Digital Social Hour
How to Build a Rabid Fan Base Without a Record Label | Rick Barker DSH #958
Sat, 07 Dec 2024
🎵 Discover how to build a rabid fan base without a record label! 🚀 Rick Barker, former manager of Taylor Swift, spills the secrets on growing your music career independently. 🎤 Tune in now for a game-changing conversation packed with valuable insights on: • Leveraging social media to connect with fans 📱 • Using AI and technology to speed up your success 🤖 • The importance of business acumen in the music industry 💼 • Rick's journey from radio to managing a superstar 🌟 Don't miss out on this eye-opening episode of the Digital Social Hour! Rick shares his experiences working with Taylor Swift, navigating the music industry, and helping independent artists thrive in today's digital landscape. Join the conversation and learn how to: • Create engaging content that resonates with your audience • Build a sustainable music career without relying on labels • Use AI and tech tools to boost your productivity and reach • Develop a business mindset to stand out in the industry Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets from music industry veterans and successful entrepreneurs. Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more game-changing conversations on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🎧🔥 #MusicIndustry #IndependentArtist #FanbaseBuilding #DigitalSocialHour #RickBarker #TaylorSwift #MusicBusiness #SocialMediaMarketing #musicmentorship #networkinginthemusicindustry #empowerartists #howtonetwork #musicmarketing CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 02:19 - Building a Career 06:58 - Characteristics of a Superstar 09:18 - Preparing for Opportunities 10:55 - Getting on the Podcast 14:11 - Rick's Support for AI 17:05 - Growing a Podcast 19:20 - Rick's Admiration for Gary Vee 21:04 - Downfall of Clubhouse 24:38 - Taylor Swift's First Manager 33:01 - Taylor Swift & Scooter Braun 34:30 - Understanding Record Deals 36:19 - Taking Sides in Music Industry 38:55 - Where to Find Rick 41:28 - Outro APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Rick Barker https://www.instagram.com/rickbarkermusic/ https://rickbarker.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the secrets to building a rabid fan base?
They chose you out of all the stuff, whatever it did, intrigued them to want to push play. You're just going to be excited because you got quarter of a million video views or you're going to go retarget everyone who gave you those quarter of a million video views and turn them on to another piece.
All right, guys. Rick Barker here. We're going to talk the music industry today. I haven't had someone in your space, man. I'm excited.
Chapter 2: How can independent artists leverage social media?
Oh, wow. Thanks. Well, I appreciate you having me in general. I mean, everything that you're doing right now, you're touching a lot of pieces of content throughout the globe. And that's what I love. It's like you find these podcasts, you're like, you need to be about this in order to do this. And you've totally proved everyone wrong. You're like...
I can just go out and have interesting conversations with people and people want that.
I don't niche down because you could learn something from every niche and apply it to your business. I agree.
Yeah.
So I'd love to hear how you penetrated one of the toughest industries, which in my opinion is the music industry.
Yeah. It's interesting because I tell people that want to come into it. I'm like, you're trying to function in a dysfunctional business because the consumer does not have to pay for the product. Right. And think about any other business. if the consumer it's like going to Costco, try the sample, say, Oh, I like this. Just take it and leave. How long would that company or Costco be in business?
And that's kind of what's happening with the, with the music business. It's, it's the wild, wild West in a way, because there's no, uh, There's no gatekeepers. Everybody can upload music. My mother-in-law could upload music if she wanted to and shoot a video and start an Instagram channel and get in the way. There's just a lot of noise.
So my goal since leaving Taylor has been to help independent artists and other creatives in general just say, look, let's go find you an audience. Let's go build a relationship with a small group of people first and then get bigger. Everybody wants the big thing first. most people wouldn't know how to handle the big thing first, you know?
So we try to crawl before we walk, walk before we run, but yeah, music's the greatest business, the most complicated business. You can't throw money at it to fix it. There is no do a, B and C and D happens. It's no two artists career paths have ever been the same. Right. It's, it's interesting.
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Chapter 3: What role does AI play in the music industry?
Be happy that all the tools and resources are available for you to get someone's attention in a world where everyone wants their attention and that they took the time to choose you that day. The problem is, is that we rely so much on what I call rental property, like Spotify's rental property, Instagram's rental property, YouTube's rental property.
I said, we need to get them to the restaurant you own, which is your website. You control the aesthetics, you control the content, you control everything, but you're relying on all these fake numbers and all these fake everything to validate you. We need to get you back focused on, do you want to build a business?
And if you want to build a business, you put the right product in front of the right person and make the right offer. It doesn't matter what business you're in. And you can't expect people just because you love it to love it as well. Yeah.
So when you go on Spotify and you see some of these songs have 100 million views, like what percentage of that you think is real?
It really depends. A lot of it could be all of it real, but it's passive listening. And what I mean by that is that it's playing in the background. If I'm listening to your podcast, that's passive listening. If I'm watching your podcast on YouTube, I'm now actively involved. I chose to be there.
Sometimes your song on a playlist, someone didn't necessarily choose to hear you, but they heard you, but there's no DJs. Unless somebody heard something so, wow, I got to see who this person is, where they actually pull their phone out, open up the app, look to see who it is, go to the About section, click your answer. There's a lot of work that goes into that.
So these people that have these million views, there's a lot of artists right now that are making $20,000, $30,000 a month in their streaming business. but they can't sell tickets to shows because no one knows who they are. They just know they like the song and the song happened to be on a playlist.
I've seen some big artists cancel their tour this year. A lot of them. Some A-listers even.
Yeah. And it's sad. And I think a lot of that just has to do with, one, the price of concert tickets has gotten way out of hand. It's like what they're sold for face value and now 10 times, 20 times. Oh, my goodness. It's absolutely crazy.
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Chapter 4: What distinguishes superstars from regular artists?
And now all of a sudden other people are like, oh, we can do that.
Wow.
You know, so it's like those are business acumen people. Kanye, business acumen, love him or hate him. He's a businessman. And that's what I think is the biggest difference right now. And then when you also make your business your fan base and you're creating music for your fan base, you're not chasing. You're saying, this is who they are. This is what I do for them.
This is how I show my appreciation to them. This is how I let them in on everything that I do. Game changer. And that's what I'm trying to teach independent artists and also business owners. It's like... We're so sometimes focused on who we don't have, we haven't even learned to love on the people we got.
100%.
You see what I'm saying? They see what you have, and they're like, well, Sean's got it. I should have it. No, Sean knows how to handle it. Sean's got systems and processes in place to make sure that things don't get overlooked. They don't want to think about that business side of it. Ray Daniels, I brought him up to you before. He has the God's podcast. He's brilliant.
He says people pray for opportunities. They don't prepare for opportunities. And there's a lot of people praying and a lot less preparation going on. And that's where I think sometimes creatives, they see that it can be achieved. They see that it's available. They want to start there. They don't know. the journey it took to get there. I mean, you've been building businesses.
You just didn't wake up one day and go, hey, look, I have all this now.
Everything's been a snowball effect.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of the current music business model?
I'm 32 years sober, but I subscribed to his Empathy Wines when he had it to give to my buddies. It's like I wanted to support whatever he did because I wanted him to continue to provide value. Because it provided value to me in a way when I met him, we were joking because people will say to me, they're like, dude, you're like the Gary Vee of the music industry. And
I didn't know how to take that at first. I said, why? They said, because you're solution-based. You don't let anybody wallow in their shit, but you don't say, you're wrong. You're like, you're wrong, here's why, and here's something you can try to fix it. I always try to... be that solutions-based person. That's awesome. Because there's so many negative people that will go, you can't do it. Why?
Well, I don't know. You can't do it. Don't listen to that person. You know what I mean? It's like sometimes we're listening to the wrong people. We were joking about Clubhouse during COVID.
Those were the days.
Oh man, I would go in and just call BS on all the people pretending to be these music business gurus. There was a lot of those. Everybody could hide behind an icon. And you could put whatever your accolades were. And nobody was searching. They were just so lonely because they were at home from COVID. They just wanted to talk to anybody.
And I would go on and I would pop in and people would see my thing. Oh, let's bring Rick up. And I go, yeah, by the way, not to cause problems, but that's bullshit. You know what I mean? It's like you're one of the reasons that things are wrong with the music industry because people prey on independent artists. And I would go out and I did my best to try to protect it.
What do you think the downfall of Clubhouse was? Because Twitter space is killing it.
Yeah, I think the downfall of Clubhouse was, once again, there was no barrier to entry. It was like, you got an invite, you could get on, you could pretend to be whoever you were. Somebody had reached out to me and said, hey, can I have one of your tokens to get this guy on? I'm like, sure, whatever. So I give him a token.
And the next thing you know, people are reaching out to me going, hey, this guy's scamming me. And I saw that you're the one who brought him into Clubhouse. And I went and I looked, I reached out to Clubhouse. I'm like, get my name off this guy's thing. Wow. You know, I would go on and call this person out.
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Chapter 7: What strategies help in growing a podcast?
Chapter 8: How can technology enhance music production?
They're wearing me out. And they went and all the big managers said no. And some of the other managers, maybe they didn't want a teenager. Maybe they didn't want to deal with parents. Who knows why they said, no, they didn't understand the internet were some of the reasons why. So they called and said, Hey, I said, how's the hunt coming? And they're like, that's why we're calling.
And I said, okay. And they said, what would you say if I told you Taylor wanted you to be her manager? I said, I would say no. What do you mean? You would say no. I said, I've never managed anyone. They're like, look, we're not hiring you for your management experience. You think different. You believe in her. You're willing to take risks. You're willing to try things.
That's what we need right now. We don't need somebody that's just going to set, you know, do the same things that everyone else is doing. So I used to always tell her, I'm like, Hey, if you want the same results as everyone else, do what everyone else is doing. And right now,
they're failing right now it's like the industry has shifted there's a change a coming and what are you going to do with it and it was great so they offered me the job to be your manager and i would drive from santa barbara to nash to la catch a plane land in nashville catch a bus that's a far flight tour for four days go back home and i did that for two years damn every week
My last year with her, I was gone 187 days. And I had a four-year-old and a two-year-old at the time. And I had gotten up to like 300 pounds. And I was just like, all right, God, what's the plan? I'm going to see more money than I've ever seen in my life. In January that year, I would have become an instant millionaire. And I was like, at what expense? Now I grew up with divorced parents.
I grew up poor. So I never made money decisions because it's never an option that I had as a kid growing up. But I also knew what divorce that, that impact that had on me. And I called her and I said, listen, I'll forever be grateful. I'll always be one of your biggest fans. I said, but my family and my kids are the most important thing. So I gave my notice to work through part of 2008 for her.
And then told my wife, I said, listen, I said, I want to move the kids to Nashville. I said, I want them raised in the South where manners aren't an option. I said, I want no state income tax. And I'd love to get twice the house for half the money. And it checked all the boxes. And then a very interesting situation happened at that point is that I didn't have a job.
I had been paid severance and that was running out. And I got a phone call who at the time was the most powerful person in Nashville. And his assistant said, Joe would like to meet with you. When is the next time that you're going to be in Nashville? And I thought I'd done something wrong. Joe Galani was the most powerful. Scott Borchetta, who I worked for at Big Machine, was number two.
Two totally different styles. Most people didn't go from one of their labels to the other. One came from a sales background. One came from a promotion background. Both amazing guys. I was blessed to be able to learn from both. And when I left the job, I was doing some work for a couple of his clients. And I thought I did something wrong. I said, can I ask why Joe wants to meet?
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