Thinking about promoting,
one thing somebody told me once that was super powerful,
and it was that a song
only dies when you stop talking about it.
You think about a Kate Bush moment or something,
to where it's like, it might not be your newest song
that you need to focus on paying attention
to your fans, paying attention at your shows,
whose faces light up when you're playing which record.
But talking about promotion and some of the things
you've come in to counter with
or some of the conversations that you've had with artists.
Let's talk about that.
Man, I love the Kate Bush moments so much.
There are songs that are really evergreen.
And some of it's about timing. Some of it is luck.
That goes back to writing something that you love
and that you're really proud of.
I think that you're talking about having an open, listening spirit
when you're talking about where playing at the shows,
what's connecting, or looking at the analytics
and the data you're getting back of what songs are hitting
with people that are listening.
And that even plays into knowing what cities.
That data that's available to us now
through Apple is like, "You know what?
I think I'm going to play two nights in New York instead of one,"
that being a really helpful aspect with promoters.
Super important.
Those kinds of things really change the landscape of artistry.
And I don't know.
It's exciting to me to think about all the things that we have at our disposal,
and how it changes the way that we create and the way that we connect.
Yeah, you're totally right talking about the data.
And that's our measure and our analytics platform on Apple Music for Artists.
Super powerful, and I can't tell you how many times
I've had conversations with artists who either discovered
that one of their songs was going through the roof from a Shazam
from a sync that they didn't know that they placed.
Because I'm sure you all are sync masters.
But I've done it to where it's like six months ago, agreed on a sync thing.
All of a sudden, you don't realize the show got postponed,
or pushed back, and goes up.
And it's not like, "You're live now, or the episode's airing."
You'd have to fight to try to get that information.
Going into your analytics, seeing a spike, and knowing like, "Oh, wait.
Oh, wow," and some bands were like,
"Yeah, what is happening with this song?"
Now, you want to put that in your set list.
Now you maybe want to get some merch with some of those lyrics
on a shirt because that popularity of that song.
And even if it's a catalog song, and you're looking like,
"Wait, this old song's doing good.
There must be something, whether it's in social media space,
or somebody having a conversation that resonates
with the topic of that record,"
and to take action on that data using that data.
Because I think there's a gift and a curse when we talk about the conversation
about data and artists who feel that don't have enough data.
"I'm not data centric, my numbers aren't crazy,
I feel left out of that conversation."
But the reality is, is that's not the whole story.
But looking at your data, whatever you have available,
you're going to know the demographics of who your fans are.
Yeah, age ranges. You have location.
You talked about touring, what cities are reacting
so that if you are packing up a van,
and you're a band, you're like, "Okay, we're going to hit New York.
It looks like we got a little bubble in New Jersey too, Connecticut.
Like we're going to drive up and down."
And you can make it a more focused approach using that data,
how little or how much you have.
Promotion's a conversation, somebody told me once.
It's like a conversation.
Like we're doing right now, we're bouncing off each other.
I'm listening to you and I'm going, "I never thought about it like that."
That data is the exact same stuff.
It's a great tool.
And the other thing that happens in conversations is,
you're going to always try and be authentic.
I'm going to be the most authentic because I want you to like me.
Right.
But you could just as easily, I could sit here and tell you
a bunch of BS that isn't true.
People see right through that stuff.
So between all these tools,
the one thing I figured out is, you just got to be yourself.
And you can't quit the conversation.
-The conversation has to keep going. -Fire emojis in the chat, please.
It's like, you have to keep the conversation going.
My wife just released a brand-new remix of a new song of hers a couple days ago.
And she had this idea.
She's a fiddle player.
And she goes, "I want to be singing my song
and playing fiddle while riding a horse around a circle."
She goes, "Is that stupid?" And I said,
"Is it you? If you fall off, what's the worst-case scenario?"
She goes, "Is that stupid?" I said,
"You're a fiddle player-singer who rides horses.
And you're making fun of yourself a bit. I think it's awesome."
Blows up online before her because she's just being herself.
They say, "Take what you do seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously."
That's what she did.
In Creative Studios Los Angeles, I had a conversation with Zane.
And he was telling the students that,
"Be the best you because everybody else is taken."
There's a lot of people who feel the way that I do,
who like pins on their jacket like I do.
And the moment you find your tribe,
that's who your fans are.
And you might be surprised, using the data, who your tribe is.
And you're constantly surprised by that.
And it's going to change too.
As you change, and you evolve, and you grow,
those people are most likely going to change and evolve with you.
And you might lose a few, but you'll gain a few.
-Yeah, I've experienced that. -Have you?
Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.
And you can't control it.
All you can do, like you said, is keep the conversation going,
show up, and be yourself,
and just keep being creative,
keep being authentically creative
to the way of who you are and how you create.
There's only one you.
Yeah, that authenticity, I think,
is really the key kernel to that.
And I think, like Nick said, your fans
will see through if you try to do something
that isn't authentically to you.
When you're promoting and performing, they see that.
And you feel that.
It's hard to be somebody else.
I think we've all tried that at one point.
I don't know. Any time I've tried to chase cool, I've always missed.
But if I write something I really love
or that I feel like tells the truth to where I am,
or helping someone else because I write a lot for other artists too,
anything that's going to help tell
my truth or someone else's truth, that tends to always have
more roots to it, and be able to grow more.
When you get into this mode of chasing something,
you're going to become exhausted.
You probably won't end up being proud of the music.
Even if you have success, at some point, you're going to be like,
"Man, I don't even like doing this."
-And we've all done that. -Yeah.
And so it starts in that creative process.
All you can go, when you write a song from one line to the next, "Do I feel it?
Am I excited about it?" And then just follow that,
and carry it on out through the rest of the process.
-That's great advice. -It is.
And Willie Jones, who joined us yesterday live in our Nashville store,
was talking with the students that are on this Creative Studios track,
talking about Spatial Audio.
He mentioned a few things about that.
He's just, "Take care of yourself internally
as you're starting to think about your music and your career path.
And make sure you honor and nurture yourself."
And that should have been on mute.
Honor and nurture yourself as you transition
into who you're becoming as an artist.
Because as you're starting to look at artistry
as your goal, as your career, as a mindset,
we've all learned these trial by fire.
But the more that you can get
that authenticity into you as you embark,
the less of those mistakes that leave scars on your art and on yourself
as you move forward.
And what we're all saying here,
and that we're trying to probably impart on somebody else is
we've all learned that lesson the hard way.
We've all chased tails.
We've all chased a target, like you said, at some point.
And if anybody can hear anything
out of this particular part of the conversation is that…
Man, you don't have to necessarily do that.
You are you.
You're your best version of you, like was just said.
Stick to it. And don't try and chase.
And it might take a little longer.
And it might. But you'll get there.
There is no cheat code. There are no shortcuts.
If you want to be an artist with a long career,
like all of the people that we love and adore their work,
that have been around for decades plus,
that is, you make a commitment to be yourself,
and for people to follow that and love that.
Or guess what? Maybe my music's not for you.
Maybe my artistry isn't for you.
Use the cover song analogy for a second.
How many cover songs come out a year that actually blow up?
Not a ton right? Why is that?
The first one that comes to mind is the Lauren Alaina,
Chris Lane, "Dancin' In the Moonlight" song right now.
So that's blowing up right now.
And the reason is that it's a really, really cool version.
They weren't trying to cop the original.
They weren't trying to do anything. They went in, "Let's have fun with this."
They got onto something magical.
So they did somebody else's thing, but they put themselves in it,
and they recreated something that was already done
in a way that was different.
I think that's a cool analogy for the cover song thing.
Even when it's already been done,
in order for it to break through, you got to inject
some sort of uniqueness, your authenticity into it.