You no longer need a label to release digital recordings for streaming. Today, any ensemble of any size can take advantage of the way recording and distribution has changed and release directly to streaming platforms.

In this episode, Aubrey is joined by two experts — Mike Warner, Head of Editorial Marketing Partnerships - North America at Believe, and Jamie Freedman, Head of Classical Programming at Pandora — to talk through the play by play (stream by stream?!)

They cover topics including how an ensemble can self-release, how an organization can be empowered to do yourself things a label historically or traditionally would have done and have more control because of it, how the artistic, production, and marketing teams will need to work together, and the nuts and bolts of releasing digital music directly vs going with a distributor.

And if you don't know what all that means or looks like, that's ok too — the whole point of this episode is to learn so you walk away educated and informed. And therefore confident and ready to tackle your next recording project knowing exactly how you'll get maximum ears to listen to it.

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Hi everyone.

I am here today in San Francisco where I just wrapped up two different

back-to-back office hours sessions with.

Both my changing the narrative community members and then the run it like a

business academy participants in the changing the narrative community session.

I wanted to share, we talked about summer goal setting, which

felt relevant to all of us.

You know, things like what's on your mind for this summer?

What intentions do you have before things pick up again in the fall?

And.

What are the big goals you have each of us, and how do we start

to reverse engineer things?

We're doing choices we're making to get there.

So those are good questions for all of us, I think.

And a break between seasons is a natural reflection point.

I think this personally, but research says this too.

Natural breaks stimulate our thinking, our reflecting.

This is exactly why New Year's resolutions are so popular.

Why at the end of a season, like now, sometimes it prompts

reflections or goal setting.

Why when you have a work anniversary, you know you get the idea.

Those are natural times to reflect, do I wanna be or want my organization to

be in the same place a year from now?

If not, what do I want to be different a year from now than today?

And like we spoke about in our group today, then you can start to

reverse engineer, how do I get there?

How do I get from A to B?

So that's what we did a lot of today in those office hours sessions.

I will just say these times with groups of people really fill me up because one of

the things I miss, maybe even the biggest thing I miss from working full-time at

an institution is seeing so many people and colleagues on a regular basis.

So days like today where I get to spend time with lots of folks who are.

Like-minded, forward thinking, asking questions, not leaning on the status quo

in the trenches, working to make their organization in the field stronger.

All of that just really like, it just fills me up and feels

so satisfying and gratifying.

So it's been a good day is what I'm trying to say.

And the good day continues because today we are talking about, Recording streaming

for classical music organizations.

As we know, typically, traditionally only the biggest organizations, orchestras,

ensembles, opera companies used to release recordings, and usually that

was via labels like Sony Classical or.

Deutche grab a phone, but this is yet another way.

The narrative is changing, right?

Some of those organizations now have their own label bringing some of that

work in-house, and today, the point of this whole episode, a label isn't even

necessary at all to produce and release recordings to all the various different

streaming platforms out there, and now in particular that so many of us have

developed Quite the competency, I'd say, of capturing our own recordings.

All those skills.

We learned big time in 2020 and into 2021.

We are gonna walk through how ensembles of any size can use those

skills that you've learned and built, and you can self-release too.

So we're gonna cover topics including the how to of it all.

How does an ensemble self-release?

What are the different steps and things involved, which is to say, how can you

be empowered to do yourselves things?

A label historically or traditionally would do.

And have more control because of it.

And we'll get into also the nuts and bolts of releasing music directly

versus going with a distributor.

All that, we're gonna unpack it.

We are spending our time today on this subject.

With two people who know this space very well, Mike Warner and Jamie Friedman.

They are two people, super knowledgeable and also super passionate about this

space of using digital content, in this case, specifically recordings, to

extend the reach and visibility of the artist, the ensemble, the organization.

I will tell you all about them when I introduce them more fully in a moment.

So let's get to it.

Episode nine starts right now.

Hey everyone.

I'm Aubrey Bergauer and welcome to my podcast.

If we haven't met, I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric,

data obsessed, and for growing revenue.

The arts are my vehicle to make the change I wanna see in this world,

like creating places of belonging.

Pursuing gender and racial equality, developing high performing teams

and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work.

In this season, I'm bringing you conversations with some of my favorite

experts from both inside and outside the arts, all to help build the vibrant

future we know is possible for our institutions and for ourselves as

offstage administrators and leaders.

You are listening to the Offstage mic.

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I am so happy to introduce to you today, Mike Warner and Jamie Friedman.

First, Mike, Mike Warner has lived and breathed.

Almost every aspect of the music industry for over 20 years now.

He is currently head of editorial marketing partnerships North America

at Believe and Believe is one of the world's leading digital music companies.

Their mission is to develop independent artists and labels and the digital world

by providing them the solutions they need to grow their audience at each

stage of their career and development.

He is also responsible for maintaining key relationships with.

Artists, labels and DSPs.

That is called demand side platform, meaning he works closely

with the product engineering, editorial and marketing teams.

So he's sort of the center of the spokes on the wheel for companies

like Amazon Music, Deezer, Pandora, Spotify, all those brands.

And he spends a lot of his time continuing to find ways to empower.

Artists through speaking at conferences, hosting workshops, and via his book

Work Hard Playlist, hard helping artists succeed in the digital age.

He is a strong advocate, as you will hear, for the many tools that are

available to artists and their teams.

And Jamie Friedman also just incredible knowledge to bring to this conversation.

She is the head of classical programming at Pandora.

She also works on catalog and creator services at Pandora.

Meaning Jamie is dedicated to empowering creation and discovery through

community engagement, creator support.

That means trying to engage better.

And more artists and fans.

This role of catalog and creator services also includes client

success, project and team management.

She is passionate about strengthening the relationship between musicians and their

fans, which is exactly what we want to do at our organizations and our ensembles.

Strengthen the relationship between musicians and their fans at Pandora.

She has worked on.

All kinds of artists and creator tools led trainings on how to use

those tools and programmed a lot of classical music along the way.

I hope you're detecting a theme coming through between Mike and Jamie and

these bio points, which is, these two are all about the creator, the

artist, the ensemble, the organization, producing and distributing their

work in order to grow more fans.

Raise their visibility and use their digital content again,

in this case, that's recordings specifically we're talking about today.

Use their digital content to extend their brand and reach.

Welcome, Mike and Jamie.

I am so glad to be doing this with you.

Thanks so much for having me.

This is such a cool, like I kind of feel like my two worlds coming

together, so I'm really honored to be here and be talking to all these folks.

Love it.

Love it.

All right.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome

man.

Okay, so let's hit it cuz I have a lot of questions.

Okay.

So this first question is for both of you.

Can you just talk through the disruption and evolution to the music industry?

I know that is probably a big question, but just to make sure we're all starting

on the same sort of baseline here.

In that, not just the move from like CDs to digital.

That's not exactly what I mean by this question.

I also mean, can you talk about artist compensation models and like how can

artists make money only if they have a gigantic following or is that not true?

How is this working?

So Jamie, I wanna start with you on this, and then Mike, can you chime in as well?

I guess

it's not all about ticket sales anymore, even though

it kind of is again, I don't know.

Same, more please.

Right.

Keep going.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

Rewind like a hundred years ago, it was all about playing live music, right?

Because there was no way to hear music without the actual musician there.

And then you have like a hundred years of selling these physical products of this

like disc, or a tape or a smaller disc, or even a file full of ones and zeros,

which I'll call an mp3 buying those.

And now that's not even a thing anymore.

And even though people made a lot of money off of that and obviously still ticket

sales and now it's sort of back what seems to ticket sales, and then maybe you can

make some extra money on the streaming platforms, but then also trying to figure

out how to use those streaming platforms.

To get butts in seats.

I don't know.

I don't know if that answers the question.

Yeah.

Ok, Mike, to say too, Jamie, you're definitely

capturing my thoughts on this, which is it's not one or the other.

Streaming is a vehicle or digital releases are a vehicle to drive people to our

in-person performances or, anyways.

But I don't wanna, Mike, I want you to go, cause I know you have opinions

on this, so you weigh in, please.

Thank you for being such a great sport and going first, Jamie.

I was like, I should be ready, but I'm not ready.

Whatever Jamie says.

I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take some pieces from that and

add onto it.

So I was totally also just biting off of something that Mick Jagger

said and just like spinning it towards the classical world.

So that did not totally just come from my brain.

No.

You know, it's interesting.

People look at streaming a number of different ways.

Some people look at it and they go, my goal isn't to make money with streaming.

My goal is to reach more fans and to grow my fan base.

And if I make a, a few bucks in the process, great.

And they're the ones that I find are really succeeding because they're

not looking at it at the pay rate.

And that's a whole nother conversation about.

How people feel about how much they get paid from it.

But I look at it and I go, it's another place where people can discover you.

You know, instead of thinking that it's those fans that previously would buy

CDs and vinyl and t-shirts, they're still doing that, but this is other

people that may not have discovered you before and heard your music.

And that's how I look at streaming.

And of course, it is an additional source of income, but for most

people, let's be honest, it's not the primary source of income, it's

just another source of income.

So I see having your music on a streaming platform as important as

having a website and an email list and you know, being on social media.

You know, you want your music to be available everywhere.

Yeah.

That, that's kind of what just came to mind after Jamie said that.

I'm like, okay, I've gotta add that bit.

Because I don't want people to think that you just focus all your time and attention

on streaming and then you're set.

It's a piece of the puzzle.

I totally agree.

It's part of a broader marketing strategy.

Discovery.

You said all of these things are important to us as ensembles.

We want to build fans.

We, which in turn to us, mean audiences eventually.

So I, I like both of your answers there.

Okay, Mike, here's a question for you.

Walk us through the top platforms.

True or false?

Spotify is seen as the big fish, but these other platforms still matter.

So can you kind of put that all together for us and talk us through that?

Yeah, definitely.

Spotify was one of the first and one of the first to get big.

And it became as common as almost people saying, oh, I'll just Google that.

You know, it was like, here's a link.

And they would send a Spotify link.

And yes, Spotify is one of the big platforms, but the reality is

there's a number of platforms out there that adjusted large, if not

larger, in specific countries as well.

So, you know, there's platforms like Diesel.

Which is based outta France.

There's Ami, which is in the Middle East.

There's Geo Saban, which is in India.

There's boom play, which comes out of Africa.

And I know Africa's a continent, not a country before anyone chimes in there.

But you know, all of these platforms, a lot of them are actually have

larger subscriber bases because they've been around longer.

So, you know, while everyone will say, oh, Everyone knows Spotify.

Spotify is in a large amount of countries.

That's true.

And they may have the largest subscriber numbers because of that, but there's

other platforms in specific countries.

I mean, I won't quite Pandora numbers in front of Jamie, but Pandora is extremely,

extremely popular in the US still.

And if we were looking at, the US alone is right up there.

Pandora is only available in the US right now.

So it would make sense.

Yeah, so the short answer is yes, Spotify is one of those platforms,

but it's not the only one and it's not the be all and end all, and

people will listen where they want

to listen.

Thank you.

I appreciate you saying that.

If I could summarize, it's that there are multiple platforms and

there are multiple ways available to us to get our music out there.

So Jamie, I wanna turn to you and talk more specifically

about the tools available to us.

This is an area where you're so knowledgeable, so what are the different

tools provided by streaming platforms?

Do different platforms offer different tools that are

strengths that are different?

Or, or is there.

Commonality, orchestra, administrators, producers,

artistic teams, marketing teams.

Like what do, what do we need to know?

I'll focus on the stuff that I know is, at least for Pandora

based, Mike can definitely speak more towards the broader streaming world tools.

That's his specialty.

But from a, from my point of view, if you're wanting to get something

out there to the DSPs, all the different DSPs, and you're gonna

have to work with a distributor.

Most likely, or label if you're lucky to have one and just

say yes to all of the things.

Say yes to Pandora, say yes to Deezer.

Check all those boxes.

Make sure you're really paying attention to.

All of the options that you have and then try to figure out

which ones you want to focus on.

Cuz there are a lot, I know that with Pandora it's not necessarily the priority

that everyone has, but once you get into it, there are a lot of opportunities

that we have with Pandora and streaming or Pandora and classical, sorry.

Um, you also wanna make sure you pay attention to metadata.

I actually was texting Mike last week kind of freaking out about this cuz it's kind

of hard to talk about because metadata.

With classical music, it's very complicated and you don't

wanna pay attention to that.

We can't get into it too much.

A lot of the DSPs were not built for classical music.

They weren't necessarily built to have movements within the.

Pieces that have different parts with composers and artists and collaborations.

Usually it's band, track, title, album, you know, so more basic things like that.

So there are different ways to think about it and get into the tools.

So like for Pandora for instance, we can, you can feature a track, you can

talk about a track before it plays, which is an artist audio message.

You can build playlists.

And you can promote shows and you can target artists geographically.

So if you are an orchestra based in Detroit, for instance,

you can market to Detroit.

We get into like hours of conversation expanding what I just said.

But Mike, I don't know if you can definitely speak to the tools

for other platforms as well.

Better than I can.

I have spent a lot of time on Pandora's artist

marketing platform known as amp.

So you know, I know firsthand with my own music.

How easy it is to navigate and some of those features that you mentioned.

You know, there's no cost.

It's provided directly from Pandora.

It's only gonna benefit you and your reach and your music.

Hearing more people on Pandora and Jamie mentioned featured tracks, it is

the easiest way to get more listeners.

Out of any of the platforms that we're probably gonna talk about today.

Um, feature track essentially lets you feature, and Jamie, correct me

if I get this wrong, up to six tracks per year, eight weeks per track.

So basically 48 weeks out of the year, you can have a track featured

on Pandora that's getting pushed.

Through their radio programming to more listeners to get feedback from them.

And every listen is a stream.

So I've done this with songs, and I'll be honest, sometimes at the

end of it, there's a few hundred extra streams, sometimes there's

thousands, sometimes there's more.

But by filling out that form, I'm getting those extra streams I wouldn't

have gotten otherwise and getting that feedback and I have seen it lead

to other programming in the future.

Whether it was a coincidence or not, I don't know, but I definitely

got to see those stream numbers come from filling out that form.

It's a very short form.

Choose the song.

Choose the release, choose the dates, click that button, and

usually the next day you'll get an email if you set it to start.

And

that's it.

Correct.

Pandora's not available in Germany, but AMP is.

So if you are an artist anywhere outside of the United or anywhere in

the world, you can use AMP and you can market to American platforms.

Okay.

We're gonna have to come back to metadata later, I think in the q

and a, because I know it's worth a little bit of more of our time.

But right now as we're going through this, I wanna get into

more of the nuts and bolts of.

Typically, traditionally only bigger orchestras, bigger

organizations, release recordings.

We now know, you all know that this is not the only way.

That's how the narrative has changed.

So let's talk about it.

How could smaller ensembles release money?

Money.

Money is always the problem.

How much does it cost?

How do we do this in a more cost effective way?

I don't know both, either one of you who wants to start.

How do we get into that?

What are the controls we have that a label used to have?

Like all of those sort of things.

If you can get into that.

I mean,

if you have the ability to make a recording, you can release it.

It's as basic as that.

I mean, I'm an choir, small women's choir out of San Francisco, and my director

just decided to get on band camp.

But we do have recordings available.

And we just made recordings and put them on band camp, you know,

so there's, as long as you can make a recording, you can do it.

I mean, you know, people making recordings in their bedrooms.

So, I mean, obviously recording equipment is a whole other thing

and having good recording equipment, although I did just hear a recording

from a tenor and a soprano out of, oh gosh, are they in Indiana?

They're recorded art duets from all female artists, and their recordings are not.

You know, necessarily what you would hear from Decca or something like that.

But they're great.

You know, you can tell they found a room.

It sounded good, it had good acoustics, and they recorded it.

She said they busted out like it was like 16 tracks and three days,

and she was saying, yeah, we were really tired by the end of it.

And some of them aren't, you know, so it's doable.

If you can make a recording, you can get it out there.

Yes.

I so appreciate you saying that and so many ensembles we're

recording for archival purposes.

And to me, I know everybody, Mike, I wanna hear you to say, but I just

gotta get on the soapbox real fast.

At the orchestra I used to run, we would record all of these

things for archival purposes.

And confession, we didn't release, I think over the course of the

history of the ensemble released one or two as recordings, and it's

like why We have this in the can.

So for a lot of us, at least, that is true.

As you said, Jamie, if you can record, you can release, but Okay.

Mike, you're up.

Say more about this whole theme we're on right now.

Yeah.

You know, just adding onto that, I mean, look at all of those recordings

that already exist that maybe have been made available on cd, made

available in other formats before that.

With the right permission, you could go and make them available to more people.

You know, there's this whole thing about, oh, we get more money from

CDs, we get more money from vinyl.

I totally get that.

But the reality is a lot of people will purchase that CD

purchase that that record.

And then keep it as a piece of art because they no longer

have a CD player in their car.

They no longer have a record player in the room where they spend

most of the time in their house.

And what are they going to do?

They're going to put it on the shelf, maybe display it proudly on the wall, and

then they're going to stream your music.

So, It's another place to make it available.

And I would say, look to that catalog.

Look to what you've already done that isn't available yet,

and make that available first.

You know, as for the costs, you know, I certainly can't answer for

everyone, and I know everyone has different circumstances, but I have

found a number of nonprofit studios.

There's one here in San Diego where you go in and.

If you can spare some dollars to donate towards the studio

to keep it running, great.

If you can't, they'll still help you out.

If you need an engineer, they will even get you an engineer and you

can go in there and you can record.

And I'm sure this isn't the only studio in the United States and

in other parts of the world.

I've heard of many others like this, and.

So just ask, just search cuz there are ways that you'll be able to

record regardless of the budget.

And there are ways that you can distribute.

And once again, distribution doesn't cost a lot of money.

There's distributors out there that charge anywhere from $26 per year and up.

And then there's distributors that will take the percentage

instead of charging any fees.

Well, instead of charging any ongoing subscription or costs, they'll take

10% or 15% or things like that.

So, You know, I sort of want to address a few of those because I always hear

that cost is a concern and I totally hear that, but I'm trying to let you

know that there are other ways that you can still record, produce, release,

and get it out there, and hopefully there's an option for every budget.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Can you both say more about what did a label used to do versus how that is

in many cases not necessary anymore, or how we can take that on ourselves?

I mean, the label used to do everything.

I mean, but they also take all the money.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

There is any, so now you might have a label, but they won't

necessarily do everything.

Just depends what sort of agreement you have.

What kind of label?

I mean, people don't even need managers anymore.

But that means that the artist might be stuck doing more, basically.

Now, if you're an artist, you can do all the things yourself, or you can outsource

that stuff that it might cost some money and you have to have connections.

Mm-hmm.

So it's really everything in between.

I mean, it's a struggle.

Definitely.

I mean, we have singer songwriters.

Who are, you know, just them and their guitar and they're trying

to figure it out, you know, so I totally understand that.

With classical ensembles, with many people, it's a challenge for sure.

You know, trying to figure out how to manage all this, which

is why record labels used to do it all, and they still do.

Especially the big ones.

Yeah, and I think this is also where classical music ensembles,

if you have any kind of administrative staff, you have a built in team or person.

If it's a small organization that this administrative work, we have the

capabilities in house is what I'm saying.

I am not saying we're not busy and not overworked and don't wanna

add one more thing to our plates.

That's not, you know, that of course is the reality of working in an arts

management role, but, I do think, to your point, Jamie, it's not just like

we're talking about ensembles here.

It's not just falling on the shoulders of the artists only.

And I think that's an asset we have that we can leverage that not every artist has.

So I think that's in our corner.

Can you both talk more about.

Really the process for releasing according, is it as simple as

you go to Pandora and upload and then fill in the metadata fields?

Like is there more for an organization who hasn't done this ever?

What's the step-by-step?

So

assuming that you're doing this by yourself, you're

going to need a distributor now.

A distributor.

There's a number of different ones out there to put some names out there.

There's Distro Kid, cd, baby, TuneCore ing Grooves, Vidia, the list goes on.

They all do very much the same thing.

Some will charge you a yearly fee or a monthly fee to be

able to upload your music.

Some will charge you a fee per release to upload your music, and some will

take, as mentioned before, a percentage.

Kind of like a record label, but nowhere near as higher percentage.

Of course.

So these distributors, what it would normally look like is there would

be a form that you would fill out.

You would add the artwork, you would add all the songs, all the files, the

audio files, and you would plug in all of the correct information, metadata,

if you will, that will travel with that release throughout all of these platforms.

Once you submit that release, you've set a release date, that's when it's

going to start to appear on platforms.

Now, one thing I just wanted to add in here, actually two things.

The first is you can still do pre-orders the same way you would

with a physical cd going into a a music store and placing an order.

Pre-orders still exist on iTunes.

iTunes does still exist.

It's in Apple Music.

It's a setting.

If it's turned off, you can turn it back on and amazon.com where

you can purchase MP3 files.

They still allow pre-orders as well.

And then there's a number of other stores out there like Cobas

and stores like that as well.

The other side of that is when you are filling out this form,

uploading this release, ready to put it out to the world, you can set

what's called a preview start time.

Now, this is important for things like social media such as TikTok and

platforms like that because there is actually a lot of classical music.

That is being utilized in social media on things such as TikTok.

By setting this preview start time, you're setting the exact moment in the

song where you would like it to start.

When people create content or videos using your music and including it, and

you do get paid for that as well, it is, it does count as a stream similar

to other music services, and not only that, but it's going to put your

music in front of a larger audience.

Once you've done that, that's when the platforms start to receive it,

such as Pandora, and then I'll.

Hand it over to Jamie.

Yeah, so at Pandora you have ways to d i y and kind of

market your music across the platform.

Other DSPs, you know, you can pitch your tracks to playlist listers

and other channels, but on Pandora you can do it your yourself.

Um, you can build playlists, you know, like classical for reading class,

symphonic, you know, anything like that.

You can pick a track every eight weeks and feature it.

You can build little mini radio show or mini podcasts.

To talk about the music and I would say, I was thinking about the kinds of

recordings that I'm looking for, and it's almost gotten to the point where like,

I don't need another Beethoven's fifth.

I wanna hear the stuff that people don't necessarily know.

Because what happens is we've got a lot of recordings of Beethoven stents

at Moonlight Sonata and the big ones, and those do really, really well.

But you're battling against people like Arthur Rubenstein, you know, and

those tracks have been making a big, so pick something that's you like, that

you enjoy playing, you wanna put out in the world, but maybe not something

that's, Quite as is well known, but still something that people wanna listen to

and also has to be said with classical is that it has to be something that

people wanna put on in the background.

That is what classical music is on A lot of these platforms, especially Pandora,

which is we call a lean back, which is people just put it on and leave it on

for 10 hours and like that is no joke.

So and say, you know, you have the data, you have the stats.

I know, you know.

Yeah.

I do hear stuff that's newer.

I don't wanna say more difficult to listen to, but like it's definitely a

very specific kind of group of people who, electronic classical music, things with a

lot of percussion, like just percussion, you know what I'm talking about?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Anything Sternberg and after, so just think about that too, right now, really

into female composers of from all eras.

Things like that.

So yeah, I, I'm always looking for new things, new tracks

that we don't necessarily have spinning really well already and

we've got a lot to choose from.

Cuz there's how many versions of Moonlight Sonata out there?

So,

Yeah.

I so appreciate you saying all of that because it actually, what you're saying,

the advice you're giving on how to stand out in the marketplace, how to

differentiate from everybody else who's releasing even within classical music is

to, it matches the broader conversation we're having with repertoire right now.

So people, you're saying, you know, do something new, do something different.

And that's exactly what we're doing is our repertoire is being pushed forward.

We are.

Playing more and more composers that were historically underrepresented

or marginalized, but that music is good and that music is in

the style of what you're saying.

It's romantic or 18th century or you know, classical.

So that matches what you're saying is how to stand out.

Of course, so much new music being commissioned today too.

But I hear your advice on if.

You were saying, if you know your audience, basically, if this is

a place where a lot of people are listening for background, then great.

That's a, that is Intel for us to know as organizations releasing.

Yeah.

So first thing I want us to talk about is to come back to this

cost structure, revenue structure.

The challenge with professional orchestras, professional meaning

unionized orchestras, is that this has to do with our union agreements, and

there's a national agreement governing this for most of us, at least in the us.

The integrated media agreement, and what that means is the cost

structure for our musicians can be prohibitively expensive, let's be blunt.

So what this means is that for, I would say most artists, not classical music

artists, most artists of other genres, it's kind of like what we've already said.

You know, if you can record, you can release.

For professional unionized orchestras.

The challenge we face with our union agreements is that we have to pay

our musicians a fee just to release.

So already these costs are going up just by nature of submitting a recording.

And I will say this is a challenge for our industry.

I think this is something we need to work toward better relationships

with our musicians so that we can reframe the conversation.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say a few words and then Mike and Jamie, if you wanna

respond to this or if you have additional thoughts, even different thoughts.

I wanna hear it.

My take on all of this is, as I just said, I think we have work to do on

our agreements with our musicians.

This is a big, big area where if it's cost prohibitive, we can't market,

which is, that goes right back to the top of the stream when both of you

were saying this is really, in many ways about marketing, it's discovery.

It's how do we get our ensemble out there, heard by more people in the world.

So when we talk about the narrative is changing, that's part of the paradigm

shift, especially for this conversation, is that it's not, we're streaming to

make a ton of money we're streaming as part of a broader marketing strategy.

Like I said, that's my take on it.

But Mike or Jamie, if you have additional thoughts or even

different thoughts, that's okay.

I'd love to hear it.

Pandora has a tool called the Artist Audio Message, and what that

allows you to do is before a track plays, you can say, Hey, this, you're about to

hear a track from the London Symphony.

Check out our website.

You can send people to the website.

You can say, let's say the London Symphony's doing a US tour.

I don't know.

And you can say, Hey Detroit, we're gonna be playing.

At the University of Michigan as part of the U M S series, tap your

screen if you wanna see tickets.

So it is a way to turn streams into money.

Let's say you've got a website that has things you can pay for, you know, like

archival streams, anything else that you want people to see, merch, whatever.

So there's a way to do that.

So it's not just putting money into streaming.

You can also figure out ways to.

Send people through for discovery and then sell them things like

tickets in merch or whatever.

Yeah, that's gold, Jamie.

It just adds onto what we said before, which is instead of looking streaming,

at streaming as, oh, we make fractions of as cent from these streams.

Look at it as we've reached X amount of people this week with our music

and of those, this many people saw the message, went to the website and we sold

some tickets, we sold some merchandise.

We, we, we sold some physical, you know, releases as well.

So, you know, I think that's really important.

And you know, I.

Definitely can't talk to the challenge of.

Multiple people being involved in one piece of music and how difficult

that is to get everyone on board to actually go ahead and release that.

Um, you know, the most I've worked on is, is a song with four people total included.

And it was just 25% each.

It was easy.

So I couldn't imagine when we're talking maybe 15, 20 people involved

what that would like 80 people,

90 people.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

That's so honest.

That's so real.

I would say, I mean, everything you guys are saying is true though.

That's why I brought you on here because you are subject

matter experts in this area.

This particular challenge for classical music, I mean, that's another reason

why I want us to have this conversation is because this is, if we can learn

from what's working for other genres, other artists, We really need to partner

with our artists in a different way so that it's not so cost prohibitive.

And that takes a lot of trust building with our musicians for them to understand

and, and for us to mutually understand that this is a shift in strategy.

40 years ago, we released music to make money as a revenue stream in 2022.

It's just not the goal.

The goal is marketing.

The goal is reaching more people than we ever could before.

Otherwise, the goal is, as you all said, how do we get those

people to click on the website?

How are we being strategic with that message that plays before the stream

begins so that we're telling them the call to action is, come see us in person,

or if they don't live in our market.

Buy the t-shirt or whatever, you know, these are also tools

available to us in 2022 that did not exist, you know, 10, 20 years ago.

So I can't underscore this as part of the shift enough.

It's so critical that we understand collectively this is part of

how the narrative is changing.

Okay, we are running at a time, but very quickly I said we'd come back to metadata.

So are there any quick tips you all have of like, do this, don't do this.

Be careful with.

Collaborations and be careful how when you're entering the

different fields, just be aware of, maybe just look and see how other DSPs are doing

it and what makes sense, what doesn't.

The problems that we have at Pandora is that we get these collaboration accounts.

Let's say it's the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas,

and then there'll be another one that says the San Francisco Symphony.

That's gonna be two different artists.

We've figured out a way on Pandora at least, so that they all end up on the

San Francisco Symphony artist page.

But then when you go and try to claim your account so you can get

artists access to the marketing tools and get access to your data, it's

gonna be two different accounts.

So you can only imagine what it happens is with you have, you know, like a

featured soloist or if you wanna say Mozart and you wanna do all these things.

So it gets confusing.

So I would just say, just make it San Francisco Symphony.

And then in the track you can say, featuring Lara Downs.

And also be careful of the track title.

Don't just say like, Two agio, because when you're looking at it

on streaming, you're gonna be like, Agio, second movement of what?

So you gotta look at the naming conventions.

Everyone's doing it differently because there's no standard way of doing

it because it's a little confusing.

So I think it's better, at least from my standpoint, to get as much

of the information in the track name.

And it's a better listening experience too.

So if like someone's listening to a playlist and they're

like, what's this track?

I really like this.

They can just look at it and say, oh.

It's the GIO by William Grant still from this movement, and that's changing too.

I've, it's starting to, as the DSPs and everyone's trying to figure

out how to get all this information to a way that is packaged easily.

Just know that there are, it is complicated because it's

not built for classical music.

So just maybe see how other folks are doing it and how it

makes sense for whatever you're

releasing.

That's a good pro tip.

Put as much as possible on the track name.

I mean, that right there is a really good, that's a little gem, so it

might

get really long, but like, I don't know, it just, it'll

just scroll right by scroll, you know?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Mike, any other pro tips you wanna help us with?

I would definitely say when you are setting that

release up, Including all of this information is extremely important.

Once it gets out, it's a lot more work to go and correct it.

Like Jamie just mentioned this, you know, make it easier for people to find

that music on all of these platforms, but you know, you can add things.

Most distributors will allow you to add genre sub-genres as well, and

multiple genres, which means that.

When people go to that shopfront in iTunes or amazon.com or even on streaming

platforms, if they highlight new releases, you're going in the right place.

You're reaching the right audience.

Beyond that, you can add songwriters and other things.

With songwriters, it's getting to the point where they are

getting their own pages on all of these platforms now as well.

So, Someone that writes the music for other artists, whether it's lyrics,

whether, whether it's composition, they're getting their own place to

showcase everything that they've created and worked on as well.

So it is going to get very, very messy if people aren't providing the

correct information at that time.

And it benefits you because you reach the right people.

It benefits them because they get the right music delivered to them

and they can find you easier.

And it benefits people like Jamie, who love hearing the music, but don't

wanna spend all day correcting artist associations and things like that.

iTunes as a style guide, which I did not know, which is great.

If iTunes is doing it a certain way, then that's a good marker.

Well, we are definitely coming to the end of our time.

Mike and Jamie, you've been so generous with your time and expertise, wisdom.

Thank you so much for just coming and having this conversation.

And with that, I think we're gonna call it a wrap.

Have a good one, everybody.

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See you next time on the Offstage Mic.

The offstage mic was produced by me, Aubrey Bergauer.

And edited by Novo Music, a studio of all women, audio engineers and musicians.

The narrative is changing for arts and culture, and I'm so glad

you're here to be a part of it.

This is a production of changing the narrative.