Management

You can create a way for fans to save your song to their library or playlist in advance of the release. Why do this? If Spotify notices that your song gets a ton of saves or playlists on day 1, it will trigger their algorithms and potentially pop your song into various algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly, Radio, Your Daily Mix, Releaser Radar, Radio, etc. And the more saves a song gets, the more likely a Spotify playlist editor will add it to a playlist.

Photo: Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee California is on fire. But this economic blaze will ignite abruptly on January 1st and will affect the California music industry so drastically that it could completely burn it down. As the fifth largest economy in the world and the...

Let’s just start by saying the US copyright office needs to hire better web developers.I just went through the painstaking process of their electronic filing system. Although it has been updated over the years, the website looks and functions like it was built in 2003. It is no...

I try to listen to The Daily podcast by the New York Times every day. Mostly I’ll put it on at the gym or in the car. I’m all about multi-tasking. Who has time to do just one, singular thing anymore?! The Daily is a really good, in-depth look at the top stories of the day. Of...

Because of my digital distribution comparison piece, I act as de facto customer service rep for all 16 companies I reviewed (yay me).I lovingly try to let these artists and managers know that each company has their own customer service department at their disposal. But if they do...

It seems every artist is trying to figure out how to get their songs licensed to TV shows, film, trailers and commercials. And rightfully so, there can be a lot of money in it. But it’s not easy. And there are only so many placement opportunities. Only so many songs each TV sh...

Over the course of my 600 shows I've hired 9 drummers, 9 bassists, 7 guitarists, 5 keyboardists, 5 singers, 4 trumpet players, 2 trombonists, 2 saxophonists, 2 cellists and 3 violinists. Not to mention the various session players for recordings.I've also been hired as a trumpet p...

I’m still about 300 emails behind from what I missed at SXSW. I completely forgot to turn on the vacation responder when I left. Only a couple people freaked out at my delay. When I'm at a music conference it's impossible to keep up with any work not pertaining directly to the...

There’s a moment that every musician experiences when you get what you think could be the final masters back from the mastering engineer. You sit in your car with extremely close friends. And you confide in them that this is your new song off of your new album. You spent the be...

I just left the studio last week where we finished the final tracking for my new funk project's debut record. For the past 8 months or so I have been working on this record on and off. My producer, co-front person and I tracked (mixed and mastered) one song to figure out if we we...