How to Become an Artist in 2023 ft Blake Music NZ.

so thanks for coming on the podcast all right good you me my pleasure um so why don't to quickly introduce who you are to the crowd and we'll go from there sure my name is Blake I'm a singer songwriter originally from Queenstown now based in Oakland and I just love writing pop songs love it awesome well um on the story of pop songs so tell us uh I want to know when did this journey of been a recording at a start like how did that how did you get into this well I've been so songw writing since about 1516 and sort of towards the tail end of high school um I started doing what's called Topline writing which is where a a producer will send

you an instrumental and then you write the vocals on top of that okay so I did that within the genre of drum and bass for about 3 years and I moved to London at the end of uni and I did a lot of that songwriting in the UK okay um it wasn't until about 2020 that I really decided that I wanted to really be my own project in itself and move into pop music yeah and it was sort of during coid and I think everyone was sort of having a bit of a life reevaluation and a bit of a re um configuration so I really decided at that point um I got made redundant for my job in London and then I had some time

and thinking about it and I just thought if I'm ever going to do music properly now is the time so I came back to New Zealand thinking I was only going to be back here for months and then I've basically stayed since then because New Zealand's just got some amazing um infrastructure in place to support emerging artists so I've been very fortunate to have some great support through New Zealand on air towards my towards my releases so I guess to answer your question 2020 end of 2020 was when I really was decided to put my foot down on the gas and really go for it yeah nice and tell me that little journey because there's a you've had a you've obviously got your new single

right now but there's been a few releases before that how many in total and how's that Journey been so far I've released about 10 songs I think and um I would say last year was the first year I really seriously put out music and that sort of with thanks to New Zealand on a because I got some great funding because prior to that I didn't really have the resources to be able to approach you know experienced producers and getting a mixing engineer and aing engineer and get all the visuals done and um so without that funding it was hard for me to put out a release to a certain standard and then last year was the first year I was actually able to release music

that I thought was of a really good standard and I'm really proud of so yeah cool and um I want to dig into that a little this journey a little bit because I don't know a lot about that side of the music industry um tell us when you're trying to put out put out music right it and you're trying to do it to that standard and you talked about producers and engineers and mastering engineers and stuff like what does that look like and how did you know a little bit about that world because of the Topline stuff or like how did you know to navigate that um a lot of it was just sort of baptism of fire you know just going in with sort

of a real naivity almost and thinking I can do it all and it's going to be fine and then you sort of launch into it and you you learn a lot along the way so a lot of it was just learning on the job and I'm quite fortunate that I have got good organizational skills and I can communicate you know just stay on top of emails and and coordinating things that's a really big part of being an independent artist so yeah just sort of tapping into all these different skills that I've been able to develop along the way and I've just learned so much in the past 2 3 years that I think if I'd stayed in my old job in in the sort of

corporate traditional corporate structure I was frequently getting very frustrated by okay sort of the lack of um development available and I'm a super creative person I've always got lots of ideas so doing what I'm doing now is allowed me to like really push myself in terms of the music video creation concept process the song concept process um and then yeah just putting it all together yeah well so how do you how do you like is someone listening to he's like someone who wants to start releasing music like where did they start like what where did you what were the mistakes you made where you were like if I had just gone down this straight away that would have been easier or did you just get

it right from the first go I I think I was very fortunate when I came back to New Zealand because I ended up just dming a bunch of people on Instagram that I like the work they'd been doing and just sort of said um let's get together and do a session and kind of just see what happens and I think the first session I did was with a producer called Harry Charles and then that song I pitched for funding and that got funding so I kind of did hit the ground running coming when I came back but I think that was only I was only able to do that because I'd had the prior experience in the UK as a Topline writer and my songwriting

was able to be developed doing that so when I came back like I was sort of like a new new artist but also had quite a lot of experience yeah and you see that a lot actually like in the music industry right like a lot of like artists who come through have been doing songwriting or some like s musician or something like that for a long period of time before they've gone out on their own and it's that experience that they've they just got the rips in right yeah exactly there's not really any such thing as an overnight success even though the marketing team would like to plug it that way but um yeah there's always a lot of development that goes on behind the

scenes before I always like that story of um have you read the book The outliers or outliers by Malcolm Gladwell no there's a book by do you know who Malcolm Gladwell is the book yeah so he's got a book called outliers it's it's the book that um popularized a 10,000 hour rule right you need 10,000 hours of Master something and uh he he he tells a story about The Beatles And when they used to um before there were anyone they would be in Germany playing like pubs and stuff on tours and like by the time they came back to the UK to be the Beatles they' already done like you know 10,000 hours each of like doing gigs and stuff like that so they really

hone their crafts out everyone thought there was these New Kids on the Block but actually they had been doing you know shitloads of gigs and stuff around Germany and rest of Europe um so similar story right like you've you've gone out you've done all the Topline writing which really hones your craft and yeah and um songwriting what is it what is some of that stuff that you learned throughout that process that like is there only like thing in particular you look at you go [ __ ] I'm so good at that thing now or I'm so glad I did that because of this or is it just the whole whole process I guess it's just well confidence is key with everything and particularly being a woman in

such a male-dominated industry you if you go into a room frequently in music the the dynamic is you've got a male producer who sits at the front of the room with your back to you cuz they're they're at a desk and then the woman singer songwriter at the back other end of the room on a couch and it's such a weird dynamic because instantly it's not a creative it's not enabling creativity it's sort of establishing this like predisposed hierarchical thing I don't I've only just had this sort of Revelation about it and I'm doing a lot more music production myself and I recently just had people coming around and I sit up in the living room and the other day I even just had um

my laptop on the coffee table and then sitting on the ground and the the songw writing's revolved around the sofas and it's like we're 90 de to each other so I'm just being now when I'm creating music I'm just conscious of that and you want to bring out the best in everybody and hear everyone hear everyone's ideas so um yeah interesting that's something I've kind of learned is just to be a bit more um just sort of set up the space that I think works best for enabling the most creativity and asserting that a bit more and now when I'm in a session if the VI's not right or something I just if it's a song for me yeah it has to be right for

me yeah and like sounds so obvious but when yeah you're in that kind of power Dynamic and you're a younger female going into a space like that it takes years to build that confidence to say actually this isn't working for me and um next time I'm going to do it this way yeah yeah that's so interesting we we think of that like even in this space in the studio one of the reasons we spend so much time on fit out and the area where you walk into um and the bathrooms and everything is so because we we like have people who aren't used to being in front of camera all the time coming and being in front of camera and if in like a typical

Studio like the big warehouses you walk in you go into your little Studio you do your little bit and you walk away and they're quite cold and and and it's not their fault that's just a model that works because the less it's set up um the less maintenance it takes the less staff it takes and they don't generate a lot of Revenue those well not a high Revenue they do good profit but they don't a lot of Revenue so they can't afford lots of staff and you know things and things that so when we built this one cuz our model is different it's based on retainers where we just produce stuff it was the same thing I was like how do we make how do

I make people feel comfortable the moment they get in and they sit down they have a coffee there's wine or whatever they might need um it's interesting that that still something that happens in like music studios because you don't see that side of it because when you when you finally get like the behind the scenes in music studio it's always like you know like once you're at that stage you can make a doo about a album you're making you're already 20 years in or 15 years in so you just see like the cool parts of being in the studio everything that goes right yeah yeah it's just rock hours of awkward like BS and just like disagreements and lack of ideas and yeah there's a

lot of stuff that just is not not a Vibe but yeah and I suppose you're like as an artist what are you you're and tell me if I'm wrong here but you're paying for the time to be there when you're getting your song done made um it really varies um the traditional model is that basically the the producer gets paid if the song comes out oh okay so basically yeah the producer has a fee and then if you want your song with them to come out then you pay them that fee yeah um some producers do like a day rate so in that case you would be paying for the time yeah um but again with my situation because I've been really fortunate with the

funding I've been able to every song that I've patched I've released so the producers always get paid yeah which I think's a nice way to approach it because I don't want people to spend a bunch of time on the track for me and then last minute me turn around and say no I don't want to use that but yeah it's a very it's a strange industry strange so like producers will that's not at all how I thought it would be so producers could potentially like go and produce songs with people and then they it's the artist's decision to go I don't want to release it yeah is that how it works yeah and then they'll only get paid if the artist actually releases it yeah

wow that's crazy it's almost like buying a house or something like the advisor only gets paid if you actually do buy or anything but it's crazy because it's like um you're yeah you're at such a mercy but it's different it's like it's like a real estate agent selling a house and then the buy been like oh actually I don't want to I don't want to move in now um that's crazy so that's actually like for me is quite surprising because like it seems it is a weird model because there there's a lot of trust that goes into producers that these are like who they take on which I suppose maybe lends its hand to why um Young Artists may find it hard to find a

producer because they might there's no trust with the producers in case yeah I mean there's so much involved and there's so much Nuance to it as well and I think for a producer to invest their time into an artist they have to really believe in the artist and one of the biggest things I think is that they people want to know that you're working hard and that you're actually prepared to Market your stuff as well because I mean like you could work with an if you youve got two artists approaching you and one artist is Super Active on their socials attending networking events putting themselves out there trying to find Opportunities and you've got an artist that they're equally as talented but doesn't do anything

and there's sort of maybe a level of all the music will just speak for itself I don't really think that works necessarily because there's so many songs being released every day so you have to be proactive so yeah there's so much that sort of goes into it it's interesting I honestly I didn't know that and I didn't realize that's how it worked that's kind of crazy um okay so you're at the stage where you got a few well you had quite a number of songs released in 2022 was a big year and then um you started to promote this new song of yours recently and when did that drop it was only Friday cuz you had your your event on on Friday right I was

it was the 4th of August so it was just like a week and a half ago yeah oh it's like Friday wait yeah that was Friday yeah wait sorry the 28th of I got conf the song came out earlier then you heard your release party on the fourth yeah that's correct so the song came out like a week or so ago yeah I've done my research I've seen it um and but you had a release party on Friday yes yeah that's correct um so tell me about that tell me how that's G because I saw that you put up a Tik Tok or you put up some content recently that you got 13,000 or something streams already in like a week or so tell tell

me how for for a now that you've had a few songs go how has this new one gone for you like um this has gone better than any of my previous releases and honestly surpass my expectations in terms of Industry support and just response in general yeah um which is amazing yeah and I think is a testament to the fact that with my work I just my main goal really is just to be better every song I put out I just want it to be the best it could possibly be um and the quality of the work like the it landed on three international Spotify playlists which is super competitive and you know I'm up against other artists on an international level that have got

teams with around them they're on labels and I currently release through my own label and I'm self-managed so the fact that I was be able to produce a piece of work that could stand up yeah an international platform yeah is phenomenal it's amazing and that song was funded through New Zealand on the air and I I feel like in a sense that my songs are like representing New Zealand music% so the fact that I can get my song on those playlists is is amazing and I'm just so happy and I can imagine as well like there's a there's a team of editors at Spotify that sit there and have discussions around what to put on the playlist so the fact that my song obviously was

in those discussions and they all were like yes let's chck on there um is amazing yeah I'm really happy can you tell me about that like how from your perspective how does that happen do you is there like a PR part to it or is it just pure luck that Spotify throws it on it's it's a combination of things and um so on Spotify there's a patching tool so if you've got a release coming up you can patch it yourself cool so there's that and then um New Zealand on there send out a newsletter to the dsps like Spotify with a highlight list of releases coming out for the we so they included my release on that Fant um I'm working with a PR Company

in New Zealand so they didn't directly pitch the song but you include that in the pitching information so they know that your release is getting support domestically and being pushed out there um I have a distributor in the UK who also sends in a pitching form with the upcoming releases coming out through the distrib platform so it's a multi-prong thing and also the song is good so yeah I think everyone's always looking for quick answers and quick quick fixes and and people might think oh it's like it's just lucky but it's it's actually this isn't luck it's like it's been a decade of me developing my craft and being fortunate enough to be living in a country where the support for arts and um hard

work and people in the industry supporting me so it's a whole combination a whole bunch of stuff which is cool which is a better thing to have right because like if it was pure luck if that was was what it was that would be [ __ ] like one it be [ __ ] from your perspective cuz you're like oh well I got lucky on that one who knows how the next one will go or whatever um but also there like other artists trying to come through it's like no the the real differentiating fact do here is like time and market and effort right and then team support right and and the team for you like yeah New Zealand like the the government and everyone else who all the

whole support network you got P which is pretty cool though actually I think it's better that's a better thing to say that actually it was a multifaceted approach to get this happen because then it's like well actually I you can't say anyone can do it but if you can make good music and you've had enough reps on the board and you've done enough work and you've put in the it and you get people around you and you do all the things that are necessary there is a chance like a higher chance that you could ever yeah succeed yeah yeah that's pretty cool um so tell me a little bit about this is just purely for me and sorry the audience who doesn't really care about

this but like tell me a bit about the Spotify thing the and not just Spotify but we're going to use them as a standing because they're the one everyone knows how does that work as an artist like how do you start and especially as an independent music artist like how do you start putting that out what does that process look like uh first step is getting a distributor okay yeah so it's very accessible now there's there's a ton of different distribution platforms they all have different slightly different systems but the the the Crux of it always is you just basically upload the song you upload the artwork and the the DAT the metad data and then you select your release date and then your song

goes live on all the platforms on the chosen date so very very accessible very easy um and then the I guess like the the release planning campaign aspect of it that just like a whole other thing which is the the real work I guess of putting a song out and I think a lot of artists really struggle with having to wear both hats in terms of being the artist and the creative and then having to Market themselves because it almost contradicts everything that it means to be an artist but at the end of the day if you if you want to pursue music as your career yeah then you kind of can't avoid the fact that you are a business and you need to Market

yourself and I I kind of frequently think of the analogy of if someone set up a shop and they spent years planning this and buying all the stock and like getting all the logo designed and meticulously planning it they wouldn't just open the shop and do no promotion for it and expect and get sad when people don't turn up and it's the same with music you you do so much work groundw work to get the release together and then some people think if I just put it out it's going to be so amazing that it's going to just find its way in the world and maybe there's like 0.1% of songs that that do that but that's not the reality so you do have to

really especially when you're emerging and you're still finding your audience you do need to be proactive and pushing your music out there yeah absolutely cuz there's so many talented people putting out so many talented quity all the timee days and's there's people putting out songs that aren't quality but they're so good at promoting them promoting they do really well and it's sort of like fair play they they're putting it out there they're putting in the gr work so it's like those girls who done I don't know if you can find it uh Conor but the ones who do the running the running what are they called fly flyer [ __ ] I mean the songs like I mean it's just not my typ of Music probably but

on Tik Tok yeah and they do the they capture the they do the still frame on their face and everything else around them and they're just running down a street and they get like 5 million views of video just like go and like Google and just be like Tik Tok music artist running down the street you'll find it because I went off um did you did you say you know what they are H flying flying B flyer boss or something flying boss is that he said it's like no it's not these ones I know the lrics you should pop out and ask um Janie she knows she'll show me that day um but yeah just like a a visual that hasn't really been done before

can be a super simple concept but if you know someone's flicking through Tik Tok and they see a different sort of camera angle or a type of editing they've not seen before then it's people it captures people attention exactly yeah that's there I think Y flying a boss there it is that there and it's a simple concept that can be replicated 10 times over yeah in different locations and they just kept on doing if you go to their page Conor and you have a look at it they were just getting oh no it kept escalating cuz then they went into like Tik Tok office and did it um it's so crazy like it's just such a simple Co concept oh you might have to search

that such a simple concept but like it is the songs I mean like it's just not my type of music maybe it is really good music but for me it was wasn't but they were able to just absolutely blow up um okay so that actually brings me into where I want to go to next so you talked about like artists struggling with marketing their music and we hear that a lot from anyone that we might see oh yeah that look at that kind of most of them majority of them are all the same too um so most we hear that a lot we've talked to a few artists along the way and journey especially when like people found out we doing Tik Tok because obviously

that was like it's something stupid like 80% of all number one Global songs have come through Tik Tok these days or something crazy like that like Fox did a thing on it recently and they broke it down and it was 80% of um something something crazy like 80% of new music by new arest that have made the Billboard 100 or whatever came through Tik Tok like that's where they had their launch on which is nuts like yeah I mean it's the it's the MTV of Our Generation made catfish um but what I what I was going to go to is like music ARS are often like when we talk to them they're saying you know it's the art form it's the music I want to

speak for itself and but then I also I do need to promote it but I don't want to like you know I don't want to sell out or I don't want to do shitty stuff or whatever and I think like what happens is like people are miscommunicating what marketing is like they're thinking that marketing is about like you a lot of people think of marketing the same way it would be if you're trying to sell hot dogs you know you're trying to like push people to come to your store to buy hot dogs and even the analogy that you used is like not that it's wrong but it's like um because it's not really the same thing but like if you're opening up a shop

what you do to sell a sell Goods is very different to like how you sell music cuz music's not that same sort of good especially in today's world where like you don't necessarily buy a record anymore you know most people listen to it through streaming or YouTube or whatever it might be so you're actually just selling a brand that like people want to belong to they want to belong with Blake in your music not that it's not like you know what I mean like it's so much different to uh trying to push shoes or whatever it might be which that sort of traditional selling style of marketing does whereas like you know some of the guys on like I mean I I like uh what's

his name um what's a Scot guy's name oh gone completely gone blank today Sam is he the guy that does the videos he does one in front of like the Eiffel Tower oh no maybe someone else no I was I was thinking um now the singer uh Big Guy funny is [ __ ] sorry just I been completely blank on there uh l e w um like the way he just dominated yeah that's on there dominated Tik Tok there isn't a thing in there that like even when he's trying to sell his stuff yeah he's doing it in an ironic way like he's he's got his own style and whether or not it is what it is I mean but he just like he understood people aren't

going to listen to my music cuz I tell them to they're going to listen to my music because they want to support me as a person um and that's what ended up happening right yeah on his Tik Tok anyway yeah this face differently personality this face is telling a story I can see it in your eyes huh you you got a story oh what with this yeah something oh no I'm just just thinking about how he's just use humor it's just purely his Personality yeah and the music's good like the music is good obviously but you know it's like without his personality driving it it wouldn't have done what it's done yeah no and you're right like people connect with him as a person and

they they want to see him do well and they're going to go buy his stuff even if is promoting it in a way that's like this is the shittest album you'll ever hear in your life but you should still go buy it because people find it funny they'll they'll go do it I love it like it's such like the it's the anti- marketing marketing right he kind of just takes the pess out of the whole celebrity culture which is yeah it's quite quite refreshing yeah I think it's so good and even how he like like like everyone knows he's full of it like cuz he's staging everything but he'll like I think it's maybe this one or one of them he talks about like oh

thanks so much guys for my thing and then it like cuts to him pretending that he stopped filming he's like oh [ __ ] oh yeah yeah I can't believe they [ __ ] left this [ __ ] up yeah it's so good and it's it's quite um what I also like about it is like he doesn't hide any part of who he is either yeah which I think is quite cool um he uses humor not everyone can use humor because it's not easy you have to it has to be a natural thing has to be authentic and and the thing that they do well with him what he does well is ex just highlighting what's already there and I think for artists using social media people get like you say

confused about what sort of content to do and they but what I've kind of tried to what I try to do is just like highlight the stuff that I already do so that and who I already am so that it's not this like big ORD deal when I go to make a piece of content because I just think this is probably something I was going to do anyway I'm just going to record it and post it and then that's showing who you really are as a person and I think people are people are really switched on like they're going to know straight away if you're posting something that's that's full of it that's full of it or not feels off and awkward and um is

I think especially with Instagram I think a lot of you know I think the model used to be with building an audience was posting a lot of photos and it was all very image driven through fashion and and um and that kind ofy lifestyle that sort of stuff and it could be curated yes very curated whereas now people posting that stuff aren't really getting the engagement where the personality content comes through on Tik Tok yeah um so yeah I just it's I mean it's good I I prefer that because I am not I like fashion but it's not my whole thing no I don't have the time or energy to be like or money to be going out and buy buing heaps of clothes and

doing heaps of shoots but um I find it easier just to go on Tik Tok and say hey this is like what I'm thinking about this thing or this is what I'm doing or just make it a bit more informal I think it's smart and can we um bring out Blake's one as well I was thinking about yours as well like I really like what you've done in terms of um you have just trying to been like take us along for the journey yeah you know what I think the where you're missing what you've you're not taking us deep enough right to like mundane stuff that you just just going about the life like yeah knowing how like like a producer like a session with

your like your producer or like those in behind the scenes like those intimate moments that no one else gets to see that like maybe you're messing stuff up or you're not really sure you're trying to figure out how do we get this next piece of the song right yeah you know like there's still I mean this is um Expos me a bit but there's still this one piece of watching Taylor Swift watching her do lover with I can't remember she was who she was Joel little yeah maybe it was Joel little she was on the phone with him or something and anyway I remember her watching like how she developed the song like right then and there like over the phone and L breakthrough that

she had and what she sent in the early piece of it like you did in that bit that you did in the text message yeah but like she showed you do the bit so and the text message uh thing that you got which is this one yeah you showed us the text M which I really like I thought was awesome I was like [ __ ] that's so cool like Insight but what she did is that when that text goes so that I like you're thinking and then you sent the the audio Yeah and the bit in between yeah yeah yeah what happened from the text to the yeah there's a lot yeah but that's the cool stuff like hey it's like cuz who knows how to

do that like who knows how the songwriter goes about yeah it's a weird one because I think about the a lot in terms of capturing the process but there's a really fine line between um capturing the process and that interfering your workflow Y and when you're crafting a song yeah all it takes is one distraction to totally throw you off your train of thought and there is something um I mean there have been some sessions where I just will record maybe like for 15 or 20 minutes of the session and then the rest of the session I'm like phone's away because as a creative person your phone is literally one of the most it's like the death of creativity really it's and I think it's

happening a lot in sessions with like like much younger artists where they're on their phone the entire session they're totally disengaged from the actual crafting of the song and the quality of the songs aren't coming and um so it's that fine it's a real fine line between yes like being on in terms of finding those moments to capture but also um for me as it like my art is first and foremost and then the promotion stuff follows that so if it's a moment where pulling out my phone is going to just ruin this Vibe of course absolutely not but I agree I agree it's it's very hard to find that balance and yeah I I almost don't even think you're documenting like one you could

document is an okay from now on there's a place you know like there's a place wor in the studio wherever I am when I'm doing these things where the phone goes over there and just records everything and maybe that's the thing and then you forget about it's a big brother model right like when it's on long enough you forget it's there and you can get into it when you know it's just in the background there's that model maybe and maybe it captures some stuff and then you've got to go find it and whatever there's a lot of post production then but like in that video it's it's like U the Charlie poth way he did it yeah right where he like obviously made the whole

album but then he was like I'm going to break down like the song bit by bit and what we did he doesn't take it to the point of like this is how we did it and recreated and he didn't do it to the extreme of like Taylor Swift doing it where she like was literally recording every I mean she was making the documentary at the time so she was recording everything part of her life so that kind of help she had a fil film crew done it for her yeah but like where Charlie would like go okay this is how we did that song I mean whether or not it's exactly how it did it it's don't the truth SK the way of a good

story right like he he C curated music that or created clips that showed the production of that music and it's that thing that like I thought this one here missed like I like it's only because I was doing research to watch or to come and talk to you as well that I was like what is this actually saying this one and it took me a couple go to get it yeah right I definitely have been thinking about that a particular piece of content and honestly I think I was just being lazy when I made that of course cuz I was just like I just yeah but you're right I mean there's so many clips that I should have or I can include and including you

know I rewrote the song about 10 times and the application process and the administration process and the Fallout what the produc the process and the where is that you know all that kind where's that juicy gossip all that kind of [ __ ] but um but it is it is interesting like it would make us um we'd be indead to you in your brand you know like we'd watch and be like that's cool like you're talented like showing the talent as opposed to like um I I don't think any of the content you've done is wrong I just think like what where do you take it to the next level like how do you get it to the level where people actually care cuz at the moment

there a lot of like hey my song out yeah enjoy it and but like if I didn't know who you were or no one introduced me to I would have flipped right past cuz I was like I don't know who you are to care about your song coming out yeah so like how do you get people to come in to care about it it's like taking them along for the journey the actual Journey the journey that you went through not the journey that the song's going through yeah right cuz this is a lot of the Journey of the song yeah yeah I think if you go back quite a while um I was definitely doing a lot more stuff like that um and going in

a bit more depth like and stuff that's not just music related like yeah yeah lify stuff I think the one of my posts that's done the best was when I was walking back from a gig that I tried to go to yeah and I got to the door and it was $40 door entry and I um was like oh yeah yeah I'll just go get cash out and then I just never went back cuz I was just like but on my way like the Walk of Shame back to my flat yeah and I just did a little Tik Tok story of it and it's got like 350,000 views or something but I think people just obviously could relate to that yeah and just showing that's

part of my journey like I'm a broke [ __ ] like can't go can't afford to go to a gig like you're a recording artist in New Zealand like yeah you people get it but you're also um a young person in New Zeal like most young people aren't going to pay like unless they really want to go to that thing like most people like $40 cover charge like yeah it's a lot it's a lot of money um but yeah I was thinking that too like that's cuz I'm assuming like I mean think about content Styles like is there any artists in the world that you love their content like you think that I would love to have a brand like that um uh I can't think off

the top of my head I I definitely on Instagram and on Tik Tok I will favorite videos that I think have done something well cool um it's always stuff where usually it's like a song and then there's like a visual like that represents the song whether it's um cool lighting and there's like the rain um reflecting off the light and then the song is sort of melancholic and it's like the perfect marriage of visual and audio and I I mean I think a lot about how I can um Market my music or promote my music on social media in a way that isn't like totally detrimental to my mental health because that is a whole other oh yeah course whole other conversation and I think

musicians I think 85% of musicians suffer from some sort of mental health like severe mental health problems so it's sort of like this perfect toxic storm when you get Artis spending too much time on social media so um yeah I do it's it's always just like a juggling act between yeah trying to promote yourself look after your mental health and remain or have integrity in your art and not let your phone or trying to capture something interrupt your creative flow I guess yeah um but there's kind of two ways I've kind of seen and there's the the first way is sort of like like you said before bringing people along on the journey and really sharing all the mundane stuff as you said and then

the second way is you've made the work you've made the body of Music totally just like you've gone into your studio and you just disappear and then you've made the music and then creating really highly engaged um engaging visuals that marry up to the music like cool cool stuff is like maybe getting like a cinematographer and then like getting some like visual person to make bespoke content it doesn't even need to be related to you it just can be something that just fits the mood of the music so well and is beautiful yeah and that can be striking like even with the flying boss I don't know if I said that right but you know they've obviously made all this music and then they've come

up with the concept and then they've done it that way so there's I think there's those two different approaches you can do yeah I think this way the second way is probably healthier in terms of um you know you've made the music and then you can just focus on creating the content rather than every single day having to put something out having to put something out um and think about it yeah and you know there's um yeah from like a an effort perspective and like a mental health perspective it's the same not just with musicians it's same with these guys the same with the creatives that we have same with Joanie right like Jan is no different to like the same mindset of uh when

she's having to put out stuff all the all the time if she when whenever she's starting that Journey it like screws her up like she can't handle it very well it's not until she like is which would be the same as you when you're writing music like when you put in the work and you know that actually and this is a this is saying even though it's creative I do need to put in a certain amount of reps to make this work when she starts to do that she's able to get over that hump a little bit but it's still like the other approach of like making really stunning visuals for something the reason why that's like an easier way for creatives to go down

is cu it's a creative Outlet the same as making the music in the first place yeah and there's nothing wrong with that approach it's just that like you know something like those girls did in flying a boss um that is like not an accident no you know that is like that strategy is that like through the roof like so successful of what they've done so it's like a it's a full strategy to that like and why not something like this like what stops you from like why don't you I mean I'm not saying you're not going to because you've only just released a song but like have you thought about that approach like and what you'd want to do yeah I I definitely think I

mean now that I've kind of got the experience I have got and managing budgets um I think next release I do will definitely be more of a focus on Tik Tok and creating content for Tik Tok um because with the funding criteria at the moment it's you um produce a visual you produce a song and you pay for PR yeah so by the time you've actually paid for all of that stuff there's no budget left which is crazy cuz like a like the producer fee is four grand yeah mixing fee two up to two grand Y and then that six grand your budget gone and then you've got to make the visual and pay for PR PR is nearly 2K for a track yeah what

the funding budgets 10K yeah yeah I thought so so like I'm always going over as well and but yeah by the end of that it's like there's no budget left to actually Market the thing and PR and marketing are two totally different things and PR has its role in promoting your music and getting you industry um recognition and IND in front of the industry people but yeah like you said 80% of hits now are from Tik Tok so yeah it does make sense to be investing more in this platform oh yeah yeah and it's it's hard because like although yeah 80% of them come from here it's not that they're all Independent Artists who just popped off like you know they have heaps of money

behind them like stupid money yeah like I remember seen like the uh com was an article the case study of when Benny did their pushing 2020 of her music and how much money they had spent getting her music to blow up on Tik Tok right and it was crazy her where was that I'd be really interested to read uh I'll try find an I'll flick it to yeah like it was like six figures spent wow to get that music to go I mean that that one song had like 40 million videos made or 8 million it like it was mental um it was money well spent like it was a good investment in doing that but there was obviously someone backing that like it's not

just an independent artist no and like and a lot of that is the way right like when you come up an idea you still need to push it to the right people so it's not it's not easy to go viral on these things but like I guess where I want to go to with you is like when you're thinking about how to make that creative or that content later on CU none of it's necessarily needed to be it's not expensive to make either like you can make it all on your iPhone or your phone or whatever it is that you're using right yeah but what's the style like I think that's something that you haven't really dug into yet right like it's quite hard to

think about like how do you change the style into what style do you want you don't seem like someone who's going to run down the street um camera in their face or are you some and potentially not someone who's going to use humor would you like what is it like when you're normally talking to what's the sort of content that you normally watch yourself um I guess I'm a bit of a nerd like I like learning stuff um somebody that's really good at something and you're like wow how did they do that or um yeah I guess that's probably educational sort of stuff yeah I'm very I'm actually a very factual person which is kind of contradictory to the fact that I'm creative but but

in in a sense like all of my songs are very non-fiction that they're always very real about my experience and I don't write I don't makeups and a lot of artists can write amazing songs that way but that's not how I write so yeah I mean the the content I like is always from like a factual perspective so it makes sense that your content you would make emulates that style right yeah like you don't want to make you I think like if you're trying to make content you don't want to make something that you wouldn't watch no I mean you probably I don't know you might tell me something different here but I'm assuming you don't make music that you don't want to listen to

you know yeah you obviously make music that you want to listen to so you make content that you want to watch to and I think like which means that like running down the street if that's not the things that you're watching if you're watching people talking about factual stuff or learning things then that that's still the same thing I sing them out here like how do you show someone that process even post like I would be because that's the sort of content I like to watch too I would have I would love to watch the bit in between there of what you did like how did you do that like what was that process even looking like what was going through your head how do

you articulate it later on like you might not be able to get it perfect cuz like I know that's not necessarily how creative things happen sometimes they're just like it all just sort of forms in your head at once all the pieces but it is easy to like somewhat post break it down going wow obviously I had to think this to get to this part part and I thought about this and then I I spoke about this particular part because it related to this story or or whatever like that's the stuff that you would that I would I mean I'm not sure it's like the nitty-gritty how do you do I think yeah that's a good point I think CU because I've been songwriting for

15 years so for me it doesn't seem like such a thing but songwriting is such a niche skill to have like it's and it's mind blown cuz and what's cool about is we all listen to music like globally universally music's universally accepted that we all humans listen to it somewhat right yeah so which is the best place to start with a piece of content that the topic I'm talking about every single person in the world cares about and then it's going to and then now you're going well actually this one part of it which is the songwriting piece I'm going to tell you my process for doing that and now you're going to get people like everyone's going to be interested in it so it'll

go I mean viral is like maybe not the right word but it'll get enough people interested in it because they like oh this is interesting I like music I want to learn about I I want to hear about how this person uh writes a song the same way I think about it with like uh you know construction guys or like there's one guy I watch Nathan who does um uh ashal he lays ashal we all drive on roads we all know what that means but none of us know how they're laid really like unless you're in that world you really know and like watching them lay Ash is crazy like I watch I watch for ages watching just like you know like putting that [ __ ]

down and it's like I don't really care about it but cuz I I don't know anything about it I'm real interested in now yeah and we will see that it's the same with like the the lawnmowing guy you know the guys that do the lawn mowing that like oh they just they just do it for for free for views yeah cuz they make all their money on YouTube yeah you know and like we all know people need their lawn mode why are we watching these things like they're satisfying satisfaction of see and seeing how they do stuff and it's like the the cleaning Tik Tok yeah exactly yeah I was what if you just know the midd down just I was going to jump to

that next which is like yeah which is like the second stage of it like the first stage is like what is it that Blake does that helps her story but then the way we think about is like where do you how else can you distribute it like how else can like we we have a bunch of accounts at Conor's building that will have like targeted audiences about random stuff right like have you seen the ones like he's talking about where you like dropped the metal bow yeah right like it's so dumb down the stairs this yeah like so stupid but making those accounts so our thought is like how do we make these sorts of accounts for ourselves they're stupid no one needs to know

who we are behind them but you can distri things through them right like you can like for instance you could have audios playing like you could charge artists for instance you know it's this much for your song to be behind this track yeah um they take a lot of work and you probably don't have the effort to go and put those together but like but those sorts of channels are there for and like they will work with emerging artists just as you know just because they're cool they're good people right like you think about all the YouTubers who like music and like talk about different things like reaching out to those guys who have millions of followers they make their money on the sponsors you're

an independent artist who they they can easily see and they understand the music industry they're like well she doesn't have millions of dollars so she probably can't pay us but this could be quite cool if we worked with her on how she wrote the song or how she broke it down or whatever so it's like there's like the one side of it which is what's the Tik toks that you make that go viral or how do you do it and I I think in your in your world is like you're a songwriter teach us about songwriting like I'd love to watch a Channel about songwriting like I don't even want to make music ever ever but I would watch that and then I would I

would listen to your songs because of it because I'm like this is cool I know why she wrote this song like I get it it means a whole lot more it's like um when Sophie showed us her song like I care about Sophie so I cared about a song like I would never listen like one of the girls in our team just they wrote they produced a song recently and I would never listen to the style of song probably that it is but because it was her and I know the story that went into making it and why she did it like I was like I mean we all we all cried on Friday night when she played it to us cuz we all knew

the story behind it yeah but then there's the other side of it it's like how do you distribute it how do you distribute the track but don't use necessarily traditional PR cuz traditional PR goes to the big guys you know they go to all the normal places that you would take music but there's like there are just like I don't know probably a thousand YouTubers who all just talk about music on their Channel yeah and they massive audiences or there's Tik Tok guys who just do that right it's like I don't know his name but there's a guy who uh his video about the dude who made the um oh man my name my my mind's so blank today um the Billy eyelish you know

the song Billy Alish yes by the the American rapper is he American yeah American rapper what's his name um the T-shirt one you know the one I'm talking about yeah the guy who made the song talking about the guy who made the song that video was bigger then the guy who did the one about the bilish song which blew up this guy's career like him making the video I forget what that guy's name is now just dissected it just dissects it yeah just talks about it and those guys are all the time looking for Content like by pitching them like hey here's a song Here's my thing of how this is the story of it going he's now got a story to make a piece

of content with yeah and that that's how I found out about the Billy is song like the whole story about it and who the guy was is cuz well I still can't remember his name but so maybe it didn't work that well but like I know the song now because of watching that guy's Tik Tok yeah does that make sense yeah like what are the other distribution channels outside of the traditional ones yeah cuz these guys get like millions of views massive audiences who come back all the time and make them the authority on something M and they're always looking for new content ideas mhm and I think you're in a real unique position at the moment as like an independent artist who like people

understand what that means like they know especially people in the industry they understand what that means they know you don't have like millions of dollars behind you to Market anything you need yeah so they're probably more willing to say yes to you cuz they're like well yeah I was there once like actually a lot of the Tik Tok guys who have got a million followers they still are there like they're not making lots of money they just need to make content and you've like handed it to them on a platter yeah you know like how do you feel about doing stuff that way yeah no I feel definitely like Keen to explore that have you ever done that sort of stuff with anyone have you

tried into that sort of thing no not really I think a lot of the thing for me is like energy yeah because for me to put together the the song that I put together and the the music video um yeah it's a lot of energy and then to go away and think about all this other stuff as well it's like a whole other thing but yeah it is it is important though so definitely something I'd be Keen to like dig into a bit more sometimes um where a lot of people uh they see all these ideas and then they think oh man that's so much work to go do all those things with these people and because there's so many of those people the hardest

thing to do is actually just Outreach to them which you obviously know how to do because you already did that with the top of the line stuff that you talked about but then also when you came back to producers just contacting them saying hey I don't have any idea but I've got this new song and I'd love to collaborate with you on something on here yeah those people cuz they make content all the time they will give you the idea like don't you don't need to think and then you can just that means half the time they'll just go and do it you know so it's just like a catch all it's just like I'm going to message 50 people and say hey I love

you what you do I've got the song I'm an independent artist I'm trying to push it out I need to make content not really sure what to make for content and I'm good at making music not content but is there something you think you could do with us yeah you'll get people who pick it up who are just like yeah 100% let's just go for it like um uh we had J Thon in here the other day and she was telling us about uh who was the guy oh man I'm so bad of names today but there was a guy that this whole podcast just going to be like me trying to figure out people's names um she met a guy that was in LA

who did a a song on mental health and uh she went she was like she heard it from someone sent the song and she was like this is [ __ ] awesome just messaged him cuz it related to her so well she just messaged him saying hey I've got this crazy idea for a piece of content are you keen and he's like yeah so she flew to La wow and like hired a studio producer I mean she's got a foundation behind her so they paid for it all but um she went over and like did this whole thing with them and made this whole which I mean by the time this video goes out it would have already been released where um like for the launch right

but that was just someone she found the like his music found the right person who resonated with the song well enough to just go yeah I'm in let's make a piece of content so he just got literally like a few hundred, production what would have cost him that if it wasn't her doing it for free yeah essentially for free actually for free she paid for the whole thing that's crazy that's crazy right just because there are people out there who make content that's what they do that's their whole business right yeah right they have to make content CU that's how they make money yeah and so they're not making money off you they're making money off the sponsors and the ads and all the other

thing that comes along from their content getting put out there so if you just message enough of them just no different to like going to Spotify and getting on the uh what's hot in New Zealand uh email that went out from you know and all these other things that help Spotify go you know what this is a good song and these people have so too let's put it on our playlist it's the same thing you're going out to all these music artists and going look I've got this really good song I don't know how to make content the way I want to do it I'm too busy trying to make music but I'd love to collaborate with you and stuff what got any ideas just

like let them go to town on it as long as you're like not messaging people that you don't align with like you know if you're just messaging randoms who will then you know might misaligned or you know they might not make their audien is going to be wrong you know they're not going to be talking to people that your music will resonate with mhm um but that's I I think like when you get to energy that piece is like uh it's true that it takes energy but don't do the work of the other people don't like don't um don't think to yourself oh if I'm going to do this is going to be heepsy it you just tell them look I don't have capacity I'll

do what you need me to do m I don't know how to do this and just be out front with people yeah and see what they come up with you message enough people and someone's going to go oh there a um Adam Neely do you watch Adam Neely on uh go to YouTube and go Adam Neely NE l y there you go I remember the name I probably got it wrong but e yeah that's T I feel like this guy this guy would do it this guy like breaks down all sorts of Music he does a lot about um um he actually has a lot about like this sort of stuff like he gets real angry with like the plagiarization lawsuits and how people are

bring you know the ID shearan lawsuit and how people are bringing like bogus suits and stuff that's one thing he does but he also just like breaks down the music of music and like he obviously always needs ideas to make content about it's hard to come up with YouTube video ideas yeah that's why I think like YouTube has be the right one because like there there's is like 15 minutes not a 40 second Tik Tok so they have to have like a real good idea but then if you show them like if on your channel you're talking about the songwriting yeah you know you start to talk more about your songwriting process and teach people how to write songs or at least your process and

then you go to one of these guys and you say like hey I've got the song This is my Tik Tok this is what I know you know music the background back uh you know how the music works and I know songwriting what if we collabed on something is there something you could think of is there a piece or whatever and people like this would like I'm not saying that ad NE is going to say yes because he's not exactly a small YouTuber but they need stuff yeah you messaged enough of them one of them says yes imag you get a song look look at the views of this guy like this is YouTube views too so yeah and he' just link the song or

put it in what how do you feel about doing that sort of stuff no like good I think it's good to think outside the and you know traditional PR can only get you so far so you do have to sort of be a bit more creative with with how you get people to know who you are and what you're doing you think about you know in the traditional PR stuff have you heard anything in like Publications Y what publication Oh you mean like a magazine any any sort of publication like an online blog y y what which ones uh sniffers do you know what that is I reckon if you go you know you know why I say why is because there'll be I think

if you listen think about the demographic of people who's going to listen to music which as a new artist is probably going to skew young um because you know it's that whole thing I don't know what the age is there's that real thing in life where like you go past a certain age and you stop listening to new music I can't remember what the term is but like it's my dad it's your dad yeah yeah um it happens right it happens to all of us it's uh so the young people are the ones who are going to pick up your music first as a new new artist and uh where was I going with that I [ __ ] completely going blank um that you need to

Target your content yeah Target your content exactly like sniffers sniffers MH like is that an industry publication um yeah I think they all are really I mean and that's that's the thing right it's like who is actually reading this yeah how many people are actually reading it as opposed to like Adam Ney like 1.5 million people subscribe to him who all love music they obviously do You' not listen to him unless he loved music yeah which is probably a real good demographic for you of people because they're not all necessar industry people actually I guarantee if you watch like a lot of those guys like majority of them are people like me like I subscribe to them like I'm not in the industry at all

but I listening to it cuz he breaks down things that I like to listen to right I'm like oh that's real interesting I like that song that's quite cool that that's the background of it yeah he might not be the right guy for you but that's just someone an actual name I remember but it's like who are actually reading these things or how many people are reading these and and we just find a traditional PR they leave out YouTubers and top creators they leave them out of their their their thing they go to like more publication sort of stuff or um even like something like sniffers which is probably a lot lot better than like say nzid Herald you know it's still it's like an

online magazine like how many people are really reading it it's not that you shouldn't be there I think those things are still important but it's like well actually where are the distributions channels that my audience are and they live there yeah you know I reckon probably only Sophie maybe Sam would have heard of this in L te yeah yeah those two those two probably would have Sam because of bfm and S because that's her world yeah but whereas the rest probably like they just don't they just don't go there they only they're only on socials is where most of their consumption is which is why things like [ __ ] you should care about took off as like a news Outlet right like jines decided that you

know what I'm not going to go to Hero to get my news I'm going to go to Instagram and I'm going to listen to the girls at [ __ ] you should care about like yeah love it or hate it like it's what happened and and they were right yeah yeah so anyway um I've taken you on a bit of a tangent I've forgotten every single name that I ever tried to think of it's being one of those days it's a Monday I'm GNA blame it Monday um what's at least you remembered the day of the week oh you she's got this yeah the visual coming yeah yeah yeah I like yours is a clip of your video clip right yeah it's quite good um did you

just clip that out like is that a hard process to go through to do this is it just part of the back end of uploading a song yeah oh it's just through Spotify for artists so yeah just took a clip of my music video yeah it's not really it's not there for podcast yet yeah yeah podcast just have the long format at the moment eh yeah um did you have a question about this you wanted to ask no I mean when I when you were speaking about the visual stuff this is where I saw it yeah to add visually to the song A when you're listening to it yeah I wonder how many people watch those things yeah that's another thing you put your sptify

on and you then you close your phone yeah I think that those you know what I think those things should be for Easter eggs you know East eggs you know what I mean like like a clue for the next thing or for anything or like deeper law inside jokes that only people who are true fans are like [ __ ] have you seen Blake's new clip all right right so it starts its own hype rather than just like a pretty visuals because it's one of those things no one watches but then if it forces everyone to go watch it what do they have to do they have to stream your right that's cleever and if that goes viral like hey have you seen Blake's new thing it's

so funny she did this thing yeah that's where I think we probably should have talked about that earlier it's a piece of content in itself 100% but it's a sharable thing CU only if you know you know when you can get an inside joke with people then you're on fire like people will people will want to share it and then you get these guys who do break down music going wow this artist from New Zealand was so smart she did this thing and boom you know like can you change those yeah you can change them yeah that's cool we should think of an idea for Blake and PCT it to Blake picture like a but you want something that's like a you only know if

you know it like just the 3,000 people or whatever that follow you or whatever they all know that they're like that's so funny especially if it's like a I mean I don't know if you want take a humor as side but especially if it's like a oh like you think about the video that got 350,000 views about you like the little clips of you not being able to get into a club right yeah yeah am I having a breakdown or a breakthrough like you know like the door CU I can't afford to go CU I can't afford to get in yeah but people who know you know it yes you know and so if you're watching that you're like ah this is funny it's like

an inside joke yeah this is inside joke and then that becomes sharable content because people are like [ __ ] have you seen this thing that's so funny I actually did some posts last year about countdown oh yeah how they're screwing everyone over and it went totally viral and then stuff ended up messaging me and asking me for like an interview and so like doing a clip of me in like countdown or something just like yeah yeah yeah yeah just like pointing at some $10 punet of tomatoes being like what the yeah or even funnier like um I always think of like how do you subvert the expectations everyone expects you to go on a countdown to do that but instead you're in there like loving life

you know like how good is down like in opposite the opposite end where everyone's like what the [ __ ] yeah weren't you in a video saying how much you hated it and but that's the funny bit like and if people know you they know you yeah yeah I don't know but both both are fine it's either you lean into it or you subvert it subvert the expectation you can't be in the middle yeah yeah interesting all right before we wrap up because we're already gone over um what's next uh so just getting my new songs finished really um I'm currently just trying to work out a new process for me in terms of getting my songs finished um that is more like sustainable y because this

last release just was such a difficult process for me for so many different reasons and it just I was like I can't put this much time and energy into one thing I need to put out more music and I need to find a way that is enjoyable for me is sustainable financially and yeah just works for me so that's kind of what I'm doing at the moment and I think once I've sort of Built My Team a little bit more and done what I need to do there then it would just mean that I can it's probably similar with content you know you have your process of the way you do things and you get that dialed in and then it means you can not

have to think about it so much you can just do it so just going through that at the moment cool you should share that I want to watch that I mean that's probably just going to put some pressure on you to make content but like that that stuff I mean I I know we've already talked about that a little bit about maybe from a mental health perspective it's quite it's a bit too much but like is there like a weekly time where you can have a this is what I did this week but like talk about the challenges of it and trying to develop a process cuz like for us like people who don't understand it getting that insight into a world of like [ __ ]

is this what people have to go through to make music that's crazy you deserve everything you get from this because I would never do that it's too much work like that sort of content is good to watch um but yeah I I understand what your point about before is like maybe that's too much to then continually do that yeah but it' be interesting to get it behind the scenes of that I have started doing a fortnightly um like email newsletter where I do kind of outline from the fortnite sort of what I've been doing and the challenges and blah blah blah um so yeah trying to maybe tailor that towards a te towards Tik Tok video Yeah Instagram whatever it is would be good cool

but yeah I think for me now my my focus is like quality over quantity and if I can have like if I can build up my mailing list to a thousand people who every time I put a song out will buy the song or buy a ticket to my show or buy my merch that to me is more valuable than having 100,000 followers that might see my content might probably won't the way we sort of think about it with follower growth um and and their loyal fans is that you you only do need it you know it's the old thousand true fans thing you only need that but to get to that you have to have a million people see you and that's the hard

thing that a lot of people funnel yeah they and a lot of people like struggle with that idea that like I don't need a million people it's like no you need a thousand Impressions and then have a thousand you need a million funnel those viewers yeah cuz only one in every thousand people give a crap maybe even less one in every 10,000 um and I think you've already what we call fan service content you've already got it's the content that people who know you will watch and they'll be interested but then there's like fan acquisition content which is the bouncer door stuff like it's the things that goes viral but then people like wait who's this person yeah and they see everything else and they're

the ones that you want to keep so you don't necessarily need a million followers or 100,000 followers but you do need to start reaching that many people so you can find the Thousand that you want yeah you know cuz they you can't just find them otherwise well you can it just takes ages yeah it just takes decades like accumulate especially as well if like your audience is an international base which I think my music does have Global potential and New Zealand's such a tiny Market that you can't really just expect people in New Zealand to be able to service your career yeah and going big in New Zealand doesn't really mean anything in the music industry in terms of career no and and you also

don't want to be pigeon told as just a New Zealand artist and then you know you go overseas to find that no one gives a [ __ ] about you no one knows who you are no exactly yeah cool all right well thanks for coming on thanks for sharing the story and uh we'll see you next time see you next time peace