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hey Damian! i love your videos! id love to see something on how to bring a music career to the next level. say we've followed all your advice: content, collabs, etc, and I hypothetically have 50k followers -- what next? what are the options? how do i go on tour, do i want a label, how do i keep up that momentum? would really appreciate your advice!

If I’m releasing a single in 90 days what month should I start this 23 day plan ?

Watching your videos has made me appreciate bands like King Gizzard even more. They do a lot for upcoming artists getting taking them on tours, holding a fest where the other bands can get exposure and make money from King Gizz's existing cred.....or someone like Kevin Parker producing Pond's earlier albums and helping them with gear and shit.

Problem is the consumer doesn’t care about how much an artist is getting paid, we just want as much music at a reasonable price. Spotify knows this and so they can set any rule they choose for the artist to get paid, so long as it doesn’t affect the BOTTOM LINE

People are jerks, without intelligence, passion or empathy.

See that the last comments are about a year ago but anyway. My trigger would be the album issue. I do believe in only release singel albums on Spotify etc but my experience is that people actually still by CD's Released a couple of songs and then my album in September 2023 , Yes I was connected with a label who wanted to do it that way (Not anymore, ended that collaboration and that was one of the reasons) Still, I have made more money selling CD's on gigs than I have received from all the DSP's together so I still believe in CD and Vinyl as a compliment if you can afford the initial cost making them of course. Above that I think your spot on as always, even though some of it is "hard truth" Really enjoy your videos, they are incuraging indeed Thank you !! //C

I’ve been involved in music since 1982! My face and voice is super famous but I never got a dime for any of it! Performers got up and performed it etc etc but us behind the scenes just keep getting screwed by the record labels not some algorithm!

Yes BUT.. the algorithms are the key factor... .. we should get a fair shake at being heard

They certainly control the market and it's pretty tragic trying to be a musician these days. It all sucks

I've watched a lot of your videos and this is by far one of my favourites. Just real, well balanced and objective views. For me the infrastructure has to address THREE things: 1. Distribution: We have no problems here as you can get your music global using DSP's for relatively cheap 2. Marketing: This is where it complicated. Most artists aren't good at this but they can learn and certainly suceed 3. MONETISATION: This is the where the rubber meets the road and the infrastructure breaks down. There just isn't any one way for regular talented indie artists to monetise their music using the current infrastructure that exists. So even if their marketing is on point, they're still left struggling to pay the bills and maintain growth. The solution required really has to come from artists. People thought Tidal was going to do somethig but they just weren't innovative enough. Basically a more expensive Spotify. What we need is a totally radical reimagining and restructuring of the way in which artists do those three things above. Controlling your distribution, having a better idea of what your marketing is doing (understand audience demographics is key), and learning how to monetise from that audience. This is doable but it'll take some work.

I thing you are spot on, Daniel Ek put his foot in his mouth but Spotify have also done good things, believe their "Discovery Weekly" is a great thing introducing me to artists I never would have listen to otherwise. Above that they were also doing a good job when the streaming was introduced and the "Pirates" almost killed it.(Correct me if I'm wrong) I'm a 59 yr young Independent Essential Working Musician who was very active in the 80's and beginning of the 90's when I was sure I would become a great rock star....kind of. Well life came in between with "civil" career and kids but 30 years later I'm back and have to learn the new ways.... With this I guess I want to say that I have seen the experienced the "old" way when without a record deal there was no chance that you could afford to make an album, now almost everyone can do it, which is both good and bad I guess. I'm all behind your thoughts about the infrastructure and the dog eat dog situation, there should really be some kind of artist union available. After all if you don't have a good basic foundation you can not have an elite in the top so in the long run the big players in this industry will shoot themselves in the foot as there will be no "grassroots to raise the flowers" sort of speak, we all depend on each other somehow. However I want to believe that in the end real music will win over content music, maybe we need a new Punk rock revolution kind of... Sorry, this became so long but anyway, If you establish some kind of union, count me in... //C

I’m still on my first band, we’re doing good but I’d like all the good advice and examples I need.

Always appreciate your idealism and optimism, Damian 😊

Great video, much confirmed insight. Have you checked out @Producelikeapro? I consider Warren to have a vast wealth of not only knowledge and education, but a large community of aspiring creatives where help is a short question away. Very responsive! They don't pay me to say that & aren't aware that I am writing this, either. You were spot on in this video about the void in the business! Labels used to loan marketing pushes, TOURING advances, and asset assistance in general. It costs money to make merch and tour when you don't have a big ticket budget! I have heard that Spotify is a 5 way partnership, or a council of the 5 majors? If so, they decided to team up against the artists, whom are their products? Seems extremely counter productive on their end. I love the positive energy! Keep doing more of these videos, cheers 😎

Damian - great take. I’d say my only concern is people can’t really listen to me as a collective whole unless I have an album. If I have an album or EP, they can hear everything, all at once. if it’s just a single, maybe they come to my profile, stream it, don’t like it, and are gone. Idk, that’s my biggest worry about an album (and I’m an artist with <1K monthly too so don’t have the #s to back up an album via “total spins” as you suggested)

Herding cats! :)

There's no silver bullet answer for this, in my eyes being a software developer as a job - music creation saturation has only just begun and it will get worse before it gets better - it needs to get to a point where creating 1,000 shallow AI-perfect songs in 5 minutes at the touch of a button is not worth anything, then people doing that will move on to the next technology trend as they can't make money out of it. it happens a lot in tech industries like e.g. mobile phone apps, it gets to a point where it's not worth bothering with. The same is happening with photo AI imaging, but people who love making music and do it for the love of it will get through it, originality will prevail.

I started my music journey right as the pandemic hit, never having sung for anyone else much less perform on-stage. Now, I have my own band where I sing and play bass, but what really helped me was joining a community of musicians through the School of Rock and their adult band program. Also, some Austin female musicians recently formed an open group where we meet up in person as well as online and share our knowledge, resources (social media strategies, who to contact to book venues, what grants to apply for and how to win them, etc) , and attend each others’ shows as well as promote them. It’s only the beginning for us and I’m so excited for what we can do to help the female music community especially.

I don’t have a problem with criticizing Spotify or streaming services in general. I buy physical product.

I know this vid is four years old, but I'm seeing it for the first time, so...worst gig: New Zealand, 1992. I was a drummer asked to sit in with a band that had a drummer, but the drummer didn't want to do the gig, because he was Maori and it was playing an outlaw biker gang rally. The gang was called the Outriders or something like that. Racist Hell's Angels type group. The promised money was good (NZ$1000 each) and I needed it, so I agreed. It started OK. We were supposed to play from dusk until about 2am. We did that, they fed us, gave us breaks, etc. But the gang got more and more drunk and high and as they did so, they got friendlier and friendlier, in their own drunken outlaw biker sort of way. We got close to the end of the gig, we'd exhausted our set, and we started putting away gear when the guy who hired us (I guess) came up and asked us to play "a bit" more. We told him we didn't have any more to play but he just said "Play it again". He wasn't going to let us leave. And then breaks were not allowed. And then we were basically forced to drink and take drugs (pot, hash oil, coke, thank god no injections), and we had to keep going. It HAD to be a mess. WE were a mess. At a certain point, my memory gets hazy and then just blacks out. A couple hours after sunup, they let us leave. Paid us NZ$3000 each and we were MESSED UP. No hospitalizations though. I don't remember how we got home. There were no mobiles in those days. But holy hell. I don't think any of us thought we were going to be allowed to live. And then it was over. I was 26 or 27 years old.

Maybe striving for a "career" in music just really isn't a promising model. Maybe we should start thinking about making music only for ourselves plus a small local community instead of trying to make a living from touring or hoping for the big numbers. Maybe the big companys are too greedy, yes but that just will not change. But we as artists can change our mind. But that means stopping to compare ourselves with the stars and stopping to downplay the value of the amateur scene. It's not only ok to make music on the side, you can definitely be a great musician and have fans even if your reach and time is limited.

to a certain extent we need to live in our own private idaho(s) and hold onto standards dear to us...keeps the 🧠right

Thank you for all this information, loved the longer form content :)

The famous Zig Ziglar said "you can have everything in life that you want if you help enough other people get what they want." This is one of the mottos I live by. Not only am I a musician- rock drummer, but I also am a filmmaker. I created a documentary titled The Salt Lake Strip which is on Tubi. Its about the history of rock music in salt lake city, utah during the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Though I am a small part of that scene, I made the focus about other musicians, not at all about me. I got THEIR stories told, I got THEM listed on IMDb. Some of the musicians are deceased. I still got them recognized and more in the public eye. My name is listed as the director of the movie, but that's where it ends. It was all about other people's stories getting told. Goes back to "you can have everything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want."

imagine Mike Tyson see's this and says "challenge accepted"

Elon musk is probably the only artist able to make product end with a fiery blast of flames with someone locked inside it, and still get away with it

20% tax on tier 1 artists ticket sales ringfenced for investment into local venues plus subsidies on alcohol duty and energy costs would be a good start.

Enjoyed this. I worked in the UK music industry throughout the 90s (in club and radio promotions) and yes, there are more opportunities now but the traditional methods are much harder. It's harder to be entrepreneurial in the ways the indie labels were in the 80s (Some Bizarre/Mute/Factory, etc.). Young people of 17/18 started clubs and magazines (even Smash Hits was started by youngsters and the Carnaby St offices cost peanuts compared to premises these days). Access to music is ubiquitous now too so you have less dedicated platforms in the way TOTP or The Word/The Tube was. Even the big fish are mere Blue Whales in the Pacific Ocean now. The infrastructure is needed but all art needs to be given more credibility and educational value because that's where it's slowly drifting. Successive governments care less and prioritise less. Maybe this video can help develop a trust, funded by A list artists and major record companies that can filter down to grass roots?

Music was desrtoyed by copyright claims on social media and youtube. You won't hear cool new tracks in some gaming video or on stream. And if you can't hear them in media you pay attention to - they literally do not exist to you. Even in movies you only hear nirvana and the doors remixes over and over again, because they're the cheapest to include in movie.

We all are looking at this from a wrong perspective. Nope. It's not us that's the problem. It's broken money. Everything get more and more "expensive" as actualyl our money is being devalued, on purpose by the central banks. Thry print currencies into oblivion and thus devalue it. That appears as everything more and more expensive. It's not a music industry problem, but money problem. Read maybe "Broken Money" by Lyn Alden.

Hit the nail on the head every time mate👏👏👏 you’re a great inspiration!

A while back I came to the conclusion that artists who started in a collective have the most certain, wholesome and least mentally damaging path to success. For many reasons: many artists move to a city to make it so need a second family, learning with other artists makes for far fewer dead angles, you can more easily divide work to the ones who are most skilled at various tasks. And once one makes it, pulls the rest with them. From all artists’ breakout stories I’ve always found this common thread: them having or forming a very strong community at the start - friends, college mates, local artists/creatives etc. To me, that’s just the way to go and it’s baffling how many (including myself for ages) attempt to go at it alone!

The more work we do for our own careers, the less other people are able to do that work. I try to outwork my peers by 100x. If they upload 5 tik toks I upload 500 in a week or whatever the metric is. Enough 100x and you eventually get noticed and yea people have noticed me I'm everywhere. Thanks for the videos I've been following you for awhile, love your style and mental aesthetic.

Some excellent points and I could hear you talking about us when you get to the gig and the first thing you do is judge the other bands lol. I love the community idea. Too often we have all been about who is getting further and it's getting us all no-where. Im thinking of getting 6 like minded bands together and starting a 'club" (not the right word) but a group of like minded where we all try and support each other. Look at finding a venue that will give us a Friday night once a month to put on shows between the six bands and have at least them attend and bring their mates but make it a club. Try somehow to make it desirable to be a part of that club and grow it from there. What's the worst that can happen. lol

I see a Tik Tok video of an average person dancing clumsily while mouthing to a short clip of a pop song, with 1.4 million likes, while my 1 minute clip of me finger-picking an original tune(that my friends and family like a lot) gets 300 likes. There has been a huge cultural shift and I don't really fit in. I don't think people will begin to appreciate real musical talent until the AI, micro attention phase runs its course.

Do it for yourself dont make music to please, or impress people most people are braindead souless that dont desever anything.

I would love a video explaining how you follow trends in music and how we can, I’ve always loved release strategy videos you make, but can you make a video on how we can do our own market research?

Ek became exactly what he hated

why is the quality so low though????

None of my friends like Daniel Ek

Disrepectul but true.

Another drop from Damian “Doomsday” Keyes

Also you need to not be “paneled”

I speak out against Damian Keyes' recent video, which I believe is a betrayal of his core audience and a blatant contradiction of his own teachings. His claim that the music industry's inequality issue lies solely with artists' lack of understanding and effort is not only misguided but also harmful. Let me dissect his flawed arguments: 1. "Spotify is not the only one to blame". While true, this deflects from the core issue of exploitative practices within the industry. Spotify, as a dominant platform, holds a significant responsibility in ensuring fair compensation for artists. By downplaying their role, Keyes minimizes the urgent need for systemic change. 2. "Artists should focus on playing the game." This perpetuates the myth that success in the music industry is solely dependent on individual hustle and ignores the structural barriers faced by independent artists. It places undue burden on artists who are already struggling to navigate a complex and often unfair system. 3. "The music industry lacks infrastructure to support upcoming artists." Ironically, this is the very problem Keyes claims to address through his services. His sudden shift in blame towards artists contradicts his own business model and undermines the value he purports to offer. 4. "There should be more collaboration among artists and industry players." While collaboration is important, it cannot be the sole solution to systemic inequality. It is imperative to hold powerful entities accountable and demand fair compensation models for artists. Keyes' recent statements reveal a dangerous disconnect from the realities faced by independent artists. By echoing the industry's narrative of blaming artists for their own struggles, he perpetuates a cycle of exploitation and disempowerment. I know that the music industry is a complex web of power imbalances, where artists are often the most vulnerable players. It is essential to recognize the role of streaming platforms, record labels, and other industry giants in perpetuating this inequality. Instead of blaming artists for not "playing the game" well enough, I demand a fair game for all. This means advocating for equitable compensation models, transparent contracts, and greater access to resources for independent artists. My decree: Damian Keyes' words are but a whisper in the winds of change. The true power lies with the artists and their unwavering spirit. Let us unite, demand justice, and build a music industry that truly values and supports its creators.

What's the score on doing a lesson of a song, or a guitar solo lesson? Does anyone know?

The same people who blame Spotify in the comments are the same who grew up downloading our art on Limewire, Napster, etc... for free... And they wouldn't pay 50€ per months for streaming. Spotify is not guilty, the public if also guilty of being cheap But this is a great discussion. Keep it up

As artists, we allow gatekeepers to keep their hands in our pockets. Direct to consumer does not work due to human psychology. There's plenty of data to back that up. Streaming Platforms are popping up that allow artists to directly upload their music, distribute to other platforms and pay via subscription revenue. No gatekeepers and artists remain in control. The technology to change the environment exists right now. Solstream Music and platforms like it are providing a way for independent artists to have a sustainable path forward.

I think the community idea is a good one. Personally I've been almost overwhelmed with the amount of crap to figure out with social etc. I'm a big fan of yours and I've applied your tech. Still trying to figure it all out though. Wish I could just write music, play music and live.

Taylor who? I tell you I could not recognize her if I saw her (it is a she, right?), and I don't know any of her music. I guess I have ensconced myself in my collection of old music and have extremely limited exposure to social media. Yet the music I listen to every day is awesome, and I am able to find excellent stuff on platforms like youtube music. I would much rather be an artist that gets a modest income from music but shares in a community that appreciates more creative, less industrialized and business oriented content. Much appreciate your videos!

Mainstream music used to be good, and that decline started sometime in the mid to late 80s. Since 2000, music in general has gone downhill since the downloading era.