This week on the New Music Business podcast, Ari is joined by the completely independent and incomparable neo-soul artist and producer, Madison McFerrin (recorded live at the Labelcoin x Roland House at SXSW last week).

Established in 2002, Blue Buddha Entertainment is a boutique music licensing firm.

With 560,000 registered artists, Bandsintown is one of the largest artist services platforms in the world. 97% of the Top 500 artists in America are active on the platform.

This week Ari answers more of your questions! If you’d like to submit to our next round of questions, please sign up to our email list: www.aristake.com

To celebrate the third edition of How to Make It In The New Music Business, the Ari’s Take team collaborated with Shuttershot Productions to capture Ari Herstand’s special interview and Q&A with the incomparable Theo Katzman (of Vulfpeck). This episode was recorded live at The Grove’s Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles on January 17th.

Danielle Allard is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Twitch Partner.

The Rare Occasions are an LA-based, New England-bred indie rock band known for their explosive garage rock anthems with catchy vocal harmonies. In 2021 the band released their first album as a trio, Big Whoop, which received significant press and radio play. Around the same time, their 2016 track “Notion” went viral on TikTok and continues to make waves, topping Spotify’s viral chart in the US and several other countries, and later landing on Billboard’s alternative charts and top 100 singles charts in the UK, Ireland, and Canada. The Rare Occasions released their new EP, Attaboy, on November 4th, 2022. The first single off the EP “Seasick” has already garnered the attention of radio DJs across the country including SiriusXM’s Alt Nation with the second single “Not Afraid” being an explosive follow up. After sharing Attaboy’s hard-hitting riffs, danceable grooves, and ear-catching melodies with audiences across the nation on their Fall 2022 headline tour, the band has shifted its efforts towards new music in 2023.

Jason Grishkoff started a music blog called Indie Shuffle back in 2007, when music blogs were still cool. After a 3-year stint at Google, he was lucky to take the blog full-time in 2013. From 2014 to 2015 digital advertising in the music industry changed rapidly, and a number of bloggers found themselves looking for alternative sources of income. Many gave up to focus on their day jobs, but Jason decided to double-down on his coding abilities and created a website called SubmitHub, where musicians, labels and publicists could submit their songs to blogs like Indie Shuffle. Flash forward to 2022 and nearly 30 million submissions have been submitted through the platform. Jason still runs the operation as the only developer, and the product is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the modern music promotion industry.

Shirley Halperin is an Executive Editor at Variety, where she spearheads music coverage for the print magazine and Variety.com.

The “music industry bible” by Ari Herstand has been widely adopted by music schools and universities across the world, inspiring tens of thousands of musicians to stop waiting around for that big break and take matters into their own hands.

This week on the New Music Business podcast, we are joined by Veteran booking agent Tom Windish. As Head of A&R and Business Development at Wasserman Music, Windish has developed the touring careers of some of the hottest names in music, including Billie Eilish, Lorde, alt-J and The xx. In this episode, Ari and Tom discuss the state of the live music industry, how booking agents operate, why tour buy-ins are unethical, the process of signing new artists, running a record label, and much more!

breaking down the current state of the touring landscape of both the micro and macro touring industry.

Joining us this week on the New Music Business is Kam Franklin, lead singer of the Houston-based soul band, The Suffers.

Our guest this week on the New Music Business is the multi-platinum songwriter and producer, Sam Hollander.

Our guest this week on the New Music Business is Dan Runcie, the founder of the podcast and research group Trapital.

In honor of our 100th episode celebration, Ari will be answering more of your music industry questions!

This week on the New Music Business, our guest is Jordan Anderson who is the new talent buyer for the legendary Troubadour in West Hollywood.

Joining us on the New Music Business this week is Shav “prettyboyshav” Garg, the CEO and co-founder of Indify. This innovative company connects emerging independent artists with the funding they need to build bigger careers.

This week on the New Music Business, our guest is Brandon Pankey, the Vice President of Business Development and Operations of Live Nation Urban.

Joining us this week on the New Music Business is Billboard’s music copyright reporter, Kristin Robinson. In this episode, Ari and Kristin dive deep into one of her latest articles ("How Did Two Unknown Latin Music Operators Make $23 Million From YouTube? The IRS Says They Stole It") and why it's more important than ever for artists to protect their works.

Our guest on the New Music Business this week is the talent buyer of the Brooklyn Bowl, Paul Bacher. In this episode, we dive into how the venue operates and books acts, how artists should be writing their booking emails, the current state of the live music industry, and much more!

Part two of Ari answering your music industry questions!

This week and next week, I’ll be answering your questions! If you’d like to submit to our next round of questions, please sign up to our email list at www.ArisTake.com.

Joining us this week on the New Music Business is the hit songwriter and producer, Bonnie McKee. Since the early 2000s, McKee has written 10 singles that have reached #1 in the US and UK, which have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide combined.

Our guest this week is Alex Ciccimarro, the Vice President of Marketing at RCA Records. In this episode, Ari and Alex dive deep into the digital marketing endeavors across Atlantic and RCA Records, why artists don’t need to be on all social media in order to be successful and how to embrace the future of music fans.

Joining us on the New Music Business is the CEO of Comedy Dynamics, Brian Volk-Weiss, who’s officially our first guest that does not exclusively work in the music industry. Given how parallel these two industries are, there are incredible revelations on how he operates the most successful independent comedy record label in the world.

Joining us this week is Mark Miller who is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Web3 company, Labelcoin, also known as “The Robinhood of music.” With the mission to eliminate artistic poverty, Mark breaks down how music fans will become investors and the benefits the app will have on artists’ careers.

Joining us this week is Sam Duboff, the Director and Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing at Spotify! In this episode, Ari and Sam dive deep into everything about Spotify for Artists’ promotional tools, editorial vs. algorithmic playlists, production credits, payment structure, and much more.

Our guest this week is music supervisor and Vice President of the Guild of Music Supervisors, Madonna Wade-Reed. Her credits include TV shows such as All American, Batwoman, American Crime, Reign, Blue Mountain State, Smallville, One Tree Hill, plus films such as 8-Bit Christmas, Lovesick, A Thousand Words and the documentary Let It Fall. In this episode, Madonna breaks down her responsibilities within new projects, why it’s vital for artists to educate themselves on licensing, as well as a closer look into why the music supervisors’ movement toward unionizing.

Our guest this week on the New Music Business is singer/songwriter Sammy Arriaga. Ari and Sammy dive deep into everything songwriting and his successful endeavors in the world of NFTs.

Our guest this week is Anne McKinnon, the co-founder and CEO of the web3 experience platform Ristband. In this episode, Ari and Anne break down everything musicians need to know about the ever-evolving metaverse and how exactly it’ll add value to artists’ careers.

This week on the New Music Business, our very own Ari’s Take Academy course instructor Carey Rayburn (Good Co. and Rayburn Entertainment) joins Ari to discuss Performing Arts Centers and how to best navigate your live career within the Special Events market.

This week on the New Music Business, Ari is joined by Lyle Hysen and Kyra Wendel of the sync licensing agency, Bank Robber Music. They discuss everything from how they organize and pitch playlists, what today’s sync fees are looking like, negotiations with record labels and publishing companies, the best pitching methods, and much more!

This week on the New Music Business podcast features Bob Babisch, the Vice President of Entertainment for the glorious Summerfest. Following its 1968 debut, Summerfest has evolved into what is now recognized as “the World’s Largest Music Festival” and Milwaukee’s cornerstone summer celebration with approximately 800k people. Babisch manages tens of millions of dollars in the entertainment budget for Summerfest on an annual basis, and has worked with a plethora of artists over his 46 years in the music industry, from The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga and Kanye West.

This week on the New Music Business, the 4-piece Georgia band Walden breaks down their fully independent and successful Where’s Walden Tour that grossed $80k and carried them across the entire U.S. with only a $50 budget.

Enrollment is NOW OPEN for Ari’s Take Academy! In this episode of the New Music Business, we’ve got all the ATA instructors together to discuss the current state of the music industry. We also invited our community to be a part of this special live round table discussion, so be sure to stick around for the Q&A at the end. To learn more about ATA, please visit: https://aristakeacademy.com and use code NMB for 10% off!

Nonstop Management founder and principal Jaime Zeluck Hindlin has signed, shepherded, and spearheaded the success of numerous GRAMMY® Award-winning multi-platinum songwriters and producers. In 2018, the roster ignited smashes such as Meghan Trainor’s “No Excuses” and “Let You Be Right,” XXXTentacion’s “Numb,” Jason Mraz’s “Have It All,” Young The Giant’s “Simplify,” and more as well as singles for Alesso, Bebe Rexha, Jack & Jack, Zara Larsson, and BTS.

This week on the New Music Business, I interviewed the multi-faceted Benoni Tagoe. As the president of Issa Raes’ music label and supervision agency, Raedio, Tagoe breaks down the “audio everywhere” company, what it means to develop an artist, as well as his experiences supervising shows such as Insecure and The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

In this week’s episode, I spoke with artist NEFFEX and his manager Ryan Sullivan. We breakdown NEFFEX’s impression release strategy in which he successfully released one copyright free song a week (yes, you read that right!) to eventually surpassing 4 billion DSP streams all independently. We also dive into his previous record deal with 12Tone Music, embracing TikTok’s open verse challenges as well as how he expanded his role as a songwriter and producer.

This week on the New Music Business, I spoke with the co-founder and partner at Brilliant Corners Artist Management, Jordan Kurland. Artists such as Death Cab for Cutie, Toro Y Moi, She & Him, Best Coast, Soccer Mommy, Real Estate, New Pornographers, and Pup are all amongst their diverse talent roster. We discussed what the role of an artist management entails, his history working with Death Cab, building career artists without relying on TikTok, as well as the best methods for artists who are seeking management.

Ryan Chisholm is the General Manager of Work of Art Management, as well as the Senior Vice President of Arista Records’ West Coast division. At WoA, the company currently represents notable artists such as Mike Posner, Trevor Daniel, Verzache, Tai Verdes, Wes Period and MILCK. Prior to WoA and Arista Records, Chisholm worked with Nettwerk Music Group under their Artist MGMT and A&R department. In this episode, we dove into Tai Verdes’ musical journey, the significance of TikTok, influencer marketing deals and gaining leverage with the major labels.

This week on the New Music Business, I spoke with Pink Noise’s business manager Khloe Churko, alongside tax preparer and fellow podcaster Stephanie Belcher. We dive deep into the weeds of music industry finances including bookkeeping, 1099s, LLCs versus S Corps, DBAs, how PROs pay artists, and so much more!

Trousdale is a pop-folk trio born out of the USC's popular music program, consisting of band members Quinn D'Andrea, Georgia Greene and Lauren Jones. In this episode of the New Music Business, we discussed what their creation process entails, self-producing their last releases, as well as how they stayed productive during the pandemic and successfully embraced TikTok.

Over the past two decades, David’s work as a performer, talent scout, publicist, and programmer has led him to work closely with an enormous range of artists from the emerging to superstars, playing a pivotal role in artist development and content strategy. With indie rock quartet The Middle Eight from 2007-2016, David performed hundreds of shows, most memorably at The Kennedy Center in DC and in the major motion picture ‘The Rebound.' Most recently, his work as Head of Artist & Label Relations at Vevo has helped to shed light on some of the most talented new artists working today.

More Fatter is an indie-funk pop band from San Francisco, California, currently based in Los Angeles. During the summer of 2021, they embarked on a fully-independent statewide tour performing primarily in backyards. On this episode, half of the band members Tommy and Théo join Ari to discuss exactly how they successfully pulled this off, and share some very insightful tour stories throughout.

Talya Elitzer is the co-founder of Godmode, a GRAMMY-nominated artist development company whose label and management clients include genre-breaking artists like Channel Tres, JPEGMAFIA, and Yaeji. Prior to Godmode, Elitzer was a Senior A&R at Capitol Records (Katy Perry, Sam Smith, Beck), and a previous booking agent for WME (Britney Spears, Grace Jones) and Mick Management (John Mayer, Sarah McLachlan). At Godmode, Elitzer takes an unorthodox approach to artist development and marketing, with an unusually high track record for breaking artists who don't quite fit into pre-existing formats. She focuses on building sustainable operations for her artists, so they can maintain an uncompromising approach to their work.

Dan Mangan is the co-founder of Side Door, the “any space is a venue” marketplace platform that matches creatives with spaces to host shows anytime and anywhere they choose.

On this episode, Ari breaks down the whole Spotify issue of the moment and why the music industry seems to be up in arms. He discusses the discrepancy between streams and sales, why the per-stream rate is the wrong conversation to be having, how songwriters can get paid more from streaming, why everyone’s anger is misguided, how indie artists can monetize their audience, and how many artists are actually earning $10,000+ from Spotify royalties.

Hilary Gleason is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Backline, a non-profit that provides free mental health and wellness resources to music industry professionals and their families. In this episode, Hilary breaks down Backline’s positive impact within the industry, and the various programs they offer such as weekly support groups over Zoom as well as therapy through their Case Management Program.

Griffin Haddrill is the co-founder and CEO of the leading viral marketing agency, VRTCL, providing marketing services for some of today's most popular artists. In this episode, he also discusses ways independent musicians can leverage TikTok in their own careers.

Justin Vibes is a multi-platinum songwriter, producer, vocalist, and vibraphonist. In this episode, he discusses how he went viral on TikTok, incorporating the vibraphone into mainstream music, and his career as a solo artist and collaborator.

Marty Silverstone is Head of Sync at Primary Wave, overseeing licensing activity for Primary Wave’s music publishing and management clients. With staff in Los Angeles and New York, the dynamic Primary Wave Sync team is a key part of Primary Wave’s proactive marketing approach, constantly creating new opportunities and driving big ideas for music in film/TV, advertising, video games, and other visual media.

Ifiok Effanga, professionally known as Fiokee, dubbed as Africa’s No1 sensational Guitarist is a Nigerian talent who hails from Akwa Ibom. He is known for his treble guitar solos infused with highlife steeped guitar lines. Fiokee is associated with acts such as Tiwa Savage, Yemi Alade, Patoranking, Reekado...

Self-produced British composer and recording artist for over 20 years, Imogen Heap has released five solo albums, another as one half of Frou Frou and collaborated with countless and varied artists including Taylor Swift, Nitin Sawhney, Deadmau5, Eric Whitacre, Jeff Beck and Jon Hopkins.

Ritt Momney (real name Jack Rutter) is a 21-year-old musician who went viral on TikTok at the end of 2020 for his song "Put The Records On."

Today my guest is David Potter of the band Stand Atlantic out of Sydney, Australia. This is the first guest on the show from the pop punk music scene.

Most know this week's guest, Cory Wong, as the guitar player for Vulfpeck, but he's also played in Jon Batiste's band for Stephen Colbert's late night show as well as Blake Shelton and others.

Daniel McCarthy is the CEO of FM, which includes the music platform Musicbed. It's one of the more popular sync hybrid platforms.

Noble are a production duo originally from South Africa now residing in Los Angeles. They recently signed a publishing deal with Campfire Songs.

Alexandre Williams is the co-founder and COO of Create Music Group. They're a distribution, publisher, YouTube royalty collection, rights management, influencer, and TikTok (through Flighthouse) marketing company.

Michael Walker is keyboardist for the band Paradise Fears, who made headlines years ago for a thing they called "tour hacking."

Austin Georgas is the senior account manager at Flighthouse Media. They are a full on influencer and media agency that help break songs on TikTok. They've worked on previous campaigns like Doja Cat's "Say So."

Joe Conyers III is the EVP and Global Head of NFTs at Crypto.com. He's also the co-founder of Songtrust, the largest admin music publisher.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) came out of the Music Modernization Act (MMA). Spotify and other DSPs dumped all of this unclaimed money into the MLC. 

VÉRITÉ is an artist who has had over 350 million streams all independently. She has never signed to a label. She discusses why she stayed independent her entire career.

Jenn Miller and I talk about what it's like running a sync agency and the kinds of briefs she is seeing these days, the price ranges, and what Audiosocket is doing specifically. She also gives great advice on how to be successful in sync licensing.

You may know Ricky Montgomery from his Vine days. You may know him from his band The Honey Sticks. Or you may know him because a few of his songs went viral on TikTok in 2020. This led to a massive bidding war amongst 50 major labels.

Blackbox is a marketing agency that has worked with Andra Day, JP Saxe, Best Coast, Christina Perri, Dirty Honey, Jesse McCartney.

Jessica Severn, for 7 years, worked at Scooter Braun's company, SB Projects, doing creative direction. She spearheaded the campaigns of Shawn Mendes's "Wonder" and Justin Bieber's stuff over the past decade.

Winslow Bright is a music supervisor or music producer at Search Party Music. They do really big campaigns like Sephora, Beyond Burger, Calvin Klein, Mini Cooper, and many more.

Lindsay Wolfington is a music supervisor and initially broke into the music supervisor world when supervising for One Tree Hill.

DJ Swivel is a producer, engineer, songwriter, most notably for BTS, Beyonce, The Chainsmokers, Mary J Blige, Kanye West, Fabolous, Bow Wow, Redman, Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Mariah Carey. The list goes on.

Today my guest is Felicia Bennett. She is an artist manager and formerly a tour manager. She now manages Tanerélle, the breakout R&B artist. This last year they've had an incredible year.

Ari Nisman and I talk about how the college entertainment market works; how the military booking market works; how much they pay for all of that; and how much each booking earns. Surprisingly they're paying guarantees. You're not having to worry about promoting those shows. So we break all of that down.

This episode is in honor of Black History Month because Jonathan Azu and I had a really illuminating conversation about how to repair racial inequities in the music business.

Dina LaPolt is one of the most well respected, well known music attorneys in the world. The amount of awards she has is unfathomable: Hollywood Reporter, Billboard's Power 100, Variety, MIDEM, Recording Academy, GRAMMYs. She's also been the attorney for 2Pac's estate, deadmau5, 21 Savage, Britney Spears, and Steven Tyler.

Brian Vickers works on the in-house trailer department at Disney, which they call "The Hive." He's worked on a number of Disney films, including The Avengers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi & The Rise of Skywalker, Black Panther, Soul, Hamilton, Frozen II, Black is King.

My guest today is Tracy Patrick Chan. He is currently the Head of Music at Twitch. He is the top honcho; the dude; he's the guy in charge of the direction of all things music at Twitch. He started at Twitch at the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020.

After Mothica's song went viral on TikTok, she gained a lot of traction on streaming platforms. She garnered more than 25 million streams on Spotify in 2020.

Anwar and I talk about being a producer/songwriter and writing thousands of songs and even how he got his publishing deal. We also talk about developing Audrey Nuna.

This episode is for all of you orchestra nerds out there. I'm guilty of that. I played in an orchestra for most of my life. For those of you who don't know, I'm a trumpet player. I love going to the LA Phil and love orchestra music. It features Nu Deco Ensemble founders Sam Hyken and Jacomo Bairos.

Clare Means is a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter. She got her start performing on the Santa Monica Pier. Now she's known for her success on the livestreaming platforms, specifically Twitch, Facebook, YouTube Live, and Periscope. She's actually one of the most watched musicians on Periscope.

Marshall Betts is an agent formerly of Paradigm, but after Paradigm dissolved its entire music division and laid off hundreds of employees he along with a few of his co-workers at Paradigm launched a new agency... TBA Agency. Get it?

Nick Gatfield has been in the music industry for decades. He was a major label executive for 25 years, most recently Sony Music UK, which he left in 2014. He's worked at various majors over the years, including Universal and EMI. He was there when they signed Radiohead and was also part of Amy Winehouse's team.

Victoria Canal and I discuss how she's been handling quarantine. 2020 was supposed to be her breakout year. She had two massive tours scheduled. She had just finished one supporting the band Tall Heights. Then she leveled up to an even bigger tour supporting Leslie Odom Jr. She also just came out with her EP, 'Victoria,' and as you can imagine, the release strategy changed quite a bit. So we talked about that.

The music community got a major win when California governor Gavin Newsom signed AB2257 into law, the bill I and so many others, namely the organization I helped found, Independent Music Professionals United, helped write and get passed to save the California music economy from collapse.

Rogét Chahayed is a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter whose songs have sold over 30 million copies. He's worked with some of the biggest names in the business, including Halsey, Travis Scott, Drake, Miguel, G-Eazy, Ke$ha, Calvin Harris, Carly Rae Jepsen, and more. I talk with him and his manager, Greg Katz, to get the production side as well as the business side.

In this episode I talk with Malaysian singer Yuna, Ben Willis, and Carlo Fox, the founders of indie-pop!, a management company based out of Los Angeles. This is the first time I've had a conversation with three people at once for the show. Yuna was coming to us from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Ben and Carlo tuned in from Los Angeles.

Emily Kinney is an actress, musician, and podcast host. Most people know her as an actress who starred in The Walking Dead from 2011-2015, Masters of Sex, The Flash, Arrow, Law & Order: SVU, and many others. She was also in Spring Awakening on Broadway.

In this episode I discuss the controversy surrounding the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek’s comment: "You can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough." I also go into how Spotify’s payment model actually works and if it’s fair or not.

Allie X is a Canadian singer-songwriter and artist who's been living in LA for the last few years. She is an incredibly talented artist and has over 100 million streams and 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

John Fung is the CEO and co-founder of The Music Fund, a startup company that issues advances to artists for their streaming revenue. They're not a record label even though labels are typically the ones offering advances to artists. They are innovating and disrupting in the music industry, and John goes over their business model.

Jonathan Azu is an artist manager for artists like Cory Henry, Luke James, Emily King, and Michelle Williams among others. He used to be the executive vice president and general manager of Red Light Management. He is also a two-time Billboard magazine 40 Under 40 power player. Over a year ago, he launched his own management company called Culture Collective.

Laura Escudé is a fantastic violinist, producer, and Ableton's first ever official certified trainer. She was hired by Ableton to teach people how to use Ableton Live. She then went on to tour with artists like Kanye West and Herbie Hancock.

Nick Bearden has played thousands of shows with Jamestown Revival, but we go heavy on the business side of managers, where he shares a story on one of the shadiest managers I've ever heard of. We also discuss how freelancers operate.

Bina Fronda is the marketing director for Ultra Records. Ultra Records has released artists like Steve Aoki, Alexandra Stan, Alan Walker, Lost Frequencies, and more.

Seth Kallen is an artist manager for JP Saxe, X Ambassadors, Jukebox The Ghost, and many others. He talks about how to get opening slots on tours and how he was relentless early on. We discussed creating during quarantine, sync licensing, and touring.

We talk about what it's like running our careers and writing music during COVID-19 and quarantine. We hear from all of the Ari's Take Academy instructors, including Lucidious (Streaming & Instagram Growth), Vo Williams (Advanced Sync Strategies for Film, TV and Video Games), Kristen Mathe (Cracking Colleges), Andrew Spalter (Breaking China), and Allyson Toy (Breaking China).

Ari Herstand's thoughts on what this moment and movement surrounding Black Lives Matter, #DefundThePolice and the death of George Floyd requires of white people. Namely musicians.

Kevin Garrett is an extremely talented R&B, Neo-soul, and soul songwriter. It was such a treat to speak with him. Famously, he's Grammy-nominated for writing Beyonce's track "Pray You Catch Me" from her 'Lemonade' album.