Spotify for Artists Event // ASCAP // bandcamp uploads
On Tuesday (May 21st) I attended an event hosted by Spotify for Artists, with guest speakers from different areas of the music industry. The MC was dublab co-founder and creative director, Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and the speakers included music supervisor Morgan Rhodes (Dear White People, Selma), tour director Christian Coffey (Childish Gambino), face-less founder Amit Nerurkar, and QLEEN founder Sharell Jeffrey.
I was only able to hear from two speakers due to space and time restrictions, but they were both eye-opening. First I heard from Morgan Rhodes, who began her music career as a radio DJ and is now a prominent music supervisor. Morgan’s most profound advice to independent artists looking for sync opportunities was “NO SAMPLES!” Everyone fell silent as if every producer in the room had been called out en masse. Rhodes followed up with a quip about loving beat culture and everything was fine. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with sampling to create music, but when it comes to licensing sample-filed tracks for other uses, it’s a full stop. This brought Morgan to the next topic of rights ownership and clearing tracks for use in film, television, and advertisements. If you don’t own the rights to 100% of your song and master recording, it creates a problem when it’s time to get legal approvals from large agency lawyers. Therefore music supervisors are looking for tracks with as few rights owners as possible. So once you’ve checked off the “no samples” box, it’s time to be discovered.
The best way to get your song discovered by music supervisors is by registering with a PRO (performing rights organization). PROs also collect songwriting royalties on your behalf, chasing anyone who has played your music in public and getting you paid. In the United States, there are three big PROs: BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. I am a member of ASCAP, but I encourage you to do your research before choosing to join any one of these societies. Another way music supervisors discover your music is through your Bandcamp page. So this week I’ve been rushing to get all my latest releases up on my Bandcamp page and looking good for people to discover.
The second speaker I heard from was Christian Coffey, tour director for Childish Gambino. From the outset you could tell that Spotify needed him more than he needed Spotify, and he had a lot of great advice for musicians considering touring. His expertise is in planning and executing live events for clients who perform for large audiences across the globe. Spotify is a digital platform looking to give artists a better reason to go to it not only for distribution, but for advice on how to market their music once it’s distributed.
The biggest takeaway for me was that touring in and of itself is not a good idea unless you have something to promote, or you have an audience begging for you to come out to its city. Otherwise, who will you play to? What message are you trying to hit home? There must be good reasons to go out and tour, and you must be prepared with materials to promote.
Overall the Spotify for Artists event was worth attending. I learned some things that I didn’t know before and got to speak with some experienced members of the music industry. My sense is that Spotify uses these events to build positive rapport with independent artists, and extend a hand in navigating the confusing world of music distribution and promotion. However, the production at these events was highly conspicuous. Professional audiovisual crews captured photos and video footage of engaged crowds of artists and the speakers the entire time. Much of the content that was captured has emerged over the last six months in the forms of Spotify marketing. So yes, the event was a positive experience for Spotify-verified artists and I hope to attend more events like this. I just get the feeling that Spotify’s true motive was to create “organic assets” for a larger digital marketing campaign. And now I can’t even remember…did I sign something before I entered the event?