Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #45: Unveiling the Trackstage Magic with Scott and Robina Barker

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 45

Interviewee: Scott and Robina Barker

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 guests are my good friends, Scott and Robina Barker. So glad to have you guys here. It’s been really fun over the last year to watch your progress as you’ve been doing software development and building a company from nothing out of frustration for no system, just for musicians to stay organized and be able to get their music effectively to the music libraries and music supervisors if you’re wanting to get their music into TV and film. I love what you’ve done.

Robina: Thanks, Jason. Well, having you actually as a cheerleader and with all of your insight and input has really helped us shape what we’re building, as well as all of the other musicians we’ve been working with. I’ll always be grateful to you for your input on the road. It’s fun to hang out with you now anyways. Yeah.

Jason: What’s been so impressive to me? I think we’ve known each other for about a year and a half now. We met at a Mastermind retreat down in Arizona, which was super fun. You guys were just very early getting an almost ready-to-go product at that point. That worked. I’ve been through software development. I grew a company to seven figures and then sold that company. It was fun because I could see myself a little bit in your shoes where you saw the problem and I think…

Robina: Reliving the glory days.

Jason: Right. As an entrepreneur, I think entrepreneurs are those people that get so frustrated with the problem, they see the problem, and they step up and say, you know what? I’m going to fix that thing and take ownership of it. Very few people in the world… We’re the crazy 1%-ers that decide, I’m going to fix that problem and make it better for the world. That’s what you’ve done for music, musicians.

Robina: Well, okay, you pretty much said the whole podcast. Thanks, it was nice having you here today.

Jason: Let’s rewind back.

Robina: No, no, no.

Scott: We did it. We’re done.

Jason: Scott Robina have built a tool called Trackstage, and it’s essentially supposed to fix all of these broken things that happen for musicians who typically are not organized, not very good at having a system, not very good at having everything cross that needs us to be cross, especially if you’re going to try and get your music into film and TV or video game.

Robina: Absolutely, yeah. That’s the big thing. I think as musicians, we’re creative. We have muses. Our passion is being in that zone. That brings you alive. The last thing you want to do is secretarial, administrative stuff. That’s a real drag, and I get that completely. The biggest disconnect, though, is that for musicians that are coming in is to try to pursue sync licensing if you may not realize you’re actually leaving the music industry. That’s not the music industry. You are now entering the film and television industry. That is a big business. That is Business with a capital B. To be in that business, you have to be a professional. You have to show up with all of your docs in a row. It’s a very fast paced, very lucrative, very high stakes business. Your music and the quality of your music is secondary in a lot of ways to you actually being able to show up as a professional because things move so fast, because the stakes are so high financially and contracts and all of these things have to be rock solid because it’s such a big business, that if you have the best piece of music in the world and you haven’t done your due diligence and it screws things up, people’s careers go sideways. It’s so important to show up as a professional right from the get-go. That’s what Trackstage helps people do.

Scott: I would only add to that, Jason, that even if you are organized and you feel like that you’ve really got things going, you still have to remember that automation is key here. We’ve put together the pieces that allow it to function quicker, that you can get the job done, do the admin, follow business principles, and make sure that it gets done. Even if it doesn’t overwhelm you, you can do it quicker. You can do it more efficiently.

Jason: Well, and Robina, you talked about the TV and film industry. When I first met you, the one thing that I remember is that you were more of an actor, and I think you were Jasmine in the original… We were going way back into the VHS copy of Aladdin for Disney, right?

Robina: Way back here. I was part of Jasmine. Jasmine actually was three different people or three different entities. You had Linda Larkin, who was the voice, and then you had Mark Henn, who was the animator who created the character of Jasmine in the movie Aladdin, and who based it on what she looked like was like an amalgamation of his sister and some other people. Then there was me. I was the live-action reference. I did all I did out the whole movie and they just drew me. Yeah, that is my claim to fame. It was an amazing experience with, again, a really high-powered business. Disney is one of the biggest out there. Certainly, working with that level of professionals and being in that world taught me a lot. A lot.

Jason: I envision this is like Lord of the Rings. Everybody knows Gollum. They had the little fancy suits on. This was way pre-Gollum, right?

Robina: Oh, yeah. It was so high tech, NOT literally. I was acting in front of a cardboard wall with masking tape grid. That was how high tech we were back then in the 90s. It actually, quite frankly, speaks to the brilliance of the animators, what they were able to do with what we would do, our actions, and how they would bring those to life and not only bring them to life, but elevate them into an animated character. It’s just brilliant.

Scott: It’s just to the tradition of Disney as they use live-action reference for decades and decades and… Even with Jungle book, they use whole animals, they would rather do something. Right.

Jason: If we rewind the clock even back more, I’m curious for both of you with… I know you’ve got music backgrounds, but as a kid, were you a piano player, guitar player? How did you end up getting introduced to music? Fast forward to how many years? I don’t know how many it’s been, but how did you go from there to here?

Robina: Too many. Well, actually, I was born into a musical family. Both of my parents were classical violinists. My father, in particular, was in his heyday, one of the top four or five Baroque violinists in the world. Certainly, really big shoes to fill as far as music was concerned. I was put into piano lessons and I just shafted at all of that. I didn’t like the theory and I didn’t like the practicing and all of that. Music, music, music, music, music. I know, right? You were a normal kid. I’m a normal kid. My parents said, okay, you can quit. You can quit. I quit the piano lessons and instantly fell in love with the piano. As soon as I quit the lessons, I’m spending three hours a day down in the studio. I’m teaching myself how to play Elton John’s songs from my little record player, not even a stereo. I got the little plastic thing. It’s in a little suitcase and I’m trying to learn how to play a funeral for a friend on this big old Steinway. My passion was ignited, but I certainly never had any illusions that I was going to become a professional musician because I had these super professional musician parents.

Like I said, the shoes were too big, I wanted to do anything but follow in the family business. I went the other way. I went to acting and stuff. I always had kept that passion and I started writing music. Actually, my first Aladdin check, I went out and I bought myself a Roland JV 1,000 workstation that I still have in my studio to this day, and that’s where I’ve done all of my writing. It was interesting to do the acting thing and have actually felt my quiet passion about writing music and creating. I started writing all sorts of stuff, but I knew that the stuff I was writing, I was never going to hear on the radio. This was not rock and roll. This was not pop. This was not New Age or New Wave, maybe a little New Age, but none of it really seemed like it was going to ever fit in the popular realm. It’s like, okay, this is just going to be my little habit. This is going to be my little passion that I keep in my headphones, and it’s my little safe world.

Then I discovered, fast forward, many businesses I’ve run, and life turns and so on, so forth a few years ago. I had just sold a business that I had built up and decided, well, what do I want to do now? I thought, oh, well, I’ve got a little bit of free time. Why don’t we play with our music? Just start playing with our music. Let’s get all the music that we’ve written and we’re going to get it all notated or whatnot. I discovered DAWS, the digital audio workstation, and my head exploded. I thought, oh, my gosh, look what I can actually do with this. This is amazing. I’m finally writing music and I’m orchestrating it and I’m putting all this stuff together. I’m like, this is an amazing little nice hobby for my headphones. Then I discovered sync music. I discovered that this music that I’m writing, this moody, instrumental music that they never hear on the radio, oh, my gosh, you hear it on TV. You hear it in the movies. You hear this. I thought, oh, my God, could I actually do this? Could I actually make a living doing this?

I started doing all sorts of courses. I did Michael Elsner’s course and Chris Estee. They were having a group course a few years ago. I jumped in and I learned all about that. I think there were two or three other different courses I was taking to learn all about sync-to-sync, as I say, learning about stuff like metadata, learning about music supervisors and how to approach them, trying to wrap my head around splits and rights and all of the moving pieces and everything that I had to have together to make this work. I released my first EP. I was so stoked about that. It was a huge step to move out of the headphones into the actual world.

As I am starting to pursue these, talk to supervisors and then start to pursue this line, I realized that I had to get all of my ducks in a row in a big way. This was what I was hearing from the pros that were teaching me. Being the good entrepreneur, businessperson that I’ve always been, I decided to put things in tools. I had spreadsheets and I had my notebook and then I had, okay, well, then I needed it to have a survey monkey for vetting surveys and I needed to have Dropbox and I needed to have, Oh, well, how is I going to manage the workflow of my projects so that I knew how many tracks I had in progress and how the heck was I going to manage all this metadata? Then what was I going to use to tag all this metadata? And my brain exploded.

Scott: You’d start to see how overwhelming the amount of data it is.

Robina: I was not only overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I needed to know, I was really overwhelmed by just how many tools I had to work together, all these moving pieces that would just like this site would handle splits, but this site didn’t. I wanted it all in one place.

Jason: Most musicians, when you start, probably just checked out or they’re here and all this stuff like, I just want to write my guitar or my piano music and – You didn’t want to do that. -i just take my music. I think what’s interesting is you came from more of a business-organized background a little bit. When I come down from that same world. I started in banking. One of the happiest days of my career was when I maxed out an Excel spreadsheet and told me I couldn’t fill any more fields in. The angels came out and it was like…

Robina: Oh. I can’t say that I love the spreadsheet thing. I really can’t. I mean, props. I mean, the spreadsheets obviously are incredibly powerful. Without a doubt, it’s the go-to place but when you start dealing with all the different pieces of information that you need to have for a single track, those spreadsheets, that’s a lot of columns, a lot of…

Jason: There’s no system. I think if you put yourself in the shoes of the music supervisors or these music libraries, these people that their job is to try and figure out what music to put on what scene in whatever TV show or film or whatever it is, and you want to talk overwhelming. I think what’s funny is the way it’s been done for years is they get emails with songs. They get hundreds and hundreds of emails a day. Who has time to go through and click on an email and remember? I can’t handle the emails I get in a day.

Robina: I know, right?

Jason: I throw attachments on there or links on there to hope I’m going to remember, oh, that was a really good song. It’s a really broken system. My guess is you confirm this, but a lot of times if you listen to interviews with composers or these music supervisors, they have their go-to people that they trust, and that’s probably they go to that little mini world of half a dozen or a dozen people.

Robina: Because they can trust it. You said the operative world, trust. 14:40 The way to build trust with any of these industry professionals is to be able to show up as a professional. You’re going to build trust when you’ve got a piece of music that is right for that show that you’re working on right now, right for that brief that you just put out that sounds like the reference tracks. So you’re going to build trust. If you give them the right song, you’re really going to build trust if you have got all the metadata on those audio files in place so that it’s searchables, so that it’s in their library and they’re going, You know what? I want something that’s avant-garde. Oh, your track shows up because you put that into the keywords. You build trust that way. You build trust by having all of those splits in place so that if they say, Okay, who’s got the rights? How do we clear this? You can go, Here’s the contract. Here’s the contact information, blah, blah, blah, quick. You break trust entirely the minute that that stuff is missing. You break trust.

Scott: I think that’s a good point to stress again is that there’s trying to find visibility, there’s trying to put yourself out there, and then there’s being able to respond quickly. I mean, the timelines are always compressed. You’ve got to be able to do this. You can’t be, oh, wait a minute. Which spreadsheet was that in? Or where is this… That’s a problem. You can’t get back to it.

Robina: I’ll get my co-writer to get that okay. Give me just a sec. It’s not going to work that way.

Scott: Being timely is another big key factor.

Robina: By building that trust, you start to get into that inner circle. The more times that you show up and you have all of your ducks in a row, the more times you show up and you have shown them by how you show up that you get that they are the priority and what their priorities are, that it’s not about your music. It’s not about, oh, my music is so good. You’ve got to love my music. No, it’s about, okay, you’ve got a problem to solve. Here, I’m here to solve it for you, and I’m here to solve it for you really quickly. That’s how you get into that inner circle. Sooner or later, the more inner circles that you’re in, the sooner you’re going to get those placements and the more placements you’re going to get.

Jason: If I rewind back a year and a half ago when we first met, what I found so interesting is, Robina, you’re this bubbly, go-getter, and you’ve done business and the acting. You’ve got all these talents. Then you’ve got Scott that secretly has probably more talents, but he’s like this quiet Software Developer guy that watches people’s problems. What’s crazy is I’ve been down the software development path, and it is not easy to build software.

Scott, you’re this guy that puts the puzzle together and you listen to problems like Robina’s. Most people get overwhelmed. Robina’s spouting all these, what did I do? You have to do this and this and this. Scott’s like, okay, I can organize that. I’ll put this in this database. Then two 

days later, you come back and you’re like, Yeah, I solved that problem. Here it is.

Robina: It gets even better. Sometimes he’ll hear what an existential problem you have as a musician, and suddenly he’ll go, oh, wait a minute. Honey, look what I built.

Scott: Genesis, I heard it was like Robina’s told this story before where we talk about the distraction of all the different tools and things. She’s trying to jam, just jam what she wants into a generic CRM.

Robina: The CRM, PIPE drive. I thought I could make it all work there.

Scott: Bend it to her will. That’s great, except that they went and made some software updates and changes. Then next thing you know, her entire process doesn’t work anymore because she can’t use it, she can’t transfer from one piece to another. She came to me, and she goes, I need this. I’m like, oh, okay, this sounds like a viable business platform that we can work on. You’ve got my interest. We chatted and talked and talked and chatted. Eventually, we decided to move forward on the development. Sure, yeah, the key is being able to have a piece that you’re not trying to bend to your will, that actually is specific to this from a vertical market perspective. You put into place all of the pain points. We know this. I mean, Robina has said many lifetimes of pain.

Scott: Businesses. Pain? Oh, no pain.

Scott: I love working alongside here from the perspective that we are a team.

Jason: What’s really cool is when we first met, you guys had something that was pretty good a year and a half ago. What was super impressive is you’d taken your pain points, Robina, but I could tell you were actively looking for feedback from other musicians, other users and what you guys presented in that meeting for an hour or whatever amount of time it was. I mean, everybody was impressed, but all of a sudden you got all these ideas thrown out with these other musicians there. I think you guys went back and threw it in a blender and then spit something back out. It was totally different, but it was way better, and that is hard.

Robina: Well, that is key because I understand my pain and I wanted to answer my pain, but that’s just my individual experience as a sync musician or as a musician pursuing sync. So right from the get-go, we had a group of other sync musicians who were at varying stages of their career, and we had them as our alpha group and we had them really kicking the wheels and some of the initial ideas that we had just went, no, gone. That really infused the early stages of Trackstage to where you saw it in action. Then we had beta testers, always our actual target market. We didn’t just buy beta testers. It was all people who are pursuing sync, and are moving through this stage of their career. What were their pain points? What did they need? The amount of input we got was mind-blowing, mind-blowing. I mean, things that we didn’t even think of, having the genius of somebody who’s feeling that pain point come in and help develop it, that’s become a cornerstone of really how we operate.

This is the first thing that anybody’s going to notice when they crack open Trackstage is that it is deep. This is not fluff ware. This is not just, oh, you’re going to figure this out in five seconds and you’re going to be able to manage your whole business. I’m sorry. I apologize. No, that’s not the case. However, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a very robust, comprehensive tool that has really got all of those little boxes checked, and then you get the support on top of it. 

21:59 We are absolutely committed to helping this demographic, helping our community of sync musicians get their business organized so you don’t have to spend hours and hours doing it. It isn’t that pain at the end of the development cycle. Instead, it’s that we’re wrapping it up in its little package and it’s ready to go. It’s actually not only a lot faster and a lot less chaotic, but actually maybe even a little fun because it’s us.

Scott: I’m probably trying to put some humor in there.

Jason: I think there’s some good learning. I mean, a lot of people listening to this podcast are probably thinking, I’m never going to do software. I’m not going to build software, but I think there’s some learning that I see will be successful, number one, because you’re listening to what your customers and what people are asking for. You guys are ultra-coachable. I think there’s often times for musicians, we sometimes get married to the idea or to that track or the way something sounds, and they think, well, this is mine. That’s great. You love it but when somebody does offer feedback, oftentimes I don’t know that we take the coaching or the feedback as good as we should. Sometimes it’s meant with as much love as possible. Maybe it’s not even correct feedback, but being able to listen and be like, okay, well, maybe there’s a reason why they’re suggesting this thing and be mature enough to step back and look at what your performance is or whatever your song…

Robina: It has absolutely hit the nail on the head. It’s a hard lesson that I came to learn. I think a lot of the time back when I was having everything in my headphones, it was because my music was so precious. It was so special. It was magical. I’m actually not mocking that. I am dead serious. When we’re creating something and we’re building that music, it is precious. It is beautiful. It is magic. It’s coming from somewhere else and you’re communicating with whatever that something else is and you’re using your skills and your talents to create, to give birth to something which is really special. 24:10 The most important thing I learned is that, okay, enjoy that phase, nurture that. The minute you do that final audio mix-down, that’s over. That is now a product. That is a widget. That is no longer precious because the minute you let go of the preciousness of what that is, you will not believe how free you’re feeling when you stop feeling this is precious. When this is no longer the greatest piece of music that has ever been written, when you move past that and you’re just like, nope, this is now going out into the world and it’s going to do its thing and it’s going to land here or it’s not going to land here, it’s no longer precious. It liberated me to a degree that it got me out of my headphones.

Scott: You’re saying that there’s an analogy between just being teachable or being open and knowing that it’s a world we all want to be in and want to contribute.

Robina: Precisely. That’s exactly it. When you let go of holding onto that and you can get that feedback from outside, it takes on a new life and a life that can actually really connect with more people and really serve the community, serve the world the way you really do want it to. That’s how we feel about the software as well.

Jason: That’s awesome. Scott, I’m curious on, from a developer, software guys perspective, this podcast is called the Successful Musician Podcast. I don’t know, you don’t necessarily have a ton of music background necessarily. At least I don’t think you do, right? You’re not -.

Robina: He’s got more than he likes to let on.

Jason: Oh, really? I’m curious.

Scott: I have musical parents too. It’s just, I don’t know, my path just went down the software. I was into vocals, sang for quite some time, even in college but software is where I started to find my niche. I can tell you this. I like this vertical. I like where we are with TrackStage because I do get to connect with musicians and music. Even if they’re having some glitch with something, I get to tell them not all the time, but sometimes it’ll happen. I’m going to say, why isn’t this particular field, data item working the way I thought it would? Would I interact with them? They’ll send me the track and I get to play it. I’m like, this is awesome. I get really enthusiastic about their music, the quality of the stuff that’s out there. It’s a celebratory feeling that I get, just being able to support that and be a part of that. I’ve had stuff come in and I’ll be playing Robina goes, Oh, what’s that? I’m like, Oh. We’re just like.

Robina: It’s cool. We love our artists.

Scott: Even the program and the nerves can be exciting. I enjoy that part of it, though, in all fairness. For me, I like the supportive role from that perspective. Yes, people say, they’ll say stuff like, well, I’d really like to use my artist’s pseudonyms. I’m like, artist… What about that? We have artists’ pseudonyms.

Robina: Yeah, he’ll do it like that when he can. If it’s low hanging fruit, it has happened that people request something and it’s in there within two days when it’s low hanging fruit.

Jason: This is like the golden age of being an independent artist, especially when it comes to TV, film. There’s more shows and underdevelopment, I think, than there’s ever been in the history of TV and film. You got every Netflix and Disney Plus and everybody.

Scott: The bandwidth has gotten so wide. There’s so much content going on. There are more opportunities than ever for artists.

Jason: For sure. But the thing that’s been so hard as an independent artist. There weren’t groups out there to really teach how to monetize that or do that. There are courses popping up all over the place in all industries, which is great but what it’s doing is it’s created this whole other little niche place where musicians can make a really good living, very respectable career and living now that would have never existed had you do not have the one lucky chance to meet whoever was the director or whatever place. Now it’s just opening some doors.

Robina: That’s exactly it. It is. It’s a double-edged sword, although I actually think this is a fantastic renaissance because, yes, the artists are empowered. They’re empowered with their music production. Now they can create stuff that is at the same level as the stuff that you had to go through all those producers and labels and all the people who held the reins and that you gave most of your money to, they had to run all of that before you could do it yourself. The downside to that is that you have to do all the stuff. Where you would have had a manager or a label that takes care of all of the metadata or the packaging or the marketing or even the fan-based building for independent artists and who get the music into the music supervisors, well, now that falls to the musician as well. Not every musician out there has that business mindset. This is why Trackstage helps them get into more of a treat for their music, less these precious magical things that they actually are, but put on the business hat, see them as products, and see where those products fit with the right clients.

Scott: 30:13 I think balance is the key. I think as a non-musician, I can see it. You need to be a musician and you need to work on your craft and produce. But in doing so, it is lather, rinse, repeat. You can build that catalog and make it larger and larger. Then as the hits start to come, there’s depth in your portfolio. By having that depth, it just means that that monthly income, the annual income can grow but you’ve got to be efficient enough, organized enough, and professional enough so that you can still remain a musician and not spend time jacking around with things that should be able to be done more efficiently.

Jason: Right. I think one of the things that I’ve been most impressed with is building this software tool that allows people to do sync licensing right but then on top of that, you’re teaching. You go on the back end of your help or support area, and you’ve got walkthrough videos that essentially gives you, hold your hand, how to do this to the point where, as a musician, I could get in there and I could learn it, and should learn that stuff, but it’s still probably not going to be their favorite thing to do, all the legal stuff. What I think is about this is you’ve put the system in place. Maybe that artist can have a manager, a right-hand man, woman, whatever, to help him with that or maybe you hire a VA.

Robina: Yeah, you could. This is it. Our model is everything in one place. From the moment that you start to compose a song and you might have rough lyrics or you might have even just a voice recording and a concept. Yeah, a couple of chords, all of these little things. Then you take that through the development cycle where you’ve got to have, okay, what are the mix settings? Okay, well, which patches did I use? Which VSTs? So, on and so forth. You have all of these moving pieces. Then once you’ve got that song finished and baked and ready to well, then you’re into a whole other world of, okay, you know what? I’ve got this spreadsheet for how I manage my stems, my alternates, my cut downs. Okay, how do I get all that metadata through to everyone? How do I make sure that the metadata is right before I send it out? How do I send it out? How do I have my right initial email introducing myself? How do I know which tracks to pick for the right opportunities? All of these things. How do I when that supervisor or that person has listened to my track or has downloaded my Well, so this is all these moving pieces, all of these distractions. Just all in one place. So, to really ease the mind and you can just show up confidently that you know where everything is, it’s in one place.

Jason: I think one of the areas of opportunity that I think you guys are going to find, in the next month or two or a year from now, is a lot of these musicians probably want to have somebody to hold their hand and do it with them or even for them. Personally, I’ve had a lot of great luck with finding amazing virtual assistants over in other countries. What’s been cool with that is they’ve changed my life so that I can focus on other things, and they’ve been able to exponentially increase what I’m able to accomplish in a day.

Robina: Without a doubt.

Jason: I think, as a musician, I think that’s something that you guys probably either need to help make introductions or there’s probably some add-on or upgrade service of like, hey, I’ve got the other songs.

Robina: One of the things we could do… We do offer… Not everybody can afford to have a VA, do something like this, especially a strapped artist. We do offer our subscribers, though, free track university. It is the four live webinars that occur. We cycle through them every month. They get you started. Getting all of your tracks from your hard drive connected to Trackstage and how to start to enter in the critical metadata and so on and so forth. The next one is all about the workflow. How do you go from adding new tracks all the way to getting them tagged and pitch ready? Then the third webinar is all about targeting and pitching, how to put the opportunities into track stage so that you can pick the right tracks and how you can go ahead and pitch those tracks and track how that’s being responded to, then all the way to licensing, how to see to when you’ve gotten a forward or when you’ve landed a placement.

Scott: Yeah, and then you’ll do your deal paperwork.

Robina: Exactly.

Scott: That everything still is in one place. You need to refer back to it as your business grows. Then you just have it there.

Robina: Then the last webinar of each cycle is a deep dive into the creative module, which is effectively that drag and drop of your whole development cycle that takes you from concept all the way to release with tasks and everything so that it keeps you on track. All of those help, we will work hand in hand with our users to make sure they’re absolutely comfortable and confident in there. We can, it isn’t free, but we can take your track, get you all set up, and just hand you back your catalog for you to run with but that is an extra cost.

Jason: I need to do that. I think we need to talk more offline. Maybe we can teach some of my VAs to help and then we can make it easier for everybody.

Robina: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, there we got some Trackstage specific VAs. There’s an opportunity there.

Jason: Absolutely. We need to talk more. It’s a game changer. I think for anybody who’s feeling overwhelmed or whether it’s in music or anything, there’s such awesome resources. I know for me, the one that was a game changer was Onlinejobs.ph. If you’ve never heard of it and you think you maybe want to explore VAs, go sign up for that newsletter. I get nothing for promoting them, but it has been a game changer for me on multiple levels, with music and with other businesses that I’m running. Anyway, I know we’re getting short on time here, but I love what you guys are doing.

I know there’s a lot of people that need this and didn’t even realize that this is. What I love is you’ve got Trackstage University. You’ve got a lot of these initial learnings that somebody can do without having to spend hardly any money. There are some really great $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 courses out there that all people should go through. If you really want to get serious in that, you should go through some of those courses.

Robina: Without a doubt.

Jason: There’s Chris SD’s and there’s others.

Robina: They’re fantastic.

Jason: I think what you’ve created is a hybrid of what you learned because you’ve been through all those programs.

Robina: It’s a supportive thought process. Yeah. Effectively, it’s a supporting platform to take everything that you learn in those courses and have a place to slot it in and keep it all together and it really empowers you to make strategic business decisions around your songs. I know that sounds like la la la la to us, muses, but if you’re in the film industry and you want to succeed in it, you can do this. You can jump into the business mindset. We make it easy to do that.

Scott: Don’t be too frightened by the depth whatever is there. It all makes sense once you’ve layered it and gone through the courses. Keep in mind, when you sign up, it’s a free one-month trial. You’ve got a whole month.

Jason: It’s essentially a free university. Come through this university. We’ll teach you the basics.

Robina: You got it.

Jason: What’s funny is, as I went through those courses, it took a while for some of that stuff to click. Had I at least gotten into my mindset of how a process probably should work, I know I probably would have learned more as I was going through those more expensive courses. I think you guys are really good, I don’t even want to call it an appetizer, but you’ve got a lot of good meat and potatoes that people can figure out.

Robina: It’s the plate that all those good meat and potatoes can sit on. Hold all of that so it’s not just running off on your table and then we’re going down.

Jason: You can get a taste of it for sure. Come get a taste of it with what you guys are teaching. Then if it’s something you’re like, okay, I want to do this, or maybe I need to hire somebody to help, I think you’re going to find that you’re probably going to need to have people to do more of this work. There’s my sales pitch to have a product you don’t have yet that I know is going to be needed for those that have some songs.

Robina: The ones who have the very large catalogs that can certainly serve them but for people who are just starting out with 20, 30, 50 songs, it is very, very, very doable. There are a lot of tools that can actually speed the process when you exponentially grow your catalog through cut downs and alternates and stems.

Jason: If people want to go learn more, and this isn’t supposed to be like a sales pitch for you at all, but I wanted to learn as soon as I heard about what you’re doing, I’m like, oh, my gosh, I want to figure that out. Where should they go? We’ll put the link in the show notes, but it’s? What’s the website?

Robina: It’s mytrackstage.com. That’s our website where you’ll see all about it. Then you can sign up for your free trial right through there.

Jason: I know you’ve got all kinds of videos that walk you through. So, if you’re not a tech Person…

Robina: I know YouTube.

Jason: You’re doing fantastic. I got to tell you, your emails and the training that I’ve gotten from you, the emails have humor, and it has a little bit of personality, which is so refreshing sometimes. I know, Scott, normally the developer person is not the funny guy, but I hear you’re quite the funny guy and…

Robina: I’m a straight man. Be funny. Go, be funny. Be funny.

Scott: Possibly.

Jason: Even down to the hamster, you don’t have cat videos. Maybe you’ve done some cat videos, but you’ve got these hamsters dancing on… You’ve made it fun and feel like it’s doable.

Robina: The whole hamster thing came out of all of our beta testers, with our sync musicians working with us. We were the hamsters running in the wheel, making sure that we got all the stuff done. So, the hamster thing stuck.

Jason: If not anything else, even if you don’t have a lot of music, go sign up to get her hamster email because it will at least tick smile.

Robina: You are awesome, Jason. You’re the bomb. Thank you.

Jason: Well, Robina, we definitely need to… as this develops, I’d love to have you back on the podcast as this comes about more. More. I love that you’re teaching people how to do this right. It works for the small independent musician and helps them get on a better track to be successful. Whether they sign with the label, don’t sign with the label, or whether they really want to learn the business side or not, it’s going to give them the foundation to be successful. At least if that’s a path I would like to explore and learn about.

Robina: Without a doubt. We would love to celebrate people’s success as they grow.

Jason: Awesome. Awesome.

Scott: We do get license signing and things like that, or people listening to music, there’s little things that [create sound effects] on the screen.

Robina: Scott’s put some gogo in. So yes, we did have to celebrate them in.

Jason: We’re going to have to have some plaques, or some trophies that magically show up when somebody hits a certain amount or just to celebrate that. That’s what’s going to be really fun for you guys to be part of that success of people.

Robina: I can’t wait for us to grow to that, to get there. Talking with our users, interfacing with them through the webinars, and it’s my favorite part of this, is really connecting with these people. There’s so much talent. There’s so much beauty in what’s happening in this community. God, I just want to make the E part of this business more fun.

Jason: It’s working. I know without a doubt, people are going to love what you’re doing. The fact that you’re there trying to serve and help and fix a problem, that is definitely a pain point. You’re listening and you’ve lived and walked those shoes and you’re continuing to walk in that path with your clients. It’s going to make all the difference. Congratulations and I’m excited to see where you go.

Robina: Thank you so much. This is really fun hanging with you.

Jason: Last question I’ve got for both of you. As you look at your music careers, is there one thing of best advice you’ve gotten over the years from each of you that you think would help the listeners?

Robina: For me, it is without a doubt, 44:00 let go of the precious and celebrate it while you’re creating it. As soon as you have finished, let go of it being precious. Let other people listen to it and have their own experiences with it. Don’t let whatever their experience is have really anything to do or say about what your music is. It is perfect in its own place, and you can get more from the world if you let go of it being precious.

Jason: Awesome. Scott,

Scott: I don’t have something quite so good. I would just have to say go for it. There’s an opportunity here for just about anyone who makes good music to have it go out there and provide not just financial reward, but emotional reward. I think that music does make the world go round. Please keep going.

Jason: Awesome.

Robina: Keep swimming.

Jason: We can drop the mic with that. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you. Definitely go check out mytrackstage.com.

Robina: Awesome. Thanks, Jason. We’ll talk to you later.

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