Ep. 105 - How I Got Signed To A Record Label and Why I Went independent

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Ep. 104 - Instagram Marketing Promotion and Branding Tips For Artists and Musicians

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Ep. 103 - How To Copyright Your Songs and Music

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Ep. 102 - How To Be Profitable with Facebook and YouTube Ads

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Ep. 101 - How To Stack Your Success And Not Be A One Hit Wonder

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Ep. 100 - How To Conduct Yourself As A Professional Savvy Musician

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Ep. 99 - Interview with Kevin Breuner of CDBABY DIY Musician

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CHRIS:                     Well, hey, guys. I'm super stoked to have the VP of marketing from CD Baby, Kevin Bruener. I'm a huge fan, and he's just done so much for independent artists over the years. The company has just helped me totally change my career over the years, helped me sale more music, and had such an impact. I am super stoked to have Kevin from CD Baby on the line here. How are you doing, brother?

KEVIN:                     I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, man. Dude, seriously. I started working with CD Baby, or using your guys' stuff since 2001.

KEVIN:                     Wow, wow. You predate me.

CHRIS:                     That's crazy. Yeah, man. I remember getting the ... It's actually funny. We were moving or something, or I found an old bag the other day and it had the old CD Baby physical credit card swiper in there.

KEVIN:                     Oh, man. That's a classic.

CHRIS:                     For those of you that aren't listening, I guess that shows, people take credit cards ... Before the evolution of Square, we would swipe people's credit cards. I don't even know what we'd call it. It's like a little slip, and you'd fill it out manually. Then, mail them to you guys, and then you guys would, I guess ... I don't know, process them and then send us money or something like that.

KEVIN:                     Yep, yep. That was back in the day.

CHRIS:                     This doesn't exist. Obviously, I guess, they just don't even have that anymore.

KEVIN:                     No, because the Square Reader came out, and there's no longer a need for it.

CHRIS:                     Okay, awesome.

KEVIN:                     Technology, you know, progresses. Things change, which is fine.

CHRIS:                     Yeah. Well, dude, I'd love our audience to hear your story, because you don't just work at CD Baby. You're an artist, as well, too. That's what I love, is like artists helping other artists. I don't know. You just have such an amazing perspective, but I'd love for you to share your story with music, and then also how you started working at CD Baby and everything you guys do.

KEVIN:                     Yeah. Well, I went to Nashville to study music in college. I went to Belmont University. That was one of the most challenging things I've ever done in my life, studying music. The requirements to pass those classes, meanwhile still having to pass history classes, and all these other things. It was insane. It was just extremely challenging. Then, not only that, being in Nashville with so many musicians, all of them who seemed far more talented than I was. It was just one of those big times of perseverance of my life of like, "This is what I want to do. I want to pursue music, and I'm going to make it happen. I don't care if those people are better than me. There's room for us all."

KEVIN:                     While I was there, one of my roommates in college, he was friends with these guys back in Atlanta that were reforming a new band and were looking for a guitar player. I drove to Atlanta, and on my first day, I walked in to just rehearse and try things out with them, they were sending these three song demo tapes out to all the labels in there. This was 1996, by the way.

CHRIS:                     Yeah. I love it.

KEVIN:                     I started playing with them that summer, and doing festivals. They had always been playing ... They'd been road warriors since they were in high school. Every summer, they'd play like 50, 60 shows that they booked. They had a booking agent at the time as well. Anyway, so they had a lot of shows, so I started jumping on, and then by the end of summer, we were signed to a major label under the EMI umbrella, and our debut album came out the following year, and we saw some pretty nice success.

KEVIN:                     We sold about 200,000 copies. We had a Grammy nomination. Dove Award nominations. Some number one songs. That whole machine was going, and the thing I noticed was that with all that success, we were still the last ones to get paid. We were flat broke. I wouldn't say it's all the label's fault. There were some decisions that predated me that set us up with some things, like some debt and all that. It still was, we'd work really, really hard and everybody got their piece of the pie before us, and then we just got to fight for the scraps.

KEVIN:                     Eventually, I just ... One by one, the guys in the band kind of went their separate ways for a bit. I ended up in the northwest, where my wife is from. I just kept thinking, "There's got to be a better way for artists to do this, because we have fans." It's not like we're all frustrated and not making any money because we don't have fans. We do have fans. There's just this big wall between us and them where all the money gets sucked up and we just don't have direct access to it.

KEVIN:                     About that time, I came across CD Baby, and I started writing and recording new music, and started a different band here in the northwest, and started distributing my music through CD Baby. This is like back in 2003, 2004. Just eventually thought, "Well, I might as well get a job here. I'm here in town. Might as well get a job. They happen to be in Portland, I'm in Portland." I've had several other independent bands. The band that was on a label ... I don't think I mentioned. The band's called Small town Poets.

CHRIS:                     Go check them out, guys. Go check them out on Spotify. Small town Poets.

KEVIN:                     Yeah, we started making music again back around 2010, and we'd always wanted to do a couple Christmas records, because we just loved Christmas music. We ended the hiatus with a Christmas album that did decent, and an EP, another Christmas album. Now, we just released another full length album. Not a Christmas record, but just a full length album. It's kind of in that album promotion cycle, and just trying to make it happen still.

KEVIN:                     Yeah, I work at CD Baby. That's my day job. I'm the VP of marketing. We get to do a lot of cool things with artists, and it keeps me energized for doing music and all that. I'm in the trenches just like everybody else, just trying to make things happen.

CHRIS:                     That's awesome, man. You said something profound there with the way the pay goes when you're with your label. It's so true that everybody gets paid first. The label, the publisher, the manager, and then we are, unfortunately, sometimes left with the scraps. The booking agent. I personally love booking agents for the most part, because I feel like they're the ones that really work the hardest to make us money. Yeah, it's really tricky when you don't own your stuff. Did you guys sign like a full deal? Did you guys ever get those records back or do they own the masters forever?

KEVIN:                     They own them. We've had some conversations trying to recapture them that didn't go as I'd hoped for a number of reasons. Actually one album of the band's is owned by Capitol now. The first three albums were on one label and then there was a fourth album on a different label. That label got acquired and their whole catalog got acquired by Capitol. They basically told me, "We're owned by Comcast, which is a content company. You will never get your master back."

CHRIS:                     Oh, wow. Jeez.

KEVIN:                     I've kind of given up on that one, but the other three, we've had some conversations that still have not gone the way I had hoped. You know, there's still time.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, yeah. There's still hope. I'll share quickly my ... I got my masters back slowly. I just actually emailed the label to get a song. There was a single, because I'm really trying to keep a track on it in a live album that I finally got back last week. I'm just so excited to upload it. Even my other albums, when I started to get them back, I was like, "Holy crap. Holy crap. They were making a lot of money off me." I used to get excited about the quarterly, or what is it? Biannually, they'd paid me, I think twice a year. That's a lot, but then all of a sudden when I owned it, I was like, "Holy smokes."

CHRIS:                     You must probably have a lot of stories of artists that got their masters back, and maybe submitting their ISRC codes so that they can keep the Spotify playlists, and not lose those lists, but get their stuff back. Do you get a lot of stories like artist like, "Oh my gosh. Dude, I had no idea."

KEVIN:                     Yeah, we do get a lot of artists that are like, "I got my masters back, and I want to get this back out there." Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's so important that you own your masters. If you're not going to own your masters, if you do sign a deal, that you're absolutely sure you understand what you're getting yourself into. You know, I'm not going to say that every label deal is a bad deal, but there's trade offs. There's serious trade offs. They're not going to invest a lot of time and energy developing you as an artist if they're not getting something in return. What they want is content that they can own forever, in most cases. That's not necessarily to your best interest as an artist.

KEVIN:                     Depending on what kind of music you do, and what your career ambitions are, maybe it is the best thing that could happen to you. For most people, who have a long term view of their musical journey, that's not the best.

KEVIN:                     One thing that was interesting when I was in that period of having left the label situation going, "There's got to be a better way," I remember seeing this article that was by Aimee Mann. It was in the newspaper, and it was talking about Aimee Mann, and how she'd been dropped from every major label, and that she had gotten some advances, but had never made anything on the back end. She was talking about how now she was just selling directly to her fans, and she can just sell 10,000 copies directly to her fans and make more money, far, far more money than she was when she was selling hundreds of thousands of copies. It's just kind of the understanding of how much money gets sucked up in that pipeline.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, like I literally had a course that I called How I Make Over 4,000 a Month Selling Music Online. That was until I got my next record back and then the income shot up again. I'm going to have to rename the course. Yeah, I had no clue, and it's not like I got this success manual of, "Do this, and do that, and this is how you do it." I'm on CDBaby.com right now, and you guys spell it out so much of the boost your income here, and the pro publishing. I want to talk about a bit of this stuff that you guys help for artists to make money.

CHRIS:                     I'll never forget, I was on tour, and I literally did a CD Baby podcast, like what do you call it? Like binge. There was one episode that you guys really spoke to me, and I didn't understand at first back then. It was like the black box royalties, and the YouTube. I think it goes with your guys' Pro, when you sign up for CD Baby Pro, and you collect the money worldwide. Could you maybe talk a little bit about that, and some of the money that artists might be leaving on the table that they don't even know about? I'm not good at talking about or explaining it. I'm sure you do a lot better job than me.

KEVIN:                     Absolutely. Basically, the digital world has opened up a lot of things for independent artists. Not only so many new usages of music, and the way music generates revenue, and different kinds of royalties. A lot of these royalties didn't exist 10 years ago, especially 20 years ago, and so the industry was kind of slow to figure this stuff out. The industry's also been used to delaying with the major labels who represent large catalogs, and most of the music out there that's being used in these ways. That has changed drastically, especially over the last five, six years, where independent artists make up about 40% of the music being used on places like Spotify and such.

KEVIN:                     There's all these royalties that are generated that the industry just didn't have a way to collect for independent artists, because they didn't care. It got to a point where people were like, "Hey, it doesn't matter if you're on top of the charts or you have 1,000 streams. That revenue is yours. That revenue is owed to you for the usage of your music by law, and there's no reason why it can't be paid. Especially in the digital world, where we can account for things one for one."

KEVIN:                     Way back in the day, they used to just survey radio stations and all that, to kind of try to grasp an idea of who was owed performance royalties, but now, everything's digital. If something gets played, it's accounted for, and artists should get paid their rightful money. That's been a lot of what we've been doing in the last few years, is really focusing on helping artists get paid these royalties, where they traditionally haven't.

KEVIN:                     I'd say one of the biggest problems with artists, especially artists that have some success rolling, is that most of them are under-monetized, where they're not taking advantage of all of the revenue streams owed to them. Some of them, that money can pool up and sit around for a while, but some of these royalties, after two years, it just gets paid out, which means the major label folks benefit most from that.

CHRIS:                     YouTube, specifically. I don't even think it's retroactive. If you're not monetizing it when the ad, I'm pretty sure that one's not ... You can't go back for YouTube is what I heard, if you don't have it monetized.

KEVIN:                     Yeah, correct, because YouTube, it's all ad revenue, and if it's not monetized, yeah, they won't go back and pay you out for it. I've heard some situations like someone who's had like an explosion of viral content that's happened instantly, and them trying to recover some from the previous week or two, but yeah. If you have something that's been performing for a while, no, that's lost revenue. You're not going to get that back.

KEVIN:                     That's a lot of what we do, is just help artists make sure that their publishing money's been collected. A lot of artists think they have publishing because they signed up with a PRO, and that's not a publisher, that's a performing arts organization. A lot of artists don't understand the opportunities on YouTube, or the world of sync licensing, and also that in a streaming world, there's also a mechanical royalty that's paid out. For about every five dollars that you make off of streaming, there's an additional dollar of publishing that's owed to you. If you don't sign up, if you don't have someone administering those publishing rights for you, you're losing that revenue.

KEVIN:                     That's what we do with our CD Baby Pro product. Our publishing administration service that adds on to the distribution and makes sure that you're getting paid as much money as you possibly can.

CHRIS:                     Just to talk with the YouTube thing, because I was blown away that it wasn't just off of my channel that I was making all this YouTube money. It was the thousands of videos that had my music in it that I had no idea. I had one song that's been uploaded to YouTube 9,000 times, and I get paid on all those, because I've signed up for the administration for publishing and stuff. It's really important that artists need to know that it's not just your channel, but all these other channels and people using it.

KEVIN:                     Yeah, correct. I mean, a lot of these usages can be completely hidden from the artist. Those 9,000 uploads you mentioned, it's possible that some of them cited your name, or said Music by Manifest, or something like that in the description, but a lot of them, they don't, and the only way to find it is through the content ID program, and the YouTube monetization program where we find that and make sure that you're getting paid for the usage of that music.

KEVIN:                     If you've got fans, if you're an artist that has fans, chances are that somebody's posted your music online somewhere that you don't know about it, and you could be monetizing it.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, man. Which leads me to the next thing, which I'm super excited about, is Facebook and Instagram. It might be too early, and if it is, that's cool, but if you've got any data, that's started to pay, or they're starting to monetize it at least. I'm really excited to see what that actually amounts to when they start paying us for our music.

CHRIS:                     Jeez, I run a ton of ads, and I know you're running ads, and artists are running ads promoting their music videos or whatever, just their music period on Facebook, Instagram. It's like, finally, they're going to start ... I've heard they've been trying to work on this thing for forever, and I hope it amounts to something pretty awesome, but have you heard much or got much data back from that yet?

KEVIN:                     Not much data back yet. It's still pretty new, but it will be over the next few quarters, getting more information on that. Yeah, I expect this to be a huge opportunity for artists. You know, Facebook is really trying to make their site a destination for video viewing, and they've done a good job in a way that, you know, inserts videos differently than how people experience them on YouTube. YouTube's trying to be a different type of platform than Facebook, and so there's lots of usage on Facebook, and artists should be paid for that.

KEVIN:                     The monetization is running now, but it's still early, because it takes a while for this stuff to come back, and really be able to crunch the numbers. It's only been active, it was earlier this year when it got turned on. There's usually a couple quarters' lag in the data. Really looking forward to seeing how much this adds to artists. I'm expecting it'll be a lot.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, I'm really excited, man. I hope they backdate it, too, a bit, as well. I don't know what's going to happen, but time will tell. We'll have to do another call later on, and see what happens with that, and get some stories. I wanted to ask you leading into that, and this is such a common question I get, and I want it, too, just for me as an artist myself. I personally have seen that streaming seems to have won when it comes to Spotify, as far as money now. My streams have finally outperformed my downloads. I don't know if you see that. I'm sure it's different for every artist, but you guys have thousands of artists, so you probably see so much data. Would you say streaming is the majority now?

KEVIN:                     Yeah. We pulled data for our entire catalog for 2017 that we released earlier this year. Spotify was the biggest digital partner at like 35%. Apple Music was I think in third, but iTunes was still number two at 25%. The surprise was Amazon and Pandora being as high as they were. They were like four and five. For some artists, it is definitely overtaking it and become even bigger for them.

KEVIN:                     You know, across the board, it's hard to be like, "Yes, it has," or, "No, it hasn't," because there's so much genre consideration, there's audience consideration. If you're somebody that your core audience is 18 year olds, absolutely, streaming's going to be good bread and butter. If you're an artist that your core audience is in their 50s, they might still prefer CDs, or downloads, or even vinyl. It can be very audience specific and genre specific. It's definitely growing.

KEVIN:                     The interesting thing is, in 2017, when really people started coming to grips with the fact that it's a streaming world, and streaming adoption started skyrocketing, so did the backend royalties for artists that we collect, it started skyrocketing. That's one of the cool things that we've seen.

CHRIS:                     Yeah. I get it all the time, is like, "How do I grow my Spotify? How do I grow my Spotify?" Could you speak into that a little bit? I know you just did the DIY CD Baby Conference, as well, too, so I'm also curious what do you see artists struggling with the most? Where do you feel like, "Ah, I wish if they just did this." Kind of like [inaudible 00:22:07] conception of it all, and growing this thing, and monetizing it. You know, we're talking about money and monetizing your music, but some artists are like, "But I don't even have any fans." They just don't get it. Do you know what I mean?

KEVIN:                     Yeah. Well, first off, they need to understand the platform itself. Over the last couple years, I've talked to so many artists that were like streaming haters. A lot of ... come around. It's because they were trying to make sense of a streaming world in a download economy. They're just two totally separate things. Streaming brought a fundamental shift in how people engage with music. It's not just a matter of instead of download, they just stream it. Instead of making 99 cents for that song, now I make less than a penny.

KEVIN:                     That's how a lot of artists were looking at it, and it's just not the same experience. It's not the same thing. Until you let go of that idea, and understand what's really happening on the platform, you're always going to be frustrated, angry, and not taking advantage of it.

KEVIN:                     For example, we went from a buying economy to a playing economy, where in a buying economy, you have to know what you're going to buy. You have to go into a store, or go to a download store, and know what you're going to buy, or plan to buy something. In a playing economy, all the barriers to entry are gone. All I got to do is push the play button. The ease of getting someone to sample, or the barrier to getting someone to sample or try your music is virtually eliminated.

KEVIN:                     On top of that is that really listening has gone from a intentional experience. Not only did they have to go figure out what to buy, you had to go, "I want to listen to this album right now, and I have to go select it," as opposed to, "I'd like to listen to music that's chill music while I work for three hours." People are thinking about music in a more experiential sense and less about every artist that they love. They still love artists, and follow artists, and save their music, but that shift has opened up so much more exposure for listeners to hear new music. That's really benefiting independent artists.

KEVIN:                     People are talking to devices. They're saying, "Hey Siri, play me songs for a rainy day," or, "Alexa, play me some workout music," or, "Play me the song that has this in the chorus," or, "Play me songs that all say this in the chorus," "Build a playlist off of this idea." You know, people are putting music on the background while they work all day and just letting it run. There's so many different ways people engage with music, and get into the music, than ever before, that didn't exist in a download world, where you had to be very intentional, "I'm getting this."

KEVIN:                     One of my favorite things that people are doing now, and really capitalizing on, is collaborations with other artists. You get an artist that has a following, and you do a collaboration with them, your new song will show up on their profile and your profile, and that's a perfect way to introduce people to new music that didn't exist before.

KEVIN:                     If you don't understand how these platforms work, and are working to your advantage, and how you can build a strategy around it, you're not going to benefit from it. Things like release radar. If you're building up a following on Spotify, especially now with the recent changes, when you release something new, everyone that follows you, your new track's going to show up in their release radar. Discover Weekly and things like that, where they're actively pushing music out to more people, because it's to the platform's benefit to make sure that people are enjoying the music, and finding as much new stuff, and just staying engaged, because if they don't, they'll stop paying that monthly fee.

KEVIN:                     When I talk to artists and tell them some of those things, they kind of go ... The extreme hater kind of backs down a little bit, but they're still skeptical. Until you go and understand things like how playlisting's driving adoption, and more streams, and how you can even just pitch straight to playlisters new music. If you don't understand all that stuff, yeah, you're going to be frustrated, because you're still thinking of it like, "I put my music on a shelf somewhere, and people are supposed to buy it." These are totally different thing, not even related.

KEVIN:                     That's number one, starting there. The other thing is, I find on Spotify specifically, is that a lot of people have not optimized their artist page and taken advantage of all the tools there in order to merchandise their music, present a better profile, make it attractive for people to follow, have links to their social outlets so they can get some of those fans connected other places. All those are options that are free to artists. You just have to do the work.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, it's free real-

KEVIN:                     It doesn't even take that long.

CHRIS:                     No, no. I love what you said about the collabs, man. Paying for a feature, if it's the right feature, not only are they featured on your track, and then when there's searches ... Jeez, if you did a few of those a year, or had a few on an album, or whatever, especially if they're bigger than you, that is such a worthwhile investment to have, let alone the relationship and maybe touring, or whatever. I always say the right feature is so worth it, man.

CHRIS:                     I think it's just consistency, right? Just staying in the game. It's just not an overnight thing. Even if you get a placement, or you get a playlist, there's no one thing that just blows up your career. It's kind of like, "Okay, that's one thing, and that's built the foundation for your career. That's the bricks. You got more, and you're building it." I like what you said, just strategy. What's the long term strategy to grow this thing so that in a year or two you've got more fans?

KEVIN:                     Well, and I think also, in a streaming world, some of the options out there allow artists to work together more to the benefit of all, as opposed to feeling like you're in competition with everybody.

CHRIS:                     That's cool.

KEVIN:                     Where things like collaborations, or building playlists for your local scene, and getting everybody to email their fans, so all these artists that are on these playlists can kind of help each other drive awareness of the scene that they've got in their town. Just a lot of ways where it can be artists helping artists for the benefit of all as opposed to feeling like you're fighting each other for shelf space, and fighting each other.

KEVIN:                     There is some healthy competition when it comes to getting gigs and things, but I think if you look at the options you have, there's so much more, that just community of your scene, or other artists' friends, or collaborations can really help build each other up.

CHRIS:                     Yeah. Yeah, man. I always say to artists, "Stop looking at everyone as your competitor, and start looking at them as your collaborator, you know?" I wish I did that more earlier in my career. I felt like I was a little internal, and just kind of kept to my own world. I wish I was just more ... I don't know, not outgoing, but just looked at it that way. It would've benefited me so much, to instead of trying to be this star, or get the light, there's enough room for all of us, you know?

CHRIS:                     I'm curious. We'll end here, because I know you've got to get going, but even at the CD Baby conference that just went on, and if you haven't gone, make sure you go next year. Do you guys record it? Do you guys actually sell it at all?

KEVIN:                     You can see a lot of sessions for free on our Facebook or YouTube channel. We live streamed the main stage the whole time.

CHRIS:                     Oh, awesome. Perfect.

KEVIN:                     There's probably about 10 or so sessions that are up for free on our Facebook and YouTube pages that you could go check out right now.

CHRIS:                     Sweet. Was our boy Rick Barkers up there?

KEVIN:                     Oh, yeah. I think he even mentioned you in his ... He did mention you in his session.

CHRIS:                     Oh, he did?

KEVIN:                     Yes, he did.

CHRIS:                     Oh, cool. Yeah, he's a rad dude, man. I love that guy. Man, what was I going to say? Oh yeah, what was the energy like there? Let's end with this as well. What advice did you give the most, and what would you give to artists that are just listening to this to grow and move forward their careers?

KEVIN:                     Well, I think the one thing I would highlight, one, the energy's amazing. I don't just say that because I put on the conference. In fact, it's totally different than what I expected. When we started doing this conference, I thought it would feel more like, you know, many of the music business conferences that I go to throughout the year. We've tried hard to make it feel different and unique, but I didn't know what to expect when people showed up.

KEVIN:                     Our audience is like 85% musicians. At an average music business conference, it's probably like 60, 70% businesspeople and maybe some artists, depending on which one it is. Our is mostly artists, and the thing is that people are just overwhelmingly happy to be there. They're just so excited to talk to other artists. It really feels like a family by the end of the weekend. Having done four conferences, actually five if you count the one in Valencia, Spain that we did this year, there's people that have come every year that it's like I consider friends now. I see them, and I'm so excited to see them. We hang out.

KEVIN:                     The other thing is, I've been just blown away by the level of artistry across the board. I think a lot of times, as independent artists, we feel like people maybe give us a slightest little, "Oh, they're just independent artists." Man, there was some serious crazy next level stuff I saw at our conference this saw, and I'm always blown away by the artistry, and the level of people that are there, the quality of the music, their commitment, just their heart for what they're doing. It just feels different than any other conference I've been to.

KEVIN:                     It's kind of the sad thing when it's over, especially for me and my team, because we spend all year planning it. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. When it starts actually happening, there's a lot of nerves and tension running, like, "Is this going to go well? We have 1,500 people showing up to a place. Anything could happen." It's just this emotional high, and then by the time we're really able to enjoy it, when the conference is winding down on Sunday afternoon, it feels like, "Oh, man. It's already over."

KEVIN:                     It's such a great experience. The content, we work really hard to make sure that it is useful content for independent artists to help them move their career forward. Every year, I feel like we have some big hits, maybe a few misses, but you learn from it. I feel like also this year, we had a lot of cutting edge information. That's what a lot of artists I heard mention, like, "Man, I didn't even know this stuff existed." Like some of the Facebook advertising stuff Rick was talking about. A lot of people, playlisting is still a new concept for them. We had YouTube was there, Pandora was there, Spotify was there, all there to help independent artists better understand their options on their platforms. It was just the place to be. If you're going to invest a little in your conference ... I mean, in your career, you should make plans to come to it next year in Austin. October ... Or October, I'm sorry, September. No.

CHRIS:                     Is this [crosstalk 00:34:25]?

KEVIN:                     Man, my mind is blown. It's not September. It's August. That's what I meant to say.

CHRIS:                     August, okay.

KEVIN:                     It's been a long week. Not only did I do the conference, Chris, I got to tell you, I like to really stack it deep, and I did a show in Atlanta with my band, Small town Poets, the Wednesday right before I went to Nashville to do the conference. I was spent. By the end of the week, I had no idea what I was doing, and then got hit with a cold at the end. I could barely talk by the end of the conference.

KEVIN:                     August. Yes. August. It's going to be in August again down in Austin. Speaking of Facebook ads, it was you that let me know that Facebook actually has all their advertising people down in Austin, so I'm hoping to get them out to the conference to do-

CHRIS:                     I was just going to say that. I think it's-

KEVIN:                     ... a lot of stuff.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, I think my guy, Paul ... I can't remember who my rep is now, because he just changed, but yeah, that would be rad, dude. I was just going to say Facebook is there, so that'd be totally awesome. Hey, so can people go get tickets now at CD Baby?

KEVIN:                     Not just yet. We should have tickets up very soon. If you're not on our email list, go to our blog, the DIY Musician blog, and sign up on our email list. If you don't have a CD Baby account, even if you're not distributing something right now, you should go sign up for one, because that gets you free access to our Show.co marketing platform, which is amazing. All you got to do is create an account. Just go do that, and then you'll be on our email list, and we'll let you know. We'll have them up in the next couple weeks, the early bird tickets, we'll start selling them. Yeah, it's going to be at the Hilton there right by the convention center.

KEVIN:                     Because it's the live music capital of the world, we're going to try and make more live music opportunities for artists. We'll see what we come up with.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, dude. That is awesome. Dude, you killed this. Thank you so much, man. You provided so much value, and yeah. Thank you for coming on today's podcast. Make sure you go check out Small town Poets, go to CDBaby.com, go get those tickets when they're up, go create an account, get on the email list, because you guys provide so much value and helped thousands and thousands of artists, including me. Thank you so much, man, for being on today's show.

KEVIN:                     Absolutely. Any time.

CHRIS:                     Yeah, dude.

Ep. 98 - How To Promote And Market A New Album EP or Song

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Ep. 97 - How To Have A Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

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Ep. 96 - How To Promote Your Music Online - Music Marketing Strategies Part 4 of 4

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Ep. 95 - How To Promote Your Music Online - Music Marketing Strategies Part 3 of 4

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Ep. 94 - How To Promote Music Online & Music Marketing Strategies Part 2 of 4

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