How He Got a Million Monthly Listeners and a Sold Out Tour Independently

0:00I picked up guitar during COVID. Didn't sing, didn't play an instrument. I just, my sister had a guitar in the basement and I picked it up. I really wanted to learn how to play, hey there Delilah. I've always wanted to learn how to play that song guitar. I still don't know how to play that song guitar by the way. I just moved on to Hozier like really quick.

0:27what's going on welcome to the new music business i'm your host ari herstan author of how to make it in the new music business the book third edition is out now all formats hardcover ebook audiobook however you like books you can find the book today my guest is jared benjamin he is an artist now based in Nashville. And he is an artist who actually started playing music not too long ago, in 2020, he picked up his guitar, picked up a guitar, I should say, started playing guitar. And since then, he now has over a million monthly listeners just on Spotify, over 100 million streams. He sold out his tour this past spring and he just released his debut album, Icarus, Too Close to the Sun.

1:09We talk all about his career and how he did it all. He's got nearly a million TikTok followers, about a half a million, just over half a million Instagram followers. This is a guy who, you know, he's early 20s and kind of is this like native, a TikTok native artist. He talks about how he approaches his posting schedule. And I mean, he's posted thousands and thousands of videos. And I ask him, like, what is his philosophy around all of this? How is he able to do that? And why is he doing that? And what's the inspiration? So he talks about like how he comes at it and why and when and how he decides to post and what he decides to post and why he thinks some of these songs took off.

1:53And we get into the weeds a bit on kind of the communities that he's targeted and how he thinks these things through, which communities have founded. We talk about tools he uses like Discord and other fan platforms that he he uses. And he just kind of, yeah, talks about the songwriting process, where his biggest song, Three Steps Ahead, came out of and kind of how he wrote that. He talks about the songwriting and production process, how, you know, he started from producing stuff and learning production on YouTube videos to working with producers and co-writing and now getting into a workflow where he's learned to delegate and kind of build a career himself.

2:31He's still independent. He releases music through AWOL, which is, you know, it's a label services company at this point. Did get an offer, a deal with them, but that's famously, you know, no ownership type of thing. And yeah, it's a really fascinating story of somebody who really popped off. His biggest song was released a year ago, just about a year ago. And his album was just released this past June. So not too long. And things are really starting to happen for him now. He's actually heading out on a European tour, joining Benson Boone and Sombra on this year's lineup of Yours Always Festival.

3:06So he's doing festival date. Most of his club dates have already sold out. Check out Jared Benjamin wherever you listen to music. You can find him on the socials, all of that. You can find all of us that make the show happen at Ari's Take on the socials. Find me at Ari Herstand on Instagram. but right now if you want to mind pause this episode and leave us a five-star review however you listen to this on spotify apple podcast give us a thumbs up on youtube hit the subscribe button hit the follow button and while you're at it go visit ariestake.com get on our email list that's the best way to stay in touch with us get on the email list it is so hot i don't know where you are but we're recording this uh when it's like 100 degrees everywhere and so we were sweating up a storm so if you're watching this you'll see why both Jared and I are so he's over in Nashville I'm in LA it's hot everywhere there's just a massive heat wave right now man so hopefully y 'all are staying cool wherever you are all right let's kick into the show Jared Benjamin welcome to the show thanks for having me yeah um so first off congratulations on the the new album uh Karis I know it's uh the full length I guess this is your debut full length album um yeah even though you've released uh i believe i counted 17 000 songs before this was it did i get the did i get the count right i don't know i might it might be off by one or two uh 17 000 one yeah 17 000 one two yeah you know i know i was i was close i was i i lost when i got into like the 15 thousands i was like going up and down i was like man i don't know that no no it's it's impressive uh how prolific you are and um and just kind of you know your the way that you've been releasing in music over the last few years but as a you know a debut album is a big deal I'm curious just kind of like how did you decide that this was the time to release an album after so many singles NEP and kind of all of that what made you realize like okay album time let's go I think for a long time I was putting out music to put out music as quickly as I possibly could and I was creating just as much as I was putting out.

5:16Like I remember listening to an interview with Russ and he was talking about how like to start, you should have like 40 songs batched. I didn't have any songs batched. I was just making and putting it out. And I think that was a really good thing for growth, but it was stunting how like my, at least my brand building and like defining who I was as an artist and everything else. So I think I just slowed down. I took a beat. I saw that Three Steps Ahead was doing really well. I saw it was connecting with this new audience that I had never interacted with before or didn't know what to do with. And I, instead of just like running to the next song and running to the next theme and the next genre of music, I was like, what if I just like sat on this for a minute and saw what I can build out of this idea.

6:07this idea of uh like dark pop love but like more like yearning instead of um just straight up like um uh mile smith like love song like like blanket love song i was thinking like what if i took this like idea and just like shifted and molded into something that could become me and uh i didn't have the song Icarus until about four songs in but I was writing this song and it's like dark eerie song on acoustic guitar and I was writing it in my apartment and my girlfriend who's a phenomenal writer as well was trying to get me out the door because we had somewhere to go and I was like I have this idea like I don't know what this word and she was like I was like Icarus you sold your soul for some views on the internet I gave your life for a half pack of cigarettes only going higher climbing ever skyward icarus i had the word icarus okay she was like icarus died drugged up in a diner and i was like i don't know what that means but that's fucking cool um and it fully shifted like everything because when we wrote that and i was like oh there's a north star okay three steps ahead like the idea of like this love that's all consuming uh flying too close to the sun like believe like the story of all of that which is new yeah not right that's the greek uh greek mythology icarus right is it died flying too close to the sun famously um and so that that that took it in that direction you're like oh this is uh let's we can kind of we can mold this this kind of body of work that this concept kind of uh brings everything into that that idea more or less or or it's just like kind of connects yeah it was just like the first time i didn't run away from an idea and that's what like formed everything else like i was jumping from thing to thing to thing with no direction uh i was forced to slow down uh because i couldn't release songs as quickly anymore and I was like, okay, maybe this can be something bigger.

8:26And so, yeah. Yeah, that's great. So I do want to talk about just kind of your creation schedule. And, you know, you mentioned a couple of things just now and like with, you know, growth and brand building and all of the things that, you know, marketers talk about, you know, and people on kind of like the business side and everything. But it's clear that you've had a strong handle on your business for a while. And it's clear that you've had, even though you might say you didn't think you had as much direction or whatever, but you were very focused. I mean, even before Three Steps Ahead, which came out only a year ago.

9:03I mean, to you, it probably seems like a lifetime ago because so much has happened, I bet. but you know even before that you had flatline you know that that was catching pretty well and that you you know you talked about like what you've been creating and sure maybe it's been you know singles here and there and maybe they weren't connecting and had different themes and whatnot and it was like maybe a single a month or every two months or something for a while but you create so much other than just the music and the music of course is you know everything stems from the music but i'm just just astounded at how much you have been like able to like the videos that you've created i i like step me through the creation process uh and maybe how that's evolved and changed but that i mean it's probably yeah i mean like you've created you've posted so much it like is it exhausting is it inspiring is it exciting like what's your creation process like and how do you do that so much um well at first i i kind of just i didn't think about it as like a means to an end or anything i was just doing for fun i picked up guitar during covid uh okay didn't sing didn't play an instrument i just my sister had a guitar in the basement and i picked it up i really wanted to learn how to play ahead hey there delilah i've always wanted to learn how to play that song guitar i still don't know how to play that song guitar by the way i just moved on to hozier like really quickly um but yeah i just started posting everything that like as i was learning it i was my first page was like a cover page and it did horrendous but i was just doing it to keep myself accountable um but i don't listen to a ton of music i i read a lot of books and I watch a lot of YouTube.

10:57Um, and like specifically, like when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was like be a let's player, like Minecraft, let's play and stuff. And so like, I never did it. I never did any of it, but, um, I always just like loved that idea of like videos and video editing. I took a couple video courses in college and I just really loved like, um, cinematic visuals and tarantino movies and like everything and so uh when i started making videos really was just me and my phone just putting it up and just to do it and i was just like making the song posting a song making a song posting a song post if that song did better i'd probably write the next verse to that song and none of it was like with a means of putting out the music because this was so you weren't even writing like writing complete songs you're writing like a verse recording and posting it got it okay that's so interesting yeah i i didn't i don't think i had a recorded song like well i think i started writing songs in 2021 and i didn't have a recorded song till 2023 um but i was building my tiktok pages from 2020 to to now so i was just posting to post and then as the videos like did a little bit better i was like coming into my own with it i was like writing more and I was actually falling in love with the craft of writing and uh I really thought to myself how do I build out how do I make this something that I don't need to get a job for like how do I how do I not work yeah a corporate job ever in my life um and I was watching all these other independent artists this wasn't this isn't like 2023 now I have my first recorded song I just put it out.

12:38I was like this, like white boy talk rapping songs. Like they weren't even singing because I didn't know how to sing.

12:49And I was like, how do I make this bigger? And the music wasn't ready for it. But I remember looking at like Connor Price and Nick D and how they made these like guy goes to the studio skits. and I was like I can figure out how to edit that I can put that together that can't be that hard and so I commandeered two of my sister's friends and I was like hey do you want to do this TikTok with me and they were like sure and so I was like okay to like one of my sister's friends I was like hey you're gonna pretend like you want nothing to do with me at all okay and we're gonna go down and then you you're gonna be the producer okay and I'm gonna walk down there and I'm gonna start singing this one song and then you're just gonna not be into it at all and then then i'm gonna stop the track and then i'm gonna play you another song and when i play this other song i want you to like i want you to like be like whoa what's going on why is that so good like like give me the eyes the whole time give me the eyes and she was just like okay i'm like this this my sister's three years older than me so these are like they're like short yeah right um and that video got like two million views wow and the song song the song was called hooked it's the second song i ever put out and it hasn't done like it hasn't done incredibly well but it hasn't done bad yeah hasn't done poorly and it just kind of like that idea the skit thing i was like oh that was fun okay this could be something so i made thousands more of them thousands probably like for every song i probably made 50 to 20 to 100 that's so interesting yeah no and and i mean it's not uh yeah it makes sense i mean i'm scrolling through your page and i yeah it's just like there's so many videos and even so many creates to the song that you have and a lot of them are are you doing creates to those sounds but a lot of people have then latched on to some of these sounds but um that's such an interesting inception story of just kind of like what got you on this kick because it's like uh you know coming up it's it's fascinating to hear you talk about uh how you had a tiktok page you just had tick you just had like pages your own pages that you were running before or the music.

15:18It doesn't always happen. I mean, we're starting to see that more these days with kind of some of the younger artists now coming up in the TikTok era where everyone's a creator. Everyone's trying to go viral on TikTok. Everyone's trying to find their niche and their thing and their whatever. And you kind of came at the creation part first, like with the, you know, you got inspired by video directing and editing. I mean, you were the director of that first video you kind of wrote and directed this first like short form piece that you did and you saw it connect and then the music kind of filled in the blanks a little bit which is just so interesting because you know for more traditional artists I would say where the music comes first and then they look at you know TikTok and the creation as marketing and when I think it's a mindset thing when people think of when artists think of the uh you know tiktok and instagram and these video creation short form video creates all of this clipping as marketing a lot of them start to shut down they're like oh that's gross marketing no i hate it it's all about the art the music tell me how you approach it and your thought process and mindset behind all of this uh i'm a bit unique in the way like with how i came up because i was just making videos but all the videos were for music nothing was not for music like it was all for the songs but i just there was no uh barrier between like the tiktok or the instagram video and the music because the tiktok or instagram video was my only medium of putting out songs like like spotify i didn't have a Spotify page.

17:03I didn't have any recorded music, recorded music. I didn't know anybody in the music industry. I didn't know a single producer. I didn't even know a musician. I was just making things in my basement. And so the idea of an industry was foreign to me. Like I, there was no rules. There was no path. There was no, there wasn't even like a light at the end of the tunnel. Cause there was nobody for me to ask where the tunnel was. So I was, I was sitting there going, all right, I'm just going to make songs and post them because that was my Spotify, like putting it out there. That was how I connected to people.

17:36And then I got burned a couple of times by a couple of people that said, you know, we can make you a star. And I was like, of course, uh, all right, cool. I was like naive. And I went into the city a ton and spent all of my money. And then, uh, these like label people or who are these types of people that were I Can Make You a Star? It was less of like, less of like I Can Make You a Star, more of I had this one connection with this one person that was in music, but she could only work on her schedule and she was already like incredibly wealthy and I didn't have a lot of money. And so I was spending all of my money getting in and out of the city because I was living on Long Island.

18:17And then we would work on something. And I think after like, I think after like seven months, I had half a demo of one song. and I just spent all this money just getting in and out of the city and spending on food and I didn't have a job and I was living in my parents' house and working out of the basement. And yeah, it was just this weird thing where I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere with it. And then I showed her a song that I had started producing on my own and she looked at me and she was like, this song would need so much work for it to work. Like, I don't think it's worth it. and I just remember feeling like super discouraged back on like the uh on the train ride home and I was like I really like this song I think it could be something cool and then I said fuck it I posted it and it was this first song I put out and it did like a hundred thousand streams in the first month and wow I was like oh I don't I didn't even know that was I didn't know if that was good or bad I didn't have a metric I didn't know I have anybody to talk to about it I was just like oh it got 10 ,000 streams in the first day.

19:23That's cool. Yeah. Um, but it all stemmed from, uh, just making it. And then honestly, just like believing in myself to be able to do it. I stopped relying on other people for things, which ended up hurting me a little bit farther down the road, but tick tock and Instagram and I'd say Facebook and YouTube and anything you can, it's just it's just a way for you to it's just another way to connect you know like that's that's what the music's there to do and if you can find like this other visual medium to do the same thing using the same songs it's it's just another path towards the same goal yeah yeah yeah i uh no that's fascinating i mean speaking of the production of the music like tell me how so you said you kind to produce that song in your own I'm assuming you went to the the school of YouTube to learn production is that am I right oh yeah I uh yeah spent like the last of my savings to buy a computer with logic on it okay and uh I was recording in the basement like I was looking up how to record I looked up like what I should buy got like this scarlet mic pack um and I was recording in between the boiler going off in my basement uh and I think the first thing I did was I was like okay I'm just gonna use all the presets on this and just try to make something that sounds good and I think it was just some of those old demos are just hilarious to like to listen back to um but yeah and i i still i don't i don't really produce anymore um honestly i've delegated a lot nowadays i focus mainly on writing uh and touring and uh promotion yeah i mean tell me about so for icarus and these songs on there that even though some of them have around tell me about who you worked with on these and who were kind of uh some of the uh do you have a team that you work with on everything do you bop around to different songwriters and producers or yeah tell me about it i bop around a little bit but i've stayed i've stayed pretty consistent i found a really good crew the last couple years um okay one of my friends uh michael locatelli who i went to berkeley with uh he was the person i went to when Flatline was initially popping off on socials and I didn't have a song finished.

22:01I just had a verse. And I looked at him and I was like, hey, brother, I have this verse. That's all I have. I don't have a chorus. But this video got 200 ,000 views last night and I think this could be big. I don't know what to do. And he just quieted me down. And he was like, Jared, you don't need a chorus. It's a drop. And I'm like, Michael, I play acoustic guitar, okay? I don't even know what that word means. All right. Yeah. And he was like, we're going to come in on Saturday. All right. We're going to build it out and it's going to be great. Don't even worry about it. And then I was like, okay, we brought our other friend, Matias on it and they built out the drop while I was recording the vocals and the booth.

22:45And, and I just kept posting about it and posting about it. And, and that song ended up doing really well. And Michael, um, right after Berkeley moved to Nashville. because he always wanted to move down to Nashville. And so I was like, hey, man, can I live on your floor for the next three weeks out of the month for the next six months? And he was like, sure, why not? And I just got my manager, who I love to death, and he was putting us into a ton of sessions out in Nashville. And I had all these sessions lined up, and I just brought Locatelli to all of them, like everything. and we just kept building together and growing and building together and i think he's i think we have what 36 songs out together now amazing yeah what so you you went to berkeley how how long were you there did you did you graduate here yeah i was i did a i did a berkeley master's program out of new york city got it oh okay the new york program what were you studying uh songwriting and music production got it okay honestly i'm i'm i'm a terrible student okay i was just making tiktoks in the corner okay got it got it um yeah i'll ask some of my my pals who are berkeley new york uh instructors be like yeah tell me about the jared the the student it's like six six months late to want to sign yeah yeah that's funny yeah um so no that's so uh you met michael there and uh and then he so you guys have been like the collaborators and so that's been your process it's like he like yeah tell me about the the whole process do you bring a do you like write on your acoustic guitar and kind of bring an idea to him and then he builds the drop and then yeah tell me about the songwriting process i i think it i think it really depends on the song i with this with this project in particular uh it was locatelli and uh this other michael uh michael edwards based out in la uh and i had gone to this writing camp called anti-social uh in 2023 danny ross who's probably your instructor at uh he was my ta he was my professor yeah i was gonna call him i was like hey danny you know i remember you're your student and and um and i was there at the uh at the camp and i met michael and we made this song in this uh in this studio in manhattan and i just remember going this is good this is really good yeah uh and that was three steps ahead oh shit that came out of antisocial yeah that was it i was out of antisocial we um hell yeah i think it was a two hour yeah i had like a two two and a half hour session I recorded all the vocals, wrote the whole song.

25:37And I think I had like a guitar piece that I had like these four chords and then Edwards took it and put it on electric guitar. Cool. And then, yeah, so that song did well. And I worked with this other producer, Bodhi, based out of L.A., who Locatelli, Michael Locatelli, collapsed with, and Matias, who worked on Flatline. and so we i brought edwards to nashville uh i'm gonna use last names because everybody's name a lot of michaels everyone there's everyone's a michael yeah everyone's my manager's name michael my dad's name michael my girlfriend's brother's name michael my two main producers are named michael yeah that's that's a little wild yeah well we're on the sports team now we're going by last name literally i need to give them i need to give them jerseys and numbers yeah jerseys Just a last name on the back.

26:26Yeah, let's go. But, yeah, so I brought Edwards out, and him and Locatelli co-produced Icarus pretty much back and forth. And then I had this – the first week that I was in Nashville when I was staying on Locatelli's floor back in 2023, my manager – I'm going to call him Flom. What's his last name? Flom. Michael uh he put us into this session with him I met him because he was actually one of my professors at Berkeley all right there we go but but the thing is okay that's a so he wasn't originally a professor he was just somebody that came in to guest speak and I remember he came in he had like his like man bun up and he's got like a luscious mane of hair you know uh-huh and he was incredibly intimidating and he he talked like he was like born to raise new york you know like with this professor air to him and we like hit it off we just chatted um and i started sending him songs and i found out that we were born on the exact same day the exact same year like in a hospital like a couple miles apart whoa that's pretty wild and he hates he hated this but he was I was 23 in the program so he was 23 and I got asked to be a professor well and he wouldn't tell anybody his age yeah I mean um but he was he was doing music business there um and we just chatted halfway through like the last semester I looked at him and I was like hey man you want to manage me yeah and he was like I was actually going to ask you after the program was over like I didn't want to like step on your toes or anything I was like no it's just fucking let's ride and I had nothing going for him um and then two weeks later flatline blew up wow oh man that's a testament i mean that you got you know that he wanted to work with you and you know guys work together before you know everything started to to pop um but did you have i'm like sorry to jump in on the story that you're telling but i'm curious just like the the kind of the timeline of everything so you were posting before you had songs out, before Flatline, before all of this, the posts were doing pretty well?

28:49You were building a following that way? Sort of. Going into Berklee, I had about 80 ,000 followers on TikTok. That's solid, yeah. I remember when I went to go, I was doing this campaign to get 10k on TikTok. I was like, I'm going to play the same song every day until I get 10k on TikTok and my friend almost my friend's friend almost completely destroyed my account because he got annoyed with the fact that I was doing this thing and he had just come into like an inheritance and so he had bought like 5 ,000 Russian bots to just spam my page and I was just like what is going on no what's happening and like the whole thing started tanking everything started like i got it to like 98 i was at like 9800 followers on this account and then i got up to like 15 000 overnight but they were all yeah and i was just like oh no destroy your algorithm yeah it fucked everything up for a second and then like i don't know i got really lucky that it didn't like fully tank anything how'd you clean that up or you just just i just ignored it going i just fully ignored it and i was just like these aren't real people this i don't know where this is coming from but i'm not I'm just going to ignore it and keep doing my thing.

30:09Yeah. But yeah, so 2020, I started the page. By 2023, I had like 9 ,800 followers, like not many. Okay. And then I put out my first couple songs and that built up to about 80 ,000 followers in a span of like four months, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah. And then I applied to Berkeley and I got in and I just kept posting, kept learning how to make music and produce and tried building that whole thing out and realized that like delegations incredibly important because I can't do everything by myself. So start delegating productions out to. So once end of Berkeley 2023, I have my manager. I write the first verse to Flatline I post it it blows up don't have the song finished bring it to Mike Limatius we finish the record I put it out a month later and then school there's like about two months left or like a month left of school and now I'm just in a rhythm now I'm making songs putting them out making 70 ,000 videos for all yeah unreal so I put out the next one then put out the next one those first next three didn't really do well then the next one blew up that was Doomsday popped off in September of 2023 and I made a fucking billion made a billion of these videos for it went to now we're in Nashville so when Doomsday comes out end of 2023 Michael moves to Nashville I start living on his floor Locatelli Locatelli I'm sorry I'm sleeping on Locatelli's floor and I meet one of my other collaborators Jenna who has written on a ton of the songs she's one of my best friends and started pumping out as many songs as possible trying to get like one out every two to three weeks while also pumping out two to four pieces of content a day

32:29wow and and tell me about that i just want to pause this for a second because yeah i mean i think a lot of people are listening to this just like you like yes you're you're slightly exaggerating with the 70 000 billion videos but not that much because it's like it really is i mean two to four a day like and and some of these are you know yeah they're they're somewhat or somewhat cinematic and just like they have a story behind it you know some of them are are sweet videos that you're just like all right let's just do this real quick but tell me about the process like how do you do that and it's just like is this what you're looking at is like a full-time job it's just like all right we're doing this for eight hours today and we're gonna make four videos by the end of the day or like what's your approach i used to have a much my approach was way worse about a year ago um it's shifted a ton in the last year but my original approach to it was wake up like the music um the music was either made or i'll just spend the next i'll wake up and spend the next two hours stressing over i need a video i need a video i need a video i make a video i have my coffee the video doesn't do as well as i wanted to do in the first five minutes of being up and I'm like, I need another video.

33:42That one's not doing well enough. So I make the next video and I post that video. And then I'm upset with myself because I posted the second video, which means that the first video is probably not going to do as well because the algorithms don't like it when you post back to back like that. But then the second video is doing a little bit better, but still not hitting the mark that I wanted it to hit. So I make a third video and that one does terrible because now I've really messed up my algorithm on the entire day. I get really sad, probably my fourth cup of coffee for the day. My girlfriend was working nights.

34:11So she was still sleeping. Uh, and then she's waking up to get, to go to her, go to her job. And I'm on video number four and I'm like, Hey, do you want to be in this one with me? I'm just making a video real quick. It'll take a second. That'll take about an hour. And now she's a little frustrated because she's waking up and wants to, you know, have breakfast or coffee and I'm putting her to work right away. And then that fourth video does okay. And I take a deep breath. I'm like, oh, this is great. Life is great right now. Oh my God. So that was my routine for about two years. Wow. And you guys are still together.

34:50Props to her. It's impressive. I mean, she's like a co-star and I've seen a lot of your videos. She's like, yeah, she's a, yeah. She's my rock. She's phenomenal. She's like an amazing person, an amazing writer an artist in her own right uh and she deals with me which is huge like i was my mental health was like you know what i mean and this was helpful to have somebody there that yeah keep you keep you balanced but also encouraging you and not just emotionally encouraging you like literally being part of the videos like being a good sport to to uh be part of all your videos I mean, so much so I like I see that your fans, you know, I've gotten to know her pretty well and they're commenting on there.

35:38And like, you know, it's all from what I've seen. It's all been very positive comments like you're the cutest couple ever. You're so sweet. This is wonderful. I'm I'm I'm hoping it's it's been just kind of positive across the board. But tell me about that. I mean, you went on a big tour earlier this year. Was that your first tour? That was my first tour of that scale. That was the most shows I've ever done in a row. And how was that experience, especially kind of meeting all of these fans at a lot of these shows? I mean, you're playing like smaller clubs, so it's much more intimate. I'm assuming you got to meet some of them.

36:17Tell me about that whole process and experience, and what was it like to meet all these people that you only kind of knew from the Internet or only knew you from the Internet before? I was convinced nobody was going to show up I'm going to be honest my whole goal going into the tour I've done one support act before for this band called the Nicotine Dogs and it was a really cool experience I went from playing in front of four people to playing in front of 750 people and that was amazing and then I didn't really do a lot of touring after that I couldn't really get that many opening slots. Or if any, I actually didn't get any.

36:57So I started doing my own shows. And I had a couple people come to those. But like I said, I was doing like my first tour. I did like 500 cap rooms. And I think I sold at most 70 tickets. Was it your headline tour? This is the first headline run I ever did. Before this one. and uh yeah we were doing these like massive rooms uh for me i because we thought that because of the internet we could sell these bigger rooms and it was going to be this like cool thing and and then i get to boston it's a 500 cap room and there's like there's 30 people oh uh which is like a really humbling experience and also it really goes to show like the point of it all because i remember sitting backstage and looking out and seeing like two people and going, this is going to be tough.

37:54And then I looked at my manager and he was like, don't even worry about it. Just go out there. They're here for you. They bought a ticket, dog. That's crazy. Yeah. And so I went out and I performed and I had a really good time. And I was telling everybody to come closer, come closer. And this one person off to the side was like, I can't walk. And I was like, you can stay there. Like, it's okay. Good move. Yeah. and it was just really cool to see that evolve because then this couple that was there out of the 30 people ended up coming to my next show in New York and there was like 70 people and then they just like there was there's no barrier between it's just like just hanging out and they were buying a piece of merch and I said don't worry about it like just take the sweatshirt and use that money for the next ticket.

38:48And then I didn't do another headline show for like five months. And I went and went, that was all on the East Coast. Then I went to the West Coast and I had my biggest crowd that I'd ever had at the time, which was like 150, oh no, 120 people in Seattle. And I was like, oh, this is cool. And they flew out to Seattle because there were no shows on the East Coast. And they came up to me afterwards and they were like, hey, you said to save the money for the ticket. So we bought a flight. And then they showed up and it was just like such a, cause if I'd gone out there to that Boston show with like a terrible attitude and I've been like, this sucks.

39:24Like, what's the point of this? Like this is, then I would never have like connected with the people that were there. And I would have been so distracted by what I didn't have that I didn't see the people in front of me. And then we went on this run, like this, the Icarus tour run and all my whole goal with it was just to sell out one room and so we lowered the size of the rooms down to the smallest we could play uh and I would rather be tight and intimate than big and sparse so totally we did like 100 cappers up to like 350 at the most and all I wanted to do was sell out one room and I wanted to sell out 100 cap room just I'll be satisfied.

40:09And we ended up selling out the first six. And then we ended up selling out 16 of the 26. And then five of the ones that weren't sold out were off by like four or five tickets. And I just remember the whole run, all I wanted to do was like connect with people. So I did a, I did a VIP just so I could try to make the margins work out. So I didn't lose a ton of money on the run and I would I gave the VIP like pictures and we I sang a couple acoustic songs and I connected and talked with them for an hour before the show and then after every show unless I was sick which I got sick a couple times I would go out and stay out until uh the venue kicked us out and I would just talk with people um and take pictures and sign stuff and like I don't laugh with them and just like like connect because I feel like these are my these are my people right like these are this is my community that I'm building and I'm not an I'm I'm not aloof I'm not like this dark mysterious figure I yeah and I don't think I could be that and I don't think that I think it's a lot harder to build like a community and build like in this day and age of music by being this aloof figure yeah because people want to connect with you in whatever aspect that is so so yeah i tried to tried to be as present as i possibly could with as many people as possible on the run in the hopes that they enjoy the show that they have like a core memory that makes them want to come back to another one and also because like that's the point you know The whole point of all this is to connect with people and to make music and to share it.

41:59Yeah, that's great. Speaking of community, I see that you have a couple community groups online, like a Discord and a grouped type of membership thing. I'm curious just like how you approach these online community groups and how you see them relating or connecting to the other, you know, like other social platforms, how you make sense of all of that. And and then also just how it might connect or relate to the live experience if it does at all. Well, I started the group years ago and I don't think I was ready for it. Uh, it's just like a whole nother animal of, uh, you need to put a lot of work into that to build like any, cause it's like a paid membership program.

42:47People pay like a monthly subscription fee. Yeah. Okay. And I didn't want to, I didn't want to give people, I didn't want to bring people in and then not give them what I'm offering. And so the first time I had a couple, I had like nine people subscribe and I felt really bad because for a year I didn't really use it. and then now what I'm doing is I'm trying not to I've put no expectations on what I'm going to do with it and I just throw up demos or I show music early or I give first access for tickets and I've made it so that if you're a part of my group then you have access to VIP tickets that aren't anywhere else.

43:31So, and those are free. Like I raffled away 10 VIP tickets per city on the tour. And that was really cool because a lot of those people showed up and they, it was really cool interacting with them and meeting them. Yeah. And then the discord really has changed my life. Like I love discord now. Like that community has been like breathtaking. Like they, they're the most supportive people I've ever met. I don't treat it like, like they're, they become like a kind of like a second family to me. Because I'm on there all the time. And I just jump into voice chats. And like, there's, there's this whole thing with, you know, like I was saying, like, with the dark and mysterious, like, like having like being aloof and like all this stuff.

44:13And like, I think that grounding myself and like being a person is really important. For me, for them, for me to, for me, for me to make them understand that that's who I am. So I just jump in and I chat and I like say hi to their kids if their kids come up on the feed when like we're like in the voice chat or something and like i'll just show off random demos all the time that i'm working on like ask for feedback and like talk with them i'll like jump in there and i'll tell them having a bad hair day and then like uh they'll give me ideas for like what to do um and it's just it's just it's been really really cool to to just interact with them and then they're also like every time i create challenges for things so i'm like hey if this song can get this amount of streams first two days i will show you guys a new song or if this song does this well i will uh i don't know i'll let diana wax my leg and it's created like this this network of like support for my social pages because now i like go if this video gets a thousand comments i'll give you the release date and then I'll be like alright Sammy you have commented over 500 times that's not a we gotta work on that and then I'll be like alright if this video gets a thousand comments three max per person then I will give you the release date and I've created this like this back and forth like repertoire and just like you know just building the community out and kind of forcing engagement on my posts with with the groups that I've created and it become like a I don't know it's been really really cool to see the growth like this week I felt bad because I haven't been interacting as much because I was in LA writing all the time right yeah and oh wow it's like that active for you yeah because I just want to I just want to like I don't my one of my deep-seated fears is this doesn't work because i didn't put enough into it like i the only person that's gonna make this succeed or not is me in my brain yeah because i can have the best song in the world but if nobody hears it what's the point so i'm like i you know but isn't it exhausting i mean this all sounds exhausting to me like i I don't know many people that can be I mean, let me just break this down from what I've heard from you so far.

46:45You're posting two to four videos a day. You're interacting and commenting on Discord all the time, nonstop, doing voice memos and everything like that. You're probably engaging on the social. You're writing. You're making the music. uh you know you're facilitating this paid subscription uh group as well all while you know planning and running a standard music career where you're looking for tour planning tours going on tours the whole deal doing interviews like this i mean this is a lot so it's this is like i isn't it exhausting like how do you like do how do you stay inspired with all this do you stay inspired are there days where you're just like i can't i love my fans but my god i just like i i can't bring myself to do this today i just cannot show up for today 100 um that was kind of this last like two days for me yeah i've also slowed down with the posting uh okay i i do i post one once a day now uh okay that's that's a once or twice a day depending on my mental state but um yeah yeah uh still once a day is that's intense that's this last week this is the least amount i posted in four years is like the last seven days and i've posted four times um and honestly it was harder for me to not i've gotten so used to it and uh it's become a part of my like daily routine and yeah um i honestly the last week i've i've been really struggling with uh with finding words uh i've gone into a bunch of sessions and i've and i've been able to come up with melodies and everything but you know i've written so many songs now and life is moving at such like a fast pace that i haven't had any time to just sit and just exist yeah um which is actually in the last at least in the last week it really hit me that i just need to exist again because i feel like my brain does i don't know what to say anymore uh like at least this last like the last couple sessions you got to refill the well yeah and like my videos like i i don't want to keep rehashing the same things i want to get more creative with it but i can't like my brain's in a fog and i can't think up new ways and i'm still to this day, like I've got a videographer now that I love to death, but I'm still directing all the videos and I'm also video editing all of them.

49:17So I edit all my own videos. So, and I color grade them and I do the whole thing. So that's a good portion of my day. Yeah. And I don't know, I've been tired lately, like really tired. It's really started hitting me that I haven't stopped running for four years. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, I'm exhausted just hearing about your routine and I'm not living it. There's no AC in my apartment right now. Yeah, no, I turned my AC off for the sound and we're both sweating our balls off right now. I know. It's hot everywhere. We're in it together. Yeah, no, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Like you do need to spend some time to refill the well i mean it's just like with so much outputs you know you need some input and that's i mean are you still reading are you still like taking in and taking in stuff because that was another thing that i wanted to kind of talk to you about like uh you know you found this corner of tiktok of the internet of like book talk you know and i was curious if this was like oh i bet the fans of book talk would get into my music or if this was just natural to you because you are actually fans of these like fantasy novels and and the romance and it's like the uh uh Rebecca Yarrow stuff and all that yeah so actually so I'm a big reader just generally okay I think I've read I don't know 150 books this year so far oh wow okay I do a lot of audiobooks so I just like have it on the background and I'm constantly listening to something um yeah but yeah i'm listening i'm reading three books right now three uh one with my girlfriend we're reading the series jumper um which is a really cool series i thought it was ya it's not ya do not let a kid read that book um but it's not it's not like it's not like the rebecki arrows like that it's just not why and uh then i'm reading this other one uh it's like nordic like norse mythology fantasy novel uh which is really cool um and then i'm reading court of thorns and roses right now which is the uh which is a romantic book uh by sarah j mass and i'm also reading this like ongoing book series that has like 16 books in it so far where it's just constant and the author has a patreon he uploads a chapter a day oh wow wild but um yeah i'm constantly consuming so the book talk thing was was natural to you so that was something where it's just like now let's not let's not just you know okay so yeah that makes sense because i leaned into it like i was like you know what if this is gonna if that's gonna be the connecting factor which by the way i refuse to read those books originally my friend jenna was like you have to read these books your songs were perfectly for them and i was like no i googled them and i'm not doing that and she was like no no you have to and if you're not gonna do it right away just at least put this caption on the front of your video and i was like okay and so i put the caption on it and it like did it sparked three steps ahead and like everything with that i was like why and she was like also put this phrase at the front of your videos and sit in that chair and put this phrase there they'll go wild and i'm like okay no idea what this this phrase means it's like my house my chair my woman i was like okay sure i'll put it at the front and then i read the books and i realized for like three months i'd been putting this phrase on the front of my videos you're talking about the fourth wing books or uh-huh uh-huh it was like the set it was like from the second book and like this phrase is like a really well-known phrase from these books and i was getting millions of views with like this into like this like my house my chair my home phrase and i had no idea what it meant and then i read it and i was like what does it mean my grandma's been seeing this that's not good uh-oh like i've been posting on facebook all of my family members have been seeing this what does it mean um so i haven't read the books when i'm when two people love each other you know uh-huh oh okay i see where this is going all right all right i gotcha i gotcha that's funny so that's uh so all right yeah because the songs have kind of taken on a life of their own within that community and like i'm you know are are you helping push the the sound the song along into the community in any way are you just because you've leaned into this you've posted these catchphrases you've done the hashtags you put the you know the captions on the screen the hooks up on the screen it found the community and then they ran with it or Or have you engaged, this is getting on the business side, but have you engaged like UGC or influencer agencies or marketing agencies or anything to kind of help amp up the sound a little bit and get more clips going or engage any clipping or creates or anything like that?

54:44Yeah, definitely done some clipping and some UGC campaigns. I am hesitant with them because I don't know how much they actually help. A lot of the times you're feeding money into this to get videos, but the videos aren't sparking a revolution of other people making videos. Because usually it's just like – so the campaigns, how they're broken down is it's like how much Emmy views are they going to guarantee versus how much money you're going to spend versus what they're going to do. And there's no fully guaranteed amount of views. but the metric is just views which is actually not a really good metric because yeah that's they could be putting that song under like a movie clip or they can be putting that song over something that has no connection whatsoever like to the music itself and then you're getting this campaign that they're like oh we've done five million views for you and like you've done yeah that's cool that's great five million is great but none of it connects to the music it hasn't increased my streaming hasn't increased the ugc creates outside of like the campaign itself like i'd say like if you're going to go in with like a ugc campaign or a clipping campaign go in with intention and give like a detailed guideline so like i would love it if like this was like i created this trend it's not working for me but the the the benchmarks for this trend work and i think it could work if more people used so three like i would love a campaign where uh it's three picture slides and they put this specific text on the front of those three pictures and have pictures of them with their partner um and if we can get 50 people to do that maybe one of those 50 people will pop off and if that 50 people pops off maybe by some like strike of lightning that will turn into a trend which will then boost the rest of the ugc creates right right right yeah and have you seen uh i mean have any of your songs i mean you've you've gotten some significant traction i I mean, three steps ahead as over 8 ,200 posts, creates on it.

56:46Probably more. That was just on one of the sounds. And then, like, yeah, I mean, Flatline did 4.1K. I mean, you've done very well in terms of, like, the creates and stuff like that. But did you see that your videos were driving more streams and more engagement and more fans? then or did you see a correlation that when the sound started to take off and turn a lot more creates that that actually uh increased your streams um from my perspective it's been my videos i don't think i think creates are only helpful if the creates are specifically highlighting the song so in any in any scenario where you've seen like a song really blow up and i'm talking in like million stream plus days every day sure yeah you're seeing that their creates are also massive um but those creates are usually like seven or eight different trends that have been built around the song or people specifically going whoa look at this song and it's like or like oh this really connects with me or like how how dare you make this and make me cry or like showing off like their family members or showing off like their dog or showing off whatever it is but all it centered around the words of the song and the song itself like all the creates that i've ever had for all of my songs um three steps ahead is the closest i've gotten to that because there was a lot of the creates were going oh look at this song this is really cool but no trend was ever started there was no like nothing was ever built out past past that so i'd say like until you get into like the 50k to like 150k creates creates you're not going to see it help boost the streaming of the record hmm interesting yeah but it but it has kind of caught within that community like book talk community and everything even though there's not like a necessarily a trend i've seen you know trend-ish things happening yeah right exactly playlists like all these book like all the authors make playlists for their songs uh and are we talking playlists on spotify or playlists on tiktok okay and so they make specific curated playlists for their songs like this is the inspiration of like and these playlists have hundreds of thousands between like tens of thousands to like a million saves because these people these are cult followings for these books and then they want to hear what the author is listening to when they're creating And a lot of people also just make their own playlists to listen to the books, listen while they're reading because they like to be a part of the world.

59:26So I think if I look back at my stats from the last year, I think I've done over a million more playlist ads. And all the playlists, you can see it. People don't know this, but you can see all the playlist names. they're hilarious oh my god like these are these are the funniest names and because they're like book talk related i'm like how did i get here like that's uh-huh but um but yeah i think i think getting added onto people's book playlists because they share them with their friends they share them with each other and then getting on authors book playlists that's probably been more impactful than the actual creates with the sound for me until something until i hit that threshold where something starts moving on its own and hopefully i i hit i get that song because that'll be like the song that like pushes everything to somewhere else right yeah yeah no that makes a lot of sense and uh it's uh no i mean and that's the thing it's like right yeah what what service do you use to uh to look at all the playlist names uh spotify for artists oh that's it oh right yeah because you can just look in there because you can see yours yeah um no i was taking a look yeah that's pretty wild um it's funny but yeah i mean it's it's uh that's great when you find that community and find that niche um you know um that is like what you can really uh lean into and that's that will drive it now i mean this is that also happening just organically?

1:01:08Yeah. Or did you pay for a playlist plugging whatever? No. Honestly, I haven't even spent that much on UGC. I spent a good chunk on ads for pre-saves. But most of my money, I'd say, goes towards ads for pre-saves, if anything. And what service do you use for that? Feature.fm. Okay. And so have you found that the pre-saves are a thing? Tell me about the thought process behind that. Like, yeah, why pre-saves? The only reason to do pre-saves is you have a lot of control over what people do when they pre-save something. If you were to do an ad to go towards a song, right, then they would click on the link.

1:01:57They'd go to the song. They'd either add the song or they would move past it. But the hardest part is getting them to click on. But that's the whole thing. Maybe they save it. Maybe they add it to a playlist. Maybe they listen to it more than once. You have no control over anything. When they pre-save something through Feature.fm, there's a lot of things I collect from that. So it's like data collection. I get an email address. I get a future save, which means that they can opt in to be pre-saved into all of my future releases. I have the capacity to email them through feature.fm if I, when the song comes out for like a surcharge or something I think it was like 90 bucks for all the emails I did for the last release and then there's I can get them to follow me on Spotify immediately I can get them to follow one of my playlists immediately I can get them to I can get them to follow actually up to two other playlists and then that's just for Spotify I can get them to, they follow me on Apple, they follow me on all the other things.

1:03:01And it just boosts that, your numbers going into the release. And so now I built it so that every single time I release a song, I have 20 ,000 pre-saves built in. Wow. Where I'll just, I'll get 20 ,000 saves on release day and I'll get 20 ,000 playlist ads on release day. And 20 ,000 emails. 20 ,000 emails I've sent out to people telling the records out. Huge. And with Spotify and these algorithms on these streaming platforms, it really helps get it into the algorithm and boost it ahead of everything else. So yeah, pre-saves for me has just been a way of collecting data and making sure I can get things set up for future releases.

1:03:46And I funnel it into my Discord. So instead of running any sort of ad for my Discord, I just create these events and I post about it on my story. and then if you pre-save the landing page for my pre-save is my discord so once you pre-save it it automatically filters you to the discord and go it asks you if you want to join uh and i think i've gained like two to three thousand people just from that amazing that's incredible uh are you running these ads or what platform do you use for that or is this uh manager kind of handling that too i have an ad manager named uh chuck he's he's a cool guy um not michael i was hoping it was not Not Michael.

1:04:27That's too bad. All right. I'm asking him if he can legally change it. He just got married. That's a requirement for working with. You need to add. Your name needs to be some. Only Michael's in this house. First name or middle name. It has to be one of those two. Yeah. So you got somebody who runs the ads. Yeah. Awesome. And we were seeing like a crazy conversion on our ads. So we were seeing for like a pre-save, we were seeing like 60, we were seeing like 30 cents at a time. 30 cents per click on like a pre-save which was like unheard of so we were funneling some money there but I'm like I'm hesitant with the amount of money I spend because unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to play with just for ads will you know will putting ads into songs help?

1:05:19I don't know I don't know What's the ROI there? It's not even an ROI thing. If you have$100 ,000, let's just say to round out the number, each click costs you $1. Because that's what the average would end up being. You have$100 ,000, and the average cost per click is$1. Then you have $100 ,000. That's$100 ,000 clicks. So that's 100 ,000 people that are now getting onto your song. That's cool. That's 100 ,000 streams. Maybe some people listen to that twice, but that's 100 ,000 streams. Way less than$100 ,000. 0.0035 or whatever. Yeah. I mean, you're looking at like$350 or something like that. $350 of$100 ,000.

1:06:17Yeah. Yeah. And so you can't really look at it like that. Like you said, there's a forever pre-save type of thing. And like they'll pre-save into the ones in the future. They do send to your Discord and that. Like thinking about bringing them into community because then you're also getting their email. And so like, you know, I've heard people say that an email for some is worth like$36 an email based on what they're going to be spending when it comes to like merch or tickets or something like that. And so oftentimes people, you know, I was just talking with this, uh, this, um, touring, this like platform, uh, that, that does, it's almost like pre-saves for, for tours.

1:06:58It's kind of like before the shows are booked, it's kind of like you, you buy a ticket for your city, but they haven't actually announced the, uh, the venue in that city just to see how many tickets we're going to sell in the city. And then they book the venue. It was like, Oh, am I going to sell 50 tickets or 500? And that'll be the term. but what they get to do is they get their email when they you know get that ticket and they run this whole platform themselves and then because of that they were saying like yeah the value of each email that we get not even the ticket the email is like 36 bucks and so when you think about it like that it's like oh i can sell them merch down the line i can sell them a concert tickets and it's not just like how many streams am i gonna get but yeah no that's really smart that's great totally right on yeah yeah well jared you know this is uh we we gotta go jump in a cold shower both of us at this point so yeah i'm i'm i i've got like six more michaels to collect so they right right right go collect your michaels i'm gonna go jump in a cold shower i i appreciate you taking the time and chatting with this uh and uh yeah congratulations on everything and and i'm excited for the tour happening this fall um and and everything and and all uh all the music that you're making and and uh the great record that you just released and all of that so thank you for breaking that all down.

1:08:12It's super helpful and really inspiring to see everything that you've built and created. Dude, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Of course. Yeah, yeah, it was great. I have one final question that I ask everyone who comes on the show, and that is, what does it mean to you to make it in the new music business? What does making it mean to you?

1:08:33Making it is being able to pay my rent and being able to not just pay my rent, but feel like I made the right choice when I went all in with this. So I think that goal post is always gonna shift and change and I'm never actually, like I say that, but I'm not actually satisfied with anything ever. But based off my own metric, I have made it, which is kinda cool. That's awesome. So I'm just gonna keep pushing that goal post though, because I have made it. Hell yeah. Right on.