Ari Herstand

So as many of you know I was off the grid last month in New Orleans on a (book!) writing retreat. As much as I love LA, it's very difficult to block out all the distractions of my daily life and solely focus on a creative pursuit. Meetings and (acting) auditions come up and it's...

On December 28th, 2015 long-time streaming foe, David Lowery, who runs the Trichordist blog and fronts the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, filed a class-action lawsuit seeking at least $150 million in damages against Spotify. The lawsuit alleges that Spotify knowingly, wi...

I'm a 'curator' on Fluence. That means, if you want to pay me to listen and review your music (with the possibility of sharing it), you can pay me to do it. 80% of the submissions I get are not very good, 15% are good, but not great and then occasionally I receive something so st...

Giving away song downloads used to be the standard incentive to get people to sign up for your list. Now that fewer and fewer people want to download music, you have to come up with other incentives to get them to sign up. It's best to list on your website what the fan will get i...

I just finished playing mediator between two of my good friends. To protect the innocent, let's call them Jeremy and Jamie. Jeremy had shot a video for me and Jamie a couple years back. On shoot day there were about 10 people on set. We all had a long, albeit fun, day and the vid...

I got back last night at 5am. It was one of those special evenings that only happen once in a long while, but is so inspiring that it changes the course of your life. The night started off at Genghis Cohen. My buddy from Minneapolis (now in Nashville) Elliott Blaufuss (Eric Hu...

I need to start off by saying that an incredible album dropped last week. You should go and listen to Vulfpeck's Thrill of The Arts right now. It's funky. It grooves. It's soulful. There are some fantastic guest vocalists on there. And guitarist Blake Mills (producer of my favori...

I'm still buzzing from my show this past Saturday night. I performed at this new series in LA called The Shine. They've been described 'If TED Talk, Hotel Cafe and The Self-Realization Fellowship had a love child, it would be The Shine.' Pretty darn accurate. The Shine hosts bi-m...

One of the biggest complaints of Spotify from music's biggest fans is that the money they pay to the streaming service never actually reaches their favorite artists. If one of my fans with a $10/mo Spotify subscription plays my music exclusively for the month, it would make sen...

There's a lot of legal mumbo jumbo that goes along with obtaining the rights to get music in a podcast. Dealing with mechanical licenses, public performance licenses, direct licenses, on and on. Oh and if you overlay the music with talking, it's a SEPARATE license!Way too confusi...