Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #40: The Release Roadmap: Steps to Successfully Launch Your Music with Bree Noble

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 40

Interviewee: Bree Noble

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast. 

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Jason: Welcome to the podcast today. My special guest is my friend, Bree Noble. You’ve actually been on the podcast before, and she just came out with a tool that really caught my eye, drew me in, and I thought, Oh, my gosh, people need to know about this. It covers one of the questions that I hear people ask more than ever as new artists when they’re doing a release or doing an album, and they don’t know what they should do to release that album. Bree’s got this really cool service that they put together that I wanted to talk about.

Bree, you’ve been in the music business for a long time. I know you host a podcast and done a lot of really cool things with women musicians and entrepreneurs, so welcome back.

Bree: Thank you. I’m excited to be here for the second time.

Jason: Right. You’re my first second guest.

Bree: I was going to ask that. That’s so cool. That’s a feather in my cap, I guess.

Jason: Absolutely. Let’s really dive in. I think as we were talking about how we’d go with the show, I know a lot of people have questions about when they release an album, what should they do? There’s a lot of mistakes that I think most musicians make when they do release, whether it’s a single or an album. Most of us probably aren’t even aware of those mistakes. Maybe let’s start talking a little bit about how you end up wanting to fix this problem in the first place?

Bree: Well, as most people do, I heard a lot of questions from my students. At that point, I had my female musician academy, and we ended up talking about this a lot. Then it was a natural fit. I was already working on this, and then the pandemic happened, and everybody was releasing music because they couldn’t perform live. So not only were they releasing music that they already had been working on and then just decided to release it because they couldn’t perform and that was the way they could connect with their fans but also there’s people writing a ton of music during pandemic because they were locked in and a lot of them took songwriting classes online or got into groups and wrote songs or just did it on their own and then they’re like, well, what do I do with all these songs? I can’t perform them live and so, people were really focusing on releasing. I’d say for 2020 and 2021, there were just a ton of people releasing music and trying to learn how to do that, especially people that had never really done it before, at least digitally. There are many people that had released CDs over the years, and then they’d never really gotten into the digital space. That’s where I started helping people to figure out how to release their albums, EPs, or singles.

Jason: Well, the sad thing is with all that music, especially when you’re new, you release that song and you share it with some friends and family and you maybe get a few dozen people that randomly came across your Facebook post or Instagram, whatever it might be and then those songs end up in that digital graveyard and never see the light of day, really, which I think it’s almost a similar problem that you had as an artist when you printed a thousand CDs and you sold 18 of them and then the rest of them sat in your basement and you feel bad and depressed and you’re like, Why should I even do this again? I’ve seen a lot of artists that quit because nobody found their music or listened to it.

Bree: Yeah, it’s so true. When I started talking to artists about this stuff, not necessarily about releasing music, but just helping artists in general, that was 2015 and back then, I was still talking about, like you said, the boxes of CDs in your garage. When I would say that everybody was like, Oh, my gosh, that’s me. You know what I mean? I totally have that. Now, we don’t have that as much but it’s like you said, the digital graveyard, or I meet people that have written hundreds of songs and never released any of them because they just felt freaked out about the process. They didn’t want to do it wrong. They were afraid that people were going to steal their music, all the things.

Jason: I just had a lady today asking about copyright. Do I need to hire a copyright attorney? She says I can’t afford a copyright attorney. My advice for what she was doing was just doing public domain songs that were well over 100 years old. She’s like, do I need to register with copyright? Just put it out there.

Bree: Yeah. I mean, if you’re doing public domain, you could register your master if you want to. If you’re like recording masters, on the copyright side, there’s the written form, the song itself, which is the music and lyrics or melody and lyrics and then it’s the master side. As indie artists, most of us own both of those and you could certainly register the masters if you want to but it’s probably less of a big deal than it is for someone who’s written an original work.

Jason: I think you spend almost as much registering something with the patent office or copyright office than maybe even make back in the first year.

Bree: That’s the thing so it just depends. If you talk to a lawyer, of course, they will say, yes, you should always get your copyright but it’s like, okay, but if I’m going to make this many cents every time, you know what I mean? It’s a weighing thing and it’s how scared I am. Some people are just really freaked out about their intellectual property. If that’s just going to bug you, then you really need to get your copyright. If not, I talk to people that do sync licensing all the time that don’t copyright. They only copyright once their song gets sync placed.

Jason: I’ll bet there’s several people that don’t even bother to do that when they get the sync placement. I think if you really had to go to court over something, the fact that you have something published out in the world and proof that whether that sync used it or whether… I think really you just need to show that it was available and created on whatever date it was. I can’t imagine it’s super hard to find those types of dates on Spotify or whatever.

Bree: Yeah. That’s really what blockchain, and I’m not an expert on blockchain, but that’s one of the things that blockchain is trying to solve for sure, because then you’ve got an ear erasable record, unrelated erasable record of the origin of this song and where it’s gone and all of that stuff. Some people might listen to what we’re saying and just totally bash us and just be like, you shouldn’t be giving me… This is not advice. Absolutely not. This is just what I do because I’m not freaked out about it. If you are, then you should definitely do it.

Jason: I feel the same way. The music’s out there and unless you get some huge hit, I don’t think it’s probably even going to make a big difference to the majority of people.

Bree: Honestly, what we were asking before, that is one of the big hurdles to people starting. That is one of the mistakes that they make. They’re so caught up in what are the legalities of me releasing my music and all of that that they just don’t move forward, or some people think I put it on my website, so doesn’t that mean it’s released? I’m like, no, that just meant you put it on your website. Releasing it means you actually put it into the distribution channels.

Jason: Yeah. With these releases, I know you have a checklist of things that people should think about, at least when they’re doing that release. I know you’re giving that away for free, but you’ve created this done for you, done with your model to help people if they don’t want to do it all themselves. There’s that help so maybe talk through for all of the do it yourself-ers out there, let’s talk about what are the things that we as artists need to do in order to have a successful release.

Bree: There’s a lot and you can pick and choose which ones to do or not do depending on your personality, the time that you have. For example, you could do a tour around your release, even if it’s just a few weekends out in your local area, if you have the time, if you want to, if you like to perform or you could do a digital tour and just do some live performances on different social media platforms if you have followers. That’s one component. If you choose that component, then you’ve got to see that. You’ve got to reverse engineer it because what I love to talk about around a release is the timeline is king over everything but it’s a timeline that involves several different areas or aspects that all need to work at the same time. You can’t be like, okay, now I’ve done all the marketing. Now I’m going to work on my tour because by the time you do, the places that you wanted to book are already full for the next four months and by the time you get there, your thing is old news. You do have to be able to…

When I would do a webinar about this, I had this visual of the balls in the air and eight different balls in the air and it was like a graphic. So, it was just going like this, and it makes you crazy just even to watch the graphic for a minute. That’s how people feel. I don’t blame you for feeling that way because you really do have to keep all those balls in the air, or you are going to miss out on something, but you can then pick and choose. Like, if you decide, oh, I don’t want to perform. Okay, cool. I’m going to focus on PR. I’m going to focus on getting Spotify playlists, or I’m going to really focus on just building my online presence and communicating with people through social media, or I’m going to do ads to really amplify my reach. There are all these things. It’s like a buffet, but you do need to at least pick three or four of the things at the buffet, or you’re going to be disappointed.

Jason: Absolutely. If you’re picking the top mistakes that these artists make when they are doing a release, what do you see as those top two or three things that people miss out on?

Bree: The one big one I used to talk about all the time, I think it’s less common, but before people used to just release their entire album at once and people are doing that less and less. I just think that’s a big mistake because you’re not taking advantage of all of the opportunities to talk about your music in each song separately by releasing at least three singles. Some people release all of them as singles, and then they package it together as an album and then do a big tour around that once it’s all out. You can do that. Same thing with an EP. Ep is usually generally three to six songs. You can release each one individually and then release the whole thing as a package. Then you can do a lot of pump and circumstance like a release party and things like that around the full release but you’re still taking advantage of each one of those releases as a little mini promotional opportunity for you to talk about that specific song and to be able to talk about something different. If you just release your album all at once, then it’s like, hey, my album is out. The next day it’s like, did you listen to my album? It’s out. You know what I mean? It’s like the same message over and over again. That is, it’s going to get boring real quick and you’re going to run out of content.

12:00 Actually, releasing things as singles along the way helps you create content as well. That’s one of the bigger mistakes that I think some people make just because they’re thinking about their album as one thing, which it is, and it does get hard when people start to do concept albums. I actually had a student just email me today saying, hey, I have this concept album. I just can’t imagine this one song not having this prelude that goes with it. Should I make it one track? That thing. If you feel like they don’t stand alone, that’s one thing. Then probably don’t release them as singles but you should definitely take advantage of those opportunities to number one, get out on social media more about each single you release and then you pick a few of those as well to really promote through PR, maybe songs that have a…

Usually focus on PR, either around things that are happening in the world, like a time of year, like cancer month, or all the different months that are out there that you don’t even know that exists. I actually have this PR guide that helps people know, oh, this is something I could talk about around this time of year because it’s this month and that thing and there’s all these ones that you don’t even know exist that you can have a national mental health month or whatever.

13:37 If you have songs that have special messages in them, you can align them with times of the year or causes. I have a student right now that’s releasing a cover that’s just fun and upbeat and she’s like, this will be perfect for summer and that’s right. It’s a great thing to release in July because people will just feel like they want to play it at the beach. Just thinking about those things around the singles that you release. Timing is important and just capitalizing on as many opportunities as you can around each single.

Jason: Right. Well, I’m hearing the importance of that story in the hook. If you just say, hey, I released this album. That’s a hook. Then I released an album. There’s your story and you’re going to make that offer. You missed out on 10 or more stories that probably were better.

Bree: At least…Each song probably has a story behind the song, like why you wrote it. Maybe there’s a story about when you wrote it. There’s a story about maybe when you recorded it in the studio, and something happened or a really cool player that you got to play on the song with you. There are so many things you can talk about with individual songs.

Jason: Right. Well, that’s a lot more interesting than just saying, hey, I did a new album. That’s great. You did an album, but so did 100,000 other people last year. That’s about the worst hook you can… Hey, I did an album. Great. You and everybody else.

Bree: Then there’s another aspect to releasing things separately in that you, at least for Spotify and maybe also for other streaming services that have an editorial playlist option. I know Amazon now has this but when you release something, you can only put one song into their bucket under their eyes like, would we want to put this on any of our official Spotify playlists? If you get that, it’s huge. It’s huge. Now, it’s hard to get, but I’ve definitely had students that have gotten multiple editorial playlists opportunities, and you don’t get that if you put out an entire album, you only get to choose one song to submit to them, so it just gives you more opportunities to get in front of them.

Jason: Well, yeah, it’s really a numbers game. As I’ve worked with different PR firms and marketing agencies who have helped me over the years, I guess I’ll call it harsh but the real feedback that they gave me of why I wasn’t doing as well as these other people was because I didn’t have enough tracks and enough numbers out there. It was a quantity game. People talk about wanting to have that hit, but typically one out of your hundred may get really good traction. Hopefully, you can write better than a 1 % of your songs being great but as musicians, I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we like all of our songs, but 80% of them or more are probably okay, but not one of those hits that really is going to catch traction and even if it was one of those hits, the likelihood of that one song getting traction anyways is even lower too.

Bree: Yeah. Like you said, there’s that side and there’s the percentage chances for you but there’s also the side of just creating a lot of music and that just building up. I had a guy on my podcast who was 40 years old. He’s an older guy, he had 40 years’ worth of piano tracks that he had created on CD and his wife went through all the things that she needed to do to get all of those on streaming services and he’s making his complete living off of streaming now because of all just the sheer numbers of it.

Jason: That’s awesome. I’ve got a friend that I’ve worked with that’s a piano player as well. He’s in his 70s now and about 40 years ago, he was a big deal as piano players go but he’d done all these CDs and none of them were set up digitally where they should have been. He didn’t have a catalog or even a spreadsheet. I don’t even think he knew all of the stuff that he had. Actually, my team worked with him, and we ended up uploading and doing… It was hard because I think there were about 25 or 30 CDs. They were CDs that had been, I guess, released, from a digital standpoint, which did not exist in the digital world. We’d rip the CD off, get the songs and it was about over about a 12-month period where we just slowly had those releases go out. It gave us a lot of chances to get on editorial playlists, but still the amount we missed because we didn’t do a lot of singles when we did those for him. I believe he’s making three or four thousand dollars a month now after three or four years just because of the quantity of music that he did for us.

Bree: That’s awesome. That’s a tradeoff, right? You’re like, is it better to get this music out faster and not get as many opportunities for editorial? I think in that case, it’s probably true because it’s just so much music that could give him the amount of income that could just grow from each you put on there.

Jason: Once we worked through all of those CDs, releasing and being out there, the next step was I was advising him. I said, hey, let’s start building playlists and all these new songs that aren’t there. Let’s build some playlists. You can share that with your email list and get people listening. Now, in essence, I think you control your own radio station by creating those playlists and you can add and put whatever you want on the playlists once you get people subscribed.

Bree: Exactly. That’s another thing that I’ve been advising my students to do is that, especially if you do a bunch of different genres. For me, I’ve created multiple playlists on my own Spotify because I have Christian music, I have classical music, I have show tunes and I have Christmas music. I don’t want them all mixed up, especially Christmas

 can get confusing because then one of your top songs becomes a Christmas song, and then it’s not very useful the rest of the year. Just having those playlists and being able to direct people to those things, if I’m doing a performance or even, say, my church or whatever, I’m doing stuff that’s just Christian music, and I know that’s what those people like, I can direct them to that particular playlist.

Jason: With the music type that I do, I do that relaxing piano. I love putting those playlists together, having people add my music to the sleeping playlists. The fact that you can have 10 hours of music playing in the background while people are sleeping, that’s the best. There are so many opportunities, I think, with playlists out there that just take very little effort. A little bit of effort each day goes a long way once you get the traction with even one of them.

Bree: They’re becoming subliminally addicted to your music by listening to it while they sleep.

Jason: They don’t even know. Awesome. I think PR is one of the things that probably scares and intimidates a lot of people as well. Rewind the clock back 20 years ago and you had those official press releases that you’d put out about this album, and you’d send it to your local news station or newspaper. That was the old way of doing it. I think one thing that I feel like now it’s easier but also harder to get legit press mentions in news articles. I don’t know what your experience has been with that.

Bree: It definitely is. I would say number one, 21:36 The mistake I see people make is they think that the press release is what they need, that that’s all they need. I see people paying firms to create a press release for them, and then they say, we’ll send it out to all of our contacts or whatever, and zero comes out of it. They have paid it because, of course, then they come to me and go, oh, I wasted my money. I could have told you that.

A press release is still a useful tool, but it’s only a useful tool if you are putting it in the hand of somebody that already knows about you and would actually care what it says. If you’re just sending out faxes all over the country, which is what I see some of these people doing, or unsolicited emails, which let me tell you, I got them all the time at Women of Substance and I just delete them because I don’t know this artist. I don’t have time to look into every single artist that some random PR person sends me. It’s really about getting the press release as a tool that really in one page explains, let’s say it’s about a single. What is your single about? Why should they care? It needs to not be about you as much as it’s about the listener. It’s about the person that you’re wanting to get interested in the song, whether it’s the person at the media outlet or it’s the listener, why should they care about it? It’s not like, let me just tell you all the things that I’ve ever done. That’s what we tend to do.

Then it’s getting it into the hands of somebody that would actually do something with it and that’s where it’s you as an artist making those connections, starting local, asking around, does anybody know anybody that works at the paper, at the magazine? Then you could get an agent if you want to. What PR agents are useful for is all of their connections. They’ve been building up connections over years. If you vet somebody, if you get some good references from other artists, other musicians, and if you can find somebody where musicians say, yeah, I got these placements and blah, blah, blah, then it may be worth it if you don’t want to do the leg work to get it in the hands of people that would actually write about you and would care.

I’ve seen people that had good PR get great… Some of the best PR that I’ve seen people get are radio interviews, interviews on a BBC morning show. One of my students got something on an ABC radio show that was an acoustic show where they would interview people and stuff and they got actual people that listened, learned about them, found them on social media, really got invested in them just because they heard the interview of them on the radio. I do tend to think that radio, podcast, that thing is the best PR nowadays because you really get to hear the artist’s perspective. You get to know them and stuff like that. As far as newspapers, to me, local is better because it’s going to be easier to get in. You know that more people actually read it than would actually care if you’re a local artist. I would always start local and see how far you can get.

Jason: I think with PR… When I was in the banking world, I’d done a lot of training on PR and worked with PR firms that were very good. I think the key thing for artists, if they’re trying to think, okay, how do I get an article about me? You’ve got to think about that newspaper news story writer and what is newsworthy? The fact that you did an album, again, just be brutally honest with yourself. Nobody cares but is there something unique that you did to help somebody, or is there some unique way that you wrote it, or is there some tragedy or something that’s an interesting enough story that would be… People would care about it. I even think about, okay, if you’re performing, what is this that’s going to draw that crowd in as you’re telling them the story about the thing that happened to you, or what it was, it emotionally that you overcame? That’s up to each individual artist to be able to recognize where those opportunities to share and impact your audience are. A lot of that ties right into the news articles. I’ve even seen some people where they’ll write the story that they think could be the news article and then have that be part of the press release.

There are some. It’s one of those places where I think it’s very dangerous. I lived through the banking world back in 2008 when banks were shutting down left and right. The worst thing you could have done as a PR person was to have somebody just decide to write a story about whatever the thing was because then you don’t get any say. Half the time they don’t quote you properly anyway, even when you do do it right. The more you can provide in the story written out for those opportunities with that PR person is just the better that story is going to be able to be.

Bree: That’s very true. I definitely talk about how media people have very short deadlines. If you’re giving them the easy button, you’re handing them something that’s pretty much totally written, they can just go in and add a little bit of their own flair, then it’s going to be more likely that they say yes, especially if they were running a story and then they hit a snag and they couldn’t get the interview that they needed or whatever. Now they’re under a deadline, they don’t have anything to print. They’ll be very happy to have your story.

Jason: Absolutely. I think the key is just learning to recognize those story opportunities along the way. I’ve seen a lot of artists where they sometimes share what they’re working on or what it is that’s happening and these little behind the scenes type of it, mostly the social media post type of thing. Those moments of social media that your fans find interesting, if you’re posting on social media, are probably the key elements to figuring out what that story is that would be newsworthy or press worthy.

Bree: That’s right. 28:17 Pay attention to what things on social media are really gelling with your fans – what’s getting the comments, what’s getting the shares? And then if you have, like you said, if you have any songs that are around a specific cause or just an idea that you want to get across and then, like I said, I’ve got this. The reason I talk about the PR resource that I have is because there are things all the time. For example, I have a song on one of my albums about my grandmother that has Alzheimer’s and so that would be a perfect thing. Like, oh, it’s Alzheimer’s Month so I could do a story about how I ended up writing the song and put the link to the song and all that stuff. Then I had an experience with the song where I was singing it and afterwards, some guy came up to me in a coffee shop and handed me a $20 bill and said, my dad just got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s today and wow, that song really touched me. Thank you. That thing could all be a story.

Jason: Absolutely. The key is just recognizing those moments as they’re happening, because I think a lot of the time what we as musicians think is interesting. I think we undervalue maybe some of the creative work that we do as musicians because a lot of people don’t have that talent and don’t understand what’s happening. They’re curious about it.

Bree: That’s very true, especially on the songwriting side. We just think, oh, look, it’s normal. Anyone could just write a song. No. They’re very curious about the whole creative process.

Jason: Yeah. So other things that you would say… I mean, the people mess up when they do this release. What are some other areas that you mess up on?

Bree: One major thing that pretty much everyone when I do my webinar on this, they’re all like, oh, I’m guilty of that, is that 30:15 they don’t document the whole journey to the album release, and therefore they lose out on a lot of great marketing materials. For example, when they’re in the studio, they don’t take pictures, they don’t take video, they don’t write in their journal every day after the studio about fun, cool things that happened, any frustrations, that thing. That’s all stuff that you can use on your marketing journey as you’re releasing things on the album and eventually the full album. Stories you could tell on stage, all of that. I was so guilty of this. The first time I was in the studio, I ended up with four pictures. Now, to be fair, this was in 2005, so 2006.

Jason: We’re still always using film.

Bree: Yeah, we didn’t have iPhones and all that, but I did get some pictures, four of them but it’s not just me and it’s not just because of the technology back then. Most artists that I talk to tell me that they did the same thing and it’s because we’re putting on our artist hat then. We want to focus on having the best studio experience, making sure that what we come out with is exactly what we’re wanting. Sometimes we’re co-producing all of that. You can’t do that as an artist. You’ve got to grab somebody, grab a fan, a family member, somebody that would love to hang out in the studio with you and say, you can hang out with us all day. You get the free pizza, blah, blah, blah. All you have to do is just take a bunch of video and photos while we’re here, and maybe we’ll do a live stream at some point and put it on someone else’s plate because you can’t be thinking about it as an artist, but that means you’ve got to think about it in advance.

Jason: Yeah, definitely. I’m guilty.

Bree: It’s even harder when you record from home because it’s just like, oh, it’s two o’clock. I went into my studio and recorded a new track.

Jason: You got your smelly socks on the floor or whatever. People don’t want to see that, right? Oh, man. Anything else that comes to mind? It can be overwhelming to do a launch of a CD or album, do it properly. There’s all these steps and you can do any combination of them but you’re providing, you created this checklist service that is called concierge service, or release concierge, I think is what you call it. Just talk me through what all of those things would entail if somebody was hiring an agent or a record label or the set up that you’ve got, too. What does that come with?

Bree: Yeah, pretty much the way we bill ourselves is like it’s the help and the service of a label without giving up any of your rights or creative control. The biggest thing that we provide that people love, I would say the most is that we assign them a release manager. We have somebody that is holding their hand throughout the whole process, making sure they know what steps one, two, three, five and 27 are, and what order to do them in, and making sure that they’re actually doing them because some of the issues are that they just are busy. They want someone keeping them accountable. That’s some of it. Some of it is they just are overwhelmed, and they just want someone to feed it to them a little bit at a time. I totally get that because sometimes people will download our checklist and they’ll just be like, I’m going blind. It’s way too much information. Some people just do better when they take little baby steps or just bite off a little bit at a time. That’s what the release manager can help them do. Help them if they get off track, help them get refocused, all of that. They’re meeting with them all the time. So that’s number one.

The other things that we talked about. We help them with PR, we help them with the playlisting, like trying to get on playlists beyond just the editorial playlists, reaching out to playlist curators that have good playlists that are refreshed all the time that people subscribe to and getting people on those. We’re also helping them with their social media. This is a big sticking point for a lot of people. Now, some people are very resistant to social media. Some people are scared of it. They don’t want to make videos, stuff like that so we make it really easy for them. We give them scripts, we tell them exactly what we need, and then we do all the rest of the tech work to make it look awesome. It’s in the right aspect ratio. It’s got captions, might have music behind it, all that. It looks super slick and awesome.

Most people don’t have the skills to do that on their end, let alone the time. That’s one of the things that we do and this all works together. The PR side works really well with social media because the PR people want to see, or the media outlets want to see this is an artist that’s actually doing something. They have a fan base. They’re communicating with people instead of this artist who is just in a bubble and releasing this thing. They want to feel whatever is that they’re promoted is newsworthy. AYou can show that you’re newsworthy by showing that you have action on your social media channels. It all works together synergistically.

We also make sure you get your music registered everywhere that it needs to get registered, like we talked about at the beginning. That’s a stress point for some people. Then the thing that we’ve added recently, and I’m sure you can speak to this a little bit, but 36:17 we have added an option for us to run ads for them and manage their ads because what we found is some people cannot get their head around really engaging on social media as far as making this many videos per week and that thing that just really overwhelms them. What we’re saying is, hey, that’s fine. If you would rather do ads, we can make a few really awesome videos and we can just boost that reach out to as many people as we want by using ad spend.

That’s something that we’ve added recently just because we’ve seen that we have two different kinds of artists that come to us. One that is really ready to jump into social media, really ready to engage with their fan base and that thing. They just don’t know what to do. Once they start doing it, they’re so excited. They love it. We’ve had some artists that are just like, oh, my gosh, I’m getting comments. This is so fun. I’ve never had anyone comment on my music before. They’re getting so many ideas of things that they can talk about on social media just by starting. That’s usually what it is. It’s like all of a sudden it just unleashes creativity.

Then we have some people that are like, I work as a full-time accountant, but I do this music on the side. I don’t really want to build a fan base, but I want to get it to as many people as possible and for those people, ads are the way to go and it’s not that ads aren’t the way to go for the other people, too. They probably will start adding ads on top of what they’re doing organically but it is great to do it organically, test it, see how it goes over with your audience. If there’s something you put out that just got tons of comments, then let’s make it an ad. Let’s get it out to more people.

Jason: Right.

Bree: Oh, and then the final key, I think that maybe we don’t talk about enough is just 38:16 the mindset coaching that we do with them for them to step into their artistic identity and really have the confidence to act like an artist. I think so many times musicians are a little bit apologetic about their music. You don’t have to listen to it if you don’t want to. I just put this out. I hope you like it. No, I’m excited about this release. Here’s why I created it. This is what I love about it. This is how it relates to my life, really just stepping into being an artistic, I would say, artistic boss online. I know that what I make is good and I want to share it with people. I’m not egotistical about it, but I want people to know about it because I think it’s awesome and I love it.

Jason: My mind is racing right now with all of the things that I need to do better when I do release this. One of the things as a musician, it is overwhelming when you launch that, and you put so much effort and emotional energy into just the music and getting it there. I think for a lot of people, the idea that they have to put in even more emotional energy to market it and sell it and share the story about it. I think sometimes musicians are just tired and want to move on to the next thing. I think that’s one of the big reasons I think musicians typically aren’t as financially successful, or even getting their music out there successfully is because they leave that other 50 % and they don’t do it, or they don’t want to do it.

Bree: No, it’s so true. I always liken it to birthing a child because you birth that child creatively. Your EP, your album, like you said, you went through a lot to get that out into the world but then you can’t just be like, oh, there it is. Awesome and then just walk away and assume that your child is going to grow without getting fed and all those things. Maybe sometimes you have to bring people on board to make sure that your child is being taken care of if you’re just absolutely depleted. That’s when all the family comes into town and helps you for the first few weeks when you’ve given birth because you’re just done. I liken it to that and those who haven’t had children, maybe I can certainly relate because I’ve had two. You’re just like, isn’t it enough that I made it this far? I made it through the nine months.

Jason: Even when they start to grow up, then all of a sudden, they become teenagers, and that’s a whole another experience, right?

Bree: That’s true.

Jason: Yeah, it really is looking at the long-term life of that song and just realizing it’s there but if you don’t put in the effort to take care of that kid, we’ll call it, or the thing you created, it’s not going to grow and thrive, unfortunately.

Bree: This is something I did talk about a lot when I would do webinars around releasing music is that 41:35 you don’t want to get to the end of all this and have all these regrets. One of the reasons I started this is because so many people came to me and said, I did this wrong. Now I can’t go back and do it over. I’m so bummed. I don’t want that for people because I know they put so much time and effort and money into the creation of it and it’s better to take your time with your release, really plan it out, make sure that you’re going to… But I know how that is. When you’ve gotten done recording the thing, you’re just like, I’m over this music. You know what I mean and you’re ready to move on to do music. I totally get the struggle and that’s why the release concierge is helpful because there’s always this person there bringing you back. No, remember how important this music is to you. Remember how important it is for you to get it out to more people. Let’s get excited about it again.

Jason: It’s that coaching. I know people today, it’s a big deal about hiring life coaches and health coaches and business coaches. Musicians really need to have, whether it’s somebody they’ve hired or just we’ve all got that one person, it might even be just your mom, that is the one that encourages you and reminds you why you do the thing you do. To motivate you and kick you in the pants when you need it.

Bree: That’s what I always say about one reason that has nothing to do with money, why we need fans, is because we need people to say, hey, why haven’t you released any music lately? We’re waiting for it. We need those people to be bummed out if you aren’t continuing to make music.

Jason: I need that checklist that you have. So hopefully, it’s been really valuable to everybody listening. It’s been helpful for me to just think through the things that I can do better myself but the checklist that you mentioned, I know you’d give that away for free. I know you’ve done webinars. If people want just the checklist and just to do it themselves, where do they go to find that?

Bree: You go to releaseconcierge.com/checklist. This is not just a logistical checklist. It also helps you go through all the things that are going to cost you money in the release. It basically is a bunch of questions to help you figure out the budget that you really need for your release. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? Have you seen how much this is going to cost you? All those things are going to help you come up with how much it’s going to cost you before you even start because I think that’s really important. A lot of times people get halfway through and they’re like, oh, my gosh, this is costing me twice as much and I don’t have the budget and now I’m stuck and I’ve only recorded half of it.

Jason: It’s the planning and budgeting checklist, we’ll call it that. So that would be great. I think as you’re doing that, you need to look at your time and decide what’s the value of me as an artist, what’s the value of my time and is somebody else going to have a lot better superpowers at doing these five things on the checklist than I’m going to be able to do. Whether you’re hiring a team member or a virtual concierge person or going even to a VA that’s maybe overseas somewhere that can do some of those things, I think you owe it to your music and your fans and yourself to really do it right. Finish raising that child. You birthed it, raised that little song to go out into the world and have the best opportunity possible, for sure.

Bree: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely talk about that in the checklist as well, because I would never be doing what I do now, all the different things, and neither would you, Jason, without having hired lots of help.

Jason: Right. Well, my hope is I love helping people. If this gives people some ideas to be able to be successful on their own. I know you feel the same way as you don’t always need to be hiring expensive people to do everything for you. I think there’s a value in learning to do a lot of it yourself because then you’re able to work with people who do have those superpowers and help them be more successful at helping you when you understand at least pieces of what they’re doing.

Bree: Totally. You need to understand it through and through because if you hire someone, you need to be able to know, oh, they’re doing a good job. It’s worth what I’m paying them.

Jason: Right. Absolutely. It’s all too often where I see people deciding they want to pay money to an agency or to run their ads or whatever it is, and they somehow assume that that person cares as much as they do about the thing. It’s very dangerous to just assume somebody cares about your stuff as much as you do.

Bree: You can learn the skills as you’re working with somebody and then take them over. That’s what I did with my own ads. I worked with an agency for a long time, a few years ago, a few different ones and I just said, I think I’ve got the skills to do this myself, and I do it myself now. You’re investing in help or you’re investing in education or both, and then maybe you decide you’re going to do it yourself, but you’ve learned, you’ve grown so much in that process.

Jason: I’m curious, I know we’ve had conversations about this, some of the Mastermind groups that we’ve been at. Are you using VAs or any people on your team to help you accomplish this? Do you get all this done for people?

Bree: We have a release concierge team. We have someone that’s in charge of… Well, we’ve got the release manager. We have a few of those that we assign individually to people, and then they’re walking hand in hand with them, meeting with them all the time. We have a person who helps with content creation and coming up with scripts and things like that. We have someone that does the tech side of the content. (I’m trying to think who else is on.) We have somebody that handles the PR and somebody that handles the playlist pitching. And then we’re going to have someone that is handling the ads. We have developed a team so we can serve a group of people because if one of you had to go out and hire all of those people for yourself, it would be pretty darn expensive, but we can create this team that then we can rent out to people.

Jason: That’s awesome. It’s definitely needed. I’m sure the results will speak for themselves, I’m sure, as people go through that process and then learn along the way. Awesome. It’s releaseconcierge.com/checklist. I’m sure if they go to just releaseconcierge.com, you’re going to have more details.

Bree: That’s right. You can learn all about the program. You can watch a video for me talking about what it is and everything.

Jason: As an artist, at very least, go out and watch some of these videos and learn how to do most of this stuff yourself. Don’t be afraid to hire help when it’s the right time. The only way you’re going to recognize when you really need that help is if you know what could be done instead of just ignoring it and missing opportunities along the way.

Bree: That’s right.

Jason: Awesome. Well, Bree, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing. I’ve got a few other ideas running through my head now. We may have to have you back. You’d be the third guest, too. I appreciate you taking time to share. Is there anywhere else that you’d want us that people can go and find out more about what you’re doing?

Bree: You can also go to profitablemusician.com. That’s my podcast. I had Jason on my podcast a few months ago. There’s lots of resources there. So definitely go there, start listening to our podcast. We’re all about helping musicians make money.

Jason: Awesome. Well, thanks so much. We’ll get you back here again soon.

Bree: Awesome. Thank you so much.

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