NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING

I’ve spent most of my adult life in the music industry.

I’ve worked with tiny artists… I’ve worked with major artists.

Built companies that failed… helped build a company that got acquired by Universal.

I’ve worked with indie labels… worked with major labels.

Made records nobody listened to… and made records millions of people listened to.

Toured to rooms with no one waiting for me… toured to rooms of thousands.

Taught. Consulted. Created.

And here’s one of the most liberating things I’ve learned:

Nobody… NOBODY… really knows what’s going to work.

We have experience. We have pattern recognition. And some people have very good instincts.

But, man… nobody knows.

And I think we independent artists would be a lot happier (and probably make much more interesting work) if we remembered that.

We’re constantly being told:

You need to post every day.
You need short-form content.
You need more streams before anyone will book you.
You need a manager.
You need a label.
You need to make your songs shorter.
You need to feed the algorithm.
You need to do whatever supposedly worked for somebody else six months ago!!

I mean… maybe.

But every time everyone starts running in one direction, I find myself increasingly interested in looking the other way.

They zig. I zag.

And that’s what this email is about.

I’m gonna share things I’m learning while actively building a life as an independent artist… experiments I’m running, things that worked, things that absolutely didn’t, interesting shit I’m seeing in music and technology, and occasionally something I think the conventional wisdom gets completely wrong.

No guru shit.
No “10 ways to grow your Spotify.”

Just one working artist reporting back from the field.

Sometimes I’ll be right. Shit, sometimes I’ll prolly be hilariously wrong lol.

But that’s part of the point.

Welcome to The Zag.