any other paperwork. We do it for you and we do it correct.

Matt Ebso: 26:39

Ooh, that sounds like a nice feature. Does that work for copyright too, or do you still have to go through those steps too?

Laura Catana: 26:47

No, yeah, Copyright we don't touch upon, but at least all of that, the publishing, your royalties, you can rest assured that, yeah, you will actually be collecting it all.

Matt Ebso: 26:58

That makes sense. Probably hard to build any APIs around a government website, right.

Laura Catana: 27:03

Yeah, exactly the other cool thing about that. I'll say so. Song Trust. They charge a one-time fee of $100 to work with them and we can waive that for the artist because we integrate with them. Same for the $50 fee for ASCAP, so $150 of savings there.

Matt Ebso: 27:22

Not a bad deal, especially as you're starting out.

Laura Catana: 27:25

Yeah, so, okay. So that's how we do distribution and publishing. Next, project management is a super, super cool tool. And this again me and my manager brain. I have lists upon lists, upon checklists that I'm an hyper-organized person. Sometimes that doesn't come quite as easily to the artist brain, right? So we've got a really great project management tool to help you. You know task management, to help you lay out step by step what are you supposed to be doing. We've got some cool templates to support. You know a release strategy, you know shooting a music video, so there's templates that you can build off of.

Laura Catana: 28:08

But it's, if you've ever used, like a sauna. It's most similar to a sauna. So, laying out your tasks, each task you can assign to a calendar. That calendar links with your Google calendar, so there's no escaping your notifications, your tasks, okay, nice.

Laura Catana: 28:26

Also a really cool tool you can invite collaborators into your project. So maybe you're the artist and you're either, maybe you're working on a song with another artist, or maybe you've got your producer, your videographer, whoever it is. You can invite them into the project. There's no extra fee, they don't need to be indie flow members, and what's cool about that is that it becomes a tool not just for you, but for the whole team. You can assign tasks, delegate. They will also get notifications in their Google calendar. It's just. For me, it's the difference of like, okay, we've got a lot of work to do, but we know exactly what we need to do when we need to do it by versus. Oh my God, I have so much stuff to do, I don't even know where to start, so maybe I'm just going to sit down, smoke a joint and not do anything after.

Matt Ebso: 29:13

Right? Is that paralysis by analysis?

Laura Catana: 29:16

Yeah, exactly, and so, yeah, so we, you know that's an awesome tool. There's also, like I said, other bells and whistles in there for musicians. You can store all of the files that you're working on, so your artwork, your little Instagram, you know content, videos you're, you know the MP3, different bounces of the song. It's unlimited storage and, again, tools for the whole team to be able to collaborate in there. You guys can, you can leave comments, you can download things from there. It's it's kind of the ideas to replace your Google drive or Dropbox or whatever and have it all in one place.

Matt Ebso: 29:54

Nice, that sounds so slick. I wish that. I wish this was out years ago, when I was still working with my band. Oh my gosh, I would. I love project management tools and CRMs to the point where, like, I've dabbled in way too many and now I'm at a point with my business where I have to like pick one and like simplify the processes to just like use the one. So I'm a I'm a CRM project management tool nerd.

Laura Catana: 30:20

So you're making me so excited. Well, the other, you know, another thing that we tell artists also and this again is like making that mindset shift to approaching this life of business is, you know, sometimes what I tell artists, like, how do what I tell artists is this think of it. Like you know, each time you release a new song, your music business is launching a new product. You're bringing a new product to market, right, sure, how do businesses launch new products? They definitely don't just tell a couple of friends, make a couple posts and hope for the best, right, very true Plan. They have a strategy. They they're you know, they prepare everything ahead of time and they also have some systems in place, right, each time, you know, I don't know, each time Apple drops a new iPhone, they're not starting from scratch, being like, okay, how do we do this?

Laura Catana: 31:11

They got some systems and you have to approach your music in the same way. So the idea is to spend the time once to lay out what is your release strategy, what are the different, all the different steps you're going to do each time you release a track, and then get it to the point where, each consecutive release, you duplicate your template, you plug in your new dates and you it becomes more of like a wash, rinse, repeat. You know, and that's I mean, if you're going to be putting out music consistently, which you probably should be doing, the only way you're going to keep up with it with the workload is if you have some systems in place, because you are one human being, maybe you're a couple, but it's just. It's a lot of work for one person to do on their own and you've got to be organized.

Matt Ebso: 32:00

Organization is kind of if you had to sum up everything that IndieFlow does. It's really just kind of like provide organizational assistance for musicians so they continue to do the creative stuff but also funnel it into something tangible and practical that'll help them actually sustain the creative aspects of their career.

Laura Catana: 32:23

And then the other thing I'll say. So those are, you know, the tools on our platform, but all of that is supported by a community right? So you can plug into our Discord group, chat with other artists, ask questions. Sometimes you just need a sounding board. Sometimes, you know, if you're a solo artist, you just need to be like okay, hey, I'm thinking of doing this, of rolling it out like this this is my concept. What do you think? And it's cool, you know, you could ask your friend, you could ask your girlfriend, but sometimes you need to talk to somebody in the industry that knows what they're talking about.

Laura Catana: 32:56

That is a neutral party that's not trying to hustle you out of any percentages and you know, nobody does this alone. That's the other thing. Nobody is building their music empire alone, but everybody's got to start somewhere, right?

Matt Ebso: 33:13

And the name independent musician maybe falsely implies that somebody is doing it entirely by themselves, when in reality it's just that you don't have label funding, but you still need a team around your independent music.

Laura Catana: 33:26

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, until you get to the point where you can delegate and have other people, you know, maybe until you can hire the graphic designer, you're going to have to do it on your own, but there are so many resources available and that's another thing. I think that's, you know. Cool about our Discord group is just learning, like we gosh. We learn all the time from the artists that we work with New play listing services, new graphic design services. I mean, there's so much out there and I think it's really helpful also to have a community that you can say hey guys, has anybody tried this? Or you know, hey, I loved your artwork. Like, who made it for you? How did you get that done? And you know, when you're in, I think, a safe and supportive environment where you're not looking at these other artists as your competition but rather they're your peers. You know, not independent musician against independent musician.

Matt Ebso: 34:21

There's room for everybody.

Laura Catana: 34:22

You're all doing different things. You're all unique artists. Help each other. There's so much you can learn from your peers.

Matt Ebso: 34:30

It's really kind of the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. You could look at the artists who are in a similar genre to you and say, oh, they're my competition, when in reality, like if somebody likes hip hop, they're not just going to listen to one hip hop artist. I mean, maybe they will, but their chances are they're going to like some of this artist, some of that artist, some of that artist Like it's not, like it's one or the other. There's always room for more music.

Laura Catana: 34:56

Totally. And another thing, you know, something I encourage artists to do all the time also is collaborate. It's, I mean, it's very, it's pretty strategic to collaborate. You know, find, I think also a lot of you know you're going to come up with your peers, so find the other artists that are kind of at your level, maybe a little more advanced than you make music with them and you guys bring each other up.

Laura Catana: 35:21

you know, and and it's a great strategy you put out a song with another artist. Well, guess what? Now you have. You know you're going to share that song with your fans, but now you also have a whole other fan base that you can share with and there's just, there's no reason for it to be competition.

Matt Ebso: 35:36

Right. Hopefully the person you're collaborating with is going to share it with their network, exactly, so maybe the strategy there would be to collaborate with people who have a network and will share it with that network If it's the right network you want to share your music with? Correct Correct.

Laura Catana: 35:52

Which, if it's not, you probably shouldn't be collaborating with them any.

Matt Ebso: 35:55

And again there's like some weird strategies out there. There's like the hip hop and country worlds are kind of colliding on that front.

Laura Catana: 36:01

I've noticed.

Matt Ebso: 36:02

It's like what's that old country road I?

Laura Catana: 36:05

think, definitely, definitely, what's happening there? I?

Matt Ebso: 36:07

I that one came out of left field for me, but anyway, but brilliant, I mean it works and it reached a lot, a wide audience. So you know, brilliant, brilliant.

Laura Catana: 36:18

Collaboration strategy. He's good at marketing. He's good at his marketing.

Matt Ebso: 36:21

It's true, true. So what do you? What do you think is the most important lesson you've learned over your career working with musicians? Ooh, I'm going to start asking tough questions now. This is the beginning of all the tough ones.

Laura Catana: 36:37

Well, maybe the first thing that comes to mind is actually something I already said, but everybody in this world is an email or a DM away Persistence.

Laura Catana: 36:49

I can be very persistent, and something I tell artists also is keep emailing until they tell you to stop. Don't be annoying about it, Don't be rude about it, but keep going, keep asking, keep trying. A lot of times artists will send an email and nobody respond and say, okay, well, I guess they're not interested. Keep going, Check in, Follow up, Set reminders and just. I think that level of being persistent can really get you far. I'll never forget I got one of the biggest, the first big gigs I booked for one of the artists that I was the DJs I was working with in Cuba. I'm sorry, I was managing in Cuba. I would like, every couple of months, have a little recurring reminder and I email to reach out to this venue in Miami to see if we could get him booked there.

Laura Catana: 37:38

I would just go and go and email and she would always respond and be like, oh nothing, no, not at the moment. And finally one day, out of the blue, she hits me up for a gig that was. She ended up paying us literally three times more than we asked for because that was the budget. And when I finally met her and it was, like you know, a fashion week it was like, I think, a Gucci or whatever. It was some fancy show and the woman who booked us came up to me and she's like you know, you know why you got this show. You were so persistent. You just kept coming back and I'm like thank you, that's great to hear, you know. So just keep going. I think yeah.

Matt Ebso: 38:17

And that's maybe kind of coming from a bit of your like sales background and management background there. It's a little personality thing also. Yeah, I'm sure and I think maybe that's a tough thing for artists to do generally is have that sort of sales mindset and not even necessarily like selling in the sense of like hey buy my merchandise, buy my merchandise. You know, it's not necessarily that, but if you're selling yourself, you're selling yourself, yeah Right.

Laura Catana: 38:46

Oh, the amount of time. I think that's actually something that we work on one of our artist relations managers.

Laura Catana: 38:53

She's awesome at working on elevator pitches Okay, which is something that the amount of times I, you know, on a call, ask an artist, okay, so what do you do? And the response is, well, I don't know. I like kind of, you know, like I do a little, I also sing. I like do a lot of things and I'm like let's start again. Tell me with confidence, what do you do? Why should I care about you? Why are you interesting?

Laura Catana: 39:18

You know and, yeah, you're right, it is hard for artists to do that, but that's something you can learn. You know, you can learn, you can practice and it's. But you're right, it is hard to sell yourself as an artist and but it's something you got to learn.

Matt Ebso: 39:35

I think maybe it kind of comes from some of that like field of dreams mentality. It's like I think musicians tend to think if you, if you build it, they will come right. If you, if you just make good music, you're going to find fans that are like fans are going to find you, yeah, where in reality, like there's so much noise out there that you could have the best music in the world. This is kind of come back to what we were talking about earlier. You have the best music in the world, but if you don't tell people about it and you don't make sure that people are hearing about it, they're not going to know. And what's it like? Somebody has to be presented with something seven times before it even like crosses the filter that they recognize that there's a thing there as like the big thing in advertising. It's why every time you turn on your TV there's a progressive ad.

Laura Catana: 40:19

Right, it's hard for the artists because what you're talking about I mean that is a skill set, that why do we assume that artists are also professional marketers and they're also like it's a lot you know? I tell artists all the time don't feel bad about not being an expert marketer. People dedicate their entire careers to that. It is an unrealistic expectation that now, all of a sudden, you also know how to do this. The thing is just because you don't naturally know how to do it. Okay, learn. You got to learn a little bit before you can get to the point where you can hand that off to somebody else. It's hard being a musician today. I really I empathize a lot.

Matt Ebso: 41:00

As like a solopreneur in music. It's a very similar situation where you know, as a music producer, a DJ or even like somebody who is starting out in a career managing artists, you know there's still the same hurdles you have to overcome. You know, if your background is in the performance side of something or composition, then you have to learn all these other skill sets, the sales, the marketing, and it's really hard to do all that as a single person.

Laura Catana: 41:27

And also because most independent artists, I mean, I think it also has a lot to do with how much time do you have? I mean, if you have the liberty, the luxury to be like, okay, I do this full time, Okay, if you're doing this full time, then you absolutely, you have the time, you have the resources. There's so much free stuff available for you to learn how to market. You know there's so many courses you can take, some free, some paid, but you can do it. The problem is most artists and you know it's absolutely not easy to be an artist in this country at least, most artists have a life, which, yeah, it makes. Having that time to dedicate to learning all of that makes it a lot harder. That's absolutely true.

Matt Ebso: 42:13

So you're juggling being a part time musician and whatever your other work is until you can eventually maybe make that transition to being full time or primarily musician and part time, other something to supplement that, or even full time musician.

Laura Catana: 42:29

And the crazy thing also, exactly to that point, yeah, you've probably got a full time job, maybe you have a family, you know life beyond your job and your music. But if you I mean again to what we were saying again your music is a business, it's crazy to think, like, in addition to your job, your life, you're trying to launch a business full time, you know, in addition to the creative part. So it's, it is a lot. It really is. And again, like you know, nobody does this alone. Nobody does this alone. I think it's also just about you know, plugging into a network that can give you those resources and give you that support, and that's honestly, I think that's something really cool. I think that's definitely a space that IndieFlow fills.

Matt Ebso: 43:16

I'm loving this conversation because it, like the subject matter, somewhat occupies like product overview, but that also is like motivational speech. It's like you can do it, just find your people. You know I love it.

Laura Catana: 43:30

I really do look you, but I really do think you can do it. You really can do it. You got to learn how to do it.

Matt Ebso: 43:41

And that's what we're here for. That's why we're doing this right. So we've been chatting for a while. I have a few questions that I've been asking to all the guests who come on the show, and they're more challenging. So I'm always kind of curious to see what people come up with for them. All right, I'm ready. What do you see coming down the pipeline in music marketing and just maybe just generally music business, that other people can't see yet?

Laura Catana: 44:10

Oh, you didn't lie. That is a hard question. What do I see? Say it again, Rita, something again I'll simplify it.

Matt Ebso: 44:16

What do you see in the next few years of the future of music business that other people don't see yet?

Laura Catana: 44:22

I hope it's not NFTs, because I don't. I don't. I have been dragging my feet on NFTs. What I see is, I mean, I think the individual, the creator, is going to have all the more power. I mean, what's insane right now is how I mean TikTok is something really interesting, right?

Laura Catana: 44:47

The amount of teens that are not musicians, that are getting signed to music labels really just makes me think. I mean, I think that music is evolving to be. It's really more than music it's. You know, you are much more of a brand than you are just a musician anymore, and I think that that's gonna kind of really be developed even more, which pains me a little bit for the musician, because it's like it's just more and more and more expectations. That's kind of pulling the artist even further away from their music. You know Something I say also I don't think your music sells itself anymore. These days, it's your content that's selling your music, which means that now, in addition to being a musician, you also need to be a content creator, which comes easily to some artists and really does into others.

Matt Ebso: 45:46

Yeah, it's. You almost have to be constantly on the grind with social media to have to just cross people's mental filter and get noticed at all.

Laura Catana: 45:56

Exactly.

Matt Ebso: 45:57

Which I was chatting with someone else recently who was paraphrasing something that Gary V said. He was basically talking about how, in this current environment, the real world is online and the real world is not really the real world anymore, like if it's not online, it doesn't exist.

Laura Catana: 46:16

Dude, I kind of agree. Ew, I hate it, but yeah it's. I mean, to a certain extent I agree.

Matt Ebso: 46:23

I know I've been personally focusing a lot recently on trying to be more mindful of my relationship with technology, because everything with big companies can be purchased on demand. You can stream things on demand. There's this kind of expectation, it seems, in society that you should be able to talk to anybody or get a hold of anybody or get anything you want right now, whenever you want. I hate that.

Laura Catana: 46:48

Let's normalize not responding immediately to messages.

Matt Ebso: 46:53

My goodness, yes, right, I will make you.

Laura Catana: 46:56

I might make you in a couple days, before I get back to your WhatsApp, and that is okay.

Matt Ebso: 47:00

Absolutely so. Personally, I've been focusing on my mindfulness about that and trying to be aware of, like the automatic, like lizard brain instincts that kick in and go. I have to do this right now and it's like no, sometimes you can just, it's okay, yeah, give it a day.

Laura Catana: 47:16

Well absolutely, but and I mean I think all of us. I mean I try to. It's so hard to disconnect. You have to consciously actively work to disconnect. But that also exists at the same time that, like, the industry is expecting you to constantly be putting out content, constantly putting out new music, and it's like, how do you find that balance? It's really hard. It is really hard.

Matt Ebso: 47:45

Yeah, I don't necessarily have the answer, but Maybe that's one of the things that'll be coming down. The pipeline is, I'm hoping that there's more of a focus on mental health in music creation and music industry and then just social media content in general, and I know there's some awareness for that, but it seems like there could be a whole podcast of just about mental health in music, I'm sure, or the arts really.

Laura Catana: 48:15

I bet there is. I bet there is. That's a great idea. If there isn't, you steal it. If you want it.

Matt Ebso: 48:20

I don't have the time to do that too.

Laura Catana: 48:23

But no, you're right. I actually I think also to a certain extent, I mean part of moving away a little bit from the major labels, right, I think that, like, individual artists and creators now have a lot more power and a lot more control over their career, and I do think that what comes along with that and I hope it comes along with it is having more ability to be like yeah, no, I'm not doing, I'm not, I'm turning off my social media this month because I need a break. And you know what Great take that break. Take that break because you don't have a label. You know breathing down your back saying, no, you need to put out a new song tomorrow.

Matt Ebso: 49:07

Preach it. I love that, that's. I think that would be an important lesson for a lot of artists to learn. Is or just solo entrepreneurs in general, whether it's music or not, is just hey, it's okay to take a sabbatical.

Laura Catana: 49:24

Yeah, amen. Also in life and I say this also to friends who have, you know, gone the corporate route and they just work, work, work, work, work, work, work. I have obviously not gone that way and I feel great about the decisions I've made. But like, yeah, take a break. Who says, quit your job and don't work again for another few months? Do that, it's okay, nobody's gonna, you know, oh, I'm gonna have a break in my resume. Yeah, great, tell them. You took a break and now you are happy. You're you know level. Like, let's normalize that. I think that that's awesome and important.

Matt Ebso: 50:02

I'm loving this tangent we got off onto of the mental health and music. This is great. Like I said, there could be a whole podcast, not even just a whole like episode, but a whole podcast on this. I can't talk too much about it yet because the details aren't really formalized, but I will be chatting with someone here soon about mental health and music for an episode, but again could warrant a whole show.

Laura Catana: 50:24

I wonder if I know who that is you?

Matt Ebso: 50:25

might maybe, but I have some other final questions for you. I wanna kind of see your responses to these ones. What question do you wish I would have asked, and how would you have answered it?

Laura Catana: 50:40

Mm, what question do I wish you would have asked?

Matt Ebso: 50:44

I told you, they just couldn't get harder from here.

Laura Catana: 50:46

I know I gotta say this has been a lovely conversation, so you really have hit on a lot of things. What would I have loved for you to ask Maybe more about? You know? Okay, how, what do you? This is okay after the master, right, maybe to talk a little bit about how? Oh shit, you're gonna have to edit out a lot of my pauses, that's okay, we'll trim out this dead air.

Matt Ebso: 51:18

That's fine, you take your time? Dead air.

Laura Catana: 51:26

Oh God, what I was gonna say. Actually it doesn't make much sense. Oh, I don't know. You've been doing a great job. You've been asking great questions. Let's say you asked like what do I think most artists mean help with? Maybe a good question is if you've got a limited budget, you know, for the indie artists, what should you be sending your money on?

Matt Ebso: 51:54

That's a great question. How would you have answered it? Thank, you.

Laura Catana: 52:00

I mean, aside from well, I honestly I would put my money into, not into a music video. Oh, and this comes from somebody I love me a good music video. I have produced many music videos. Music videos are beautiful.

Matt Ebso: 52:18

You're gonna really have to convince me here, because I produce music videos too.

Laura Catana: 52:22

So let's hear it. I wanna hear it. Okay, here's the reason. There is like well, first of all, my first question is what was the last time you watched the music video on an artist that you didn't know?

Matt Ebso: 52:33

Just yesterday.

Laura Catana: 52:34

Okay, well, how frequently do you do that? Do you watch music videos to learn about new artists?

Matt Ebso: 52:42

I might not be the right person to answer this question, Right? Okay, because you're a music person.

Laura Catana: 52:46

Let me tell you honestly, people don't really watch music videos of artists that they don't know. Music videos are mostly for your existing fans, the ones that wanna see more about you here. You know they wanna see that, right? So the problem with music videos for me is that there's like almost no return on the investment. Right, unless you have a situation which some people do that you can make high quality music videos for very low cost, in which case make all the music videos you want, okay. But most people don't have that situation and a shitty music video is.

Laura Catana: 53:18

I'd rather not have a music video than have there be a shitty one, right? Okay? So I would say to take a fraction of what you would have spent on a music video and instead just put that into making high quality content. People are gonna look at your Instagram and your TikTok probably much more than they're gonna watch that music video, and if they watch that music video, honestly, they're probably gonna watch 30 seconds of it, right? So I would say take a fraction of what you would have spent on the video, make content and then put the rest of that money into marketing it. Get it in front of people. You know, run some ads or you know. However, you're gonna spend your marketing budget, but if you're not marketing, people aren't gonna watch that music, beautiful music video that you spent so much time making.

Matt Ebso: 54:05

You know as much as it pains me to hear that as somebody who makes music videos, I completely agree with you. They cost a lot and you can't really sell them the same way you can a song.

Laura Catana: 54:15

Exactly, and what I would say is that, look, if you are gonna make that music video, then you better milk it. Okay, you better take that music video and cut it into a hundred different little pieces of content that you're gonna use on your Instagram reels, on your feed, on your, you know, make that work, get all the behind the scenes, the stills, and really utilize it. A lot of times, artists, you know, oh and it pains me to see they'll just, you know, put a little 30 second clip of their music video on their Instagram and that's it, that's it. I'm like, oh, you just spent hundreds of dollars on that and you just put it there and womp, womp, that's it, end of story.

Matt Ebso: 54:53

Yeah. So, like anything else, maybe it just needs a little bit more time in the oven, a little bit more planning, like you would release any other product. If you're gonna roll it out, roll it out like any other business would roll out a product. Have a strategy for it, boom there you go. I love it. That's a great answer to the question I should have asked.

Laura Catana: 55:12

Thank you.

Matt Ebso: 55:14

All right, what one piece of advice. If you had to choose just one piece, one piece of advice, would you leave our listener with Learn the industry Study.

Laura Catana: 55:31

Don't just jump to. Oh, I'm gonna.

Matt Ebso: 55:33

I gotta market my music.

Laura Catana: 55:35

Okay, do you know how to market your music? Do you know why you should be marketing your music? It feels so obvious, but like I don't think that people study as much Like pick up a book. There's a hundred million things to learn on the internet. You know from reputable resources. But like learn it, put in the time to learn it, and once you are armed with that knowledge then you just gotta go and do you know. But yeah, education Cheesy.

Matt Ebso: 56:04

but true, very true. So I guess this isn't one of the questions I asked everybody, but your answer warrants a follow-up question, go on. So one of the things I've encountered is that there is so much good information out there that it's almost again that paralysis by analysis, where there's so much that an artist could be reading and studying and so many sources that it's hard to decide. Well, first of all, is it reputable or not? And secondly, how much should you be focusing on any particular aspect of any of it? And just where should you get this content from? So everybody's gonna have a different opinion on this, but in your opinion, what are some of the best resources for a comprehensive education on the music industry?

Matt Ebso: 56:56

Okay great Free or paid resources.

Laura Catana: 56:59

Great question. Okay, first of all, yeah, you're right, there's so much out there. But one thing I would say that is like absolutely a way to go that maybe a lot of artists don't have on their radar professional industry conferences. There's a ton of them. Some of them are more expensive, some of them are less expensive, but I mean, that's a place where you're gonna, first of all, not just learn, not just learn, but you're gonna also meet people. That's another big part of it. You got a network. Everything in this world is about who you know. People do business with people they like and people do business with people that they know.

Laura Catana: 57:35

But okay, so resources I'm gonna make a shameless plug here but indie flow I mean, we do a lot of curation in terms of like helping you understand. Yeah, you're right, there's a hundred different ways to market your music. And look me personally, I like to read it all, read it all, and the more I read, the more I'm gonna say, okay, this is garbage, or I don't agree with that guy, but the truth is that there isn't one way to market your music, there isn't one way to run your business. And, ultimately, the more you know, then you make your own educated decisions. Okay, but in terms of now specifics, I think one of the most important places to start everybody jumps to like oh I need to market my music. Okay, before you're gonna successfully market your music, the foundational work is you need to have your branding crystal clear. You need to know who you are, what you're about, what kind of messaging, who's your target demographic. And if you don't have that groundwork laid, good luck marketing. You're gonna have a real hard time. Okay?

Laura Catana: 58:39

So we just actually last month, did an awesome partnership with Austere Agency. It's Natasha Brito. She's I think I'm mispronouncing her name, so I'm so sorry, natasha, if you're listening to this. Brito is, I think, what it is in Portuguese. Anyways, she has this incredible course that is called the iconic artist Blueprint. She used to be the creative director for Sony. She like killed, slayed the socials, and the branding on Pizza Hut was a big account she used to manage. She's very good at what she does and she's also a musician herself and she works with really high-end clients. So she put together a course because she's like all my musician friends wanna know what I know and they probably couldn't afford me, so she put it all together in this course. It is gold, it is gold, gold, gold. It is like from A to Z. How do I do the damn thing? So I would super, super recommend that it is worth every penny.

Matt Ebso: 59:44

I'm gonna need a URL or something I could drop in the show notes.

Laura Catana: 59:47

I will send you that, but really gold. And then also another obvious, I mean great starting point is Donald Passman's book. What is it? All you need to know about the music industry? Classic, yeah, and it is. But you have that on hand. Get a hard copy. You're gonna need to reference it several times let's see what else. I think those are really good starting resources. But yeah, I'm obsessed with Osteer at the moment. I just think they've I feel so empowered, like learning little tidbits that she dropped along the way. Yeah, that's what I would recommend.

Matt Ebso: 1:00:28

Awesome. You've given quite the list of resources. This is gonna be a goldmine of information for anybody listening. I love this. This is awesome. Final question, least challenging of them all for most people when can people find you online Me?

Laura Catana: 1:00:44

personally, yeah, or IndieFlow Okay. Indieflow are handle on all the platforms. It's indieflowme, m-e, our website. Yeah, it's indieflowme. That's where you would find us. Me myself, my I'm Lala Catana is my handle. Or I have a website, lauracatanacom, if you wanna go deep and learn more.

Matt Ebso: 1:01:19

Thank you so much for tuning in to episode six of After the Master of Musician's Guide. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. If you want to connect with Laura, check out the links in the show notes on your podcast app. Have thoughts to share or a killer guest suggestion? Shoot an email to matt at afterthemastercom. You can also connect with me via voice message or text at 612-712-6708. Remember to hit the subscribe button to be notified when we release upcoming episodes. Lastly, if you enjoy this episode, please, please, please, help me out by sharing it with a friend or by leaving a five-star review on your podcast app to tell the algorithm that our show is worth listening to. Either option takes less than a minute and it could potentially have a huge impact for an aspiring artist's music career. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, stay in tune with your dreams and I'll catch you on the flip side. Musicや.