In this episode, Jared sits down with Jack McCarthy from IndieX and Indepreneur to explore how gigging musicians—especially those playing corporate events and weddings—can tap into e-commerce strategies traditionally reserved for artists with large fanbases. They discuss the power of owning your audience data, creative ways to introduce merch even without original music, and how to ethically increase your revenue per gig. Whether you play 200 shows or 30 shows a year, this conversation is packed with ideas to boost your income and control your music career like never before.

"If you can find a way to commemorate the experience your client had with you as a performer at their event, you open the door to more revenue, deeper connection, and future opportunities."

- BookLive: Everything you need to start marketing and booking your act online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
- Your First Gig: Everything you need to book your first high-paying gig.
- Fulltime Music Masterclass: The Secret To an Unlimited Stream of High-Paying Private Event Gigs …Without Spending a Fortune on Online Advertising or Having Any Connections!
- Fulltime Music Academy (Gig Vault): 24,665 High-End Venues + Event Planners: Use this directory to book your highest-paid gig to-date.
- Breaking Into High-end Gigs Masterclass: How I Went From Broke Musician to Thriving By Breaking Into These Largely Unknown High-Paying Gigs

Jared
What's up, gigging musicians? Welcome back to another episode of the Gigging Musician Podcast where we help artists make a living through corporate events, weddings, other high ticket gigs. And I have a special guest today, someone who reached out to me, who I have actually been. I've encountered their program and their services years ago and I thought it was such a cool thing that they were doing for musicians. And so I'd love to welcome to our podcast Jack McCarthy from Indie X. Welcome to the podcast, Jack.

Jack
Hey, Jared, thanks for having me, man.

Jared
You got it. So, Indie X, I saw on your website that you guys help artists with a fan base make more revenue. And I know you talk about different income streams, but yeah, in your own words, tell me a little bit about what Indie X is.

Jack
Yeah, for sure. So Indie X is actually one arm of a larger company called Indepreneur. Uh, it's a music marketing agency. We typically work hand in hand, one on one with artists and bands and their teams on helping them scale E-commerce through digital marketing. We're typically working with larger artists that have, you know, big old fan bases that they're looking to tap into with an E-commerce revenue stream that has been kind of left on the table. And this exists a lot in. In mainstream music all over the world. And so we've kind of positioned ourselves nicely as an agency to fill that space and help these artists and their teams, you know, pick up a. Pick up a part of their revenue that is unfortunately kind of, kind of the. The, you know, middle child, the ignored middle child. In a music business where there's so much focus on streaming revenue and, you know, brand deals and partnerships and, and touring revenue and things like that. E-commerce kind of gets left to the back of the room. And we see it is a massive opportunity for artists to have a revenue stream that they can control and that is active and gives their fans, you know, opportunity to buy stuff that they really want. And it it really goes super ignored in, in the music industry still to this day. But it was really kind of the founding of our agency that that that fact existed and we've done a ton of. Man, I could share so many stories with you about studies that we've done of different artists out there that kind of prove that. That this opportunity is still kind of ripe for the picking. But that's been kind of the general thesis of Indie X and what we help our clients do. But it's a larger part of our company, Indepreneur, that primarily exists as a music marketing education company as well. To artists that aren't quite in a place for agency services or where agency services make sense for them. We have services and a community where artists can learn a lot of the frameworks and the processes that we use at our agency for themselves or get some coaching and consulting from us on how to do it themselves and build these kinds of things into their own career.

Jared
Okay, awesome. Very cool. Before we dive too deep into it, I'm sure there are a couple of people on our podcast who are unfamiliar with the term E-commerce. Would you mind just kind of bringing us back to the basics? What is E-commerce and why should musicians care about that?

Jack
Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a great question. I love that. E-commerce. Let's boil it down to like the simplest terms, right? E-commerce is buying and selling online. Right? Buying and selling online. But where you're probably most familiar with it in the context of a music career is having an online merch store. And maybe that looks like a store that's hosted on your website. It could look like a Bandcamp store, it could look like a Shopify store. But typically it's an online store where you're selling music products, merch, soft goods, t shirts, hoodies, CDs, vinyl, sometimes tickets. But it's usually a centralized place where fans can buy stuff from you and you can sell stuff to them. That is E-commerce at its simplest definition. And why I think it matters the most to artists and bands is it's an opportunity for them to have a channel where they can transact with their fans that they own and that they control. And that can be really powerful in a music industry culture where so much of artists business is controlled by third parties. So when you have an opportunity to control a revenue stream yourself, I see it as a big win and something that you want to really jump on and capitalize on as quickly as you can before, you know, a third party tries to step in and strike A deal with you to take over ownership of that asset.

Jared
Yeah, that makes sense. And I love the word control. Having control over it, because that's meshes very well with. Our philosophy is like, you should own your own customer list, you should own your own music, and that way you just retain that ownership and can do whatever you want with it, because oftentimes the only person that will care about your music the most is you. Other people are going to care about making money off of your music.

Jack
Yeah, 100%, man. That's a core part of our thesis as well, both at the agency and in everything we teach at Indepreneur is just like data ownership being such a powerful lever in a music career. In a music business, if you don't have that, it's hard to. It's. It's hard to even point to having a business. Right. Like, if you don't have the ability to contact your customers and your subscribers, then how do you really market to them beyond the constrictions of social media algorithms, you know, and having to pay to reach your fans.

Jared
Yeah, exactly. Kind of like the equivalent in our world, which I would love to, like, figure out how we'll chat about the different worlds and how we mesh them together. But in the world of, like, private events, corporate events, weddings, things like that, the equivalent here is like, there are these directory websites, like Gig Salad, the Bash. Have you heard of those?

Jack
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Jared
For sure. And. And a lot of musicians have a lot of complaints with those platforms, just as I'm sure for you, it's Spotify, Bandcamp, things like that. Because of the lack of control. Like, with these platforms, say somebody is looking to hire a band for a corporate event, they go on one of platforms. The platforms literally message every band that matches their criteria in the city that they're requesting for. You don't get their contact information unless you pay or unless, like, they specifically requested you. So you're then fighting against 100 other bands, which we shouldn't have to fight against fellow musicians just for these gigs, which then lowers the price that you can actually charge because you lack control on these platforms. Huge frustration for many musicians.

Jack
Definitely. Yeah, I know. There's similar frustrations with, like, music libraries and sync pitch platforms as well.

Jared
Mm, very cool. So you mentioned a couple examples of merch T shirts, hoodies, things like that. Could you go into a little bit more with the frame of reference that a lot of the musicians on my podcast probably have never even thought about? Merch? Because as a corporate event planner, going to want merch yeah, for sure.

Jack
So a lot of the artists that we work with at the agency are artists that are specifically, you know, selling merch to their fans. So that might look like merch collections that are designed around their most recent album that's about to launch or is in the middle of a launch cycle. So that might be T shirts with specific designs, hoodies, the kinds of merch that you might see at a merch stand on tour, just brought into the digital world. Right. And then you have things like CDs, vinyl, actual physical music products, which, believe it or not, still sell very, very regularly. In fact, we sell a lot of physical music for most of our clients at the agency. I don't know if that's like a belief buster for your. Your listeners or not, but it's true. And I have been getting questions about, like, well, do CDs even sell anymore? Or can I really sell music when everybody's streaming? I've been getting questions like that since we started doing this in 2017, and I still get questions like that today in 2025. And the answer is a resounding yes, they absolutely do sell. And fans want to have something to commemorate the experience that they are having with you. And I actually think for your listeners, Jared, for folks that are gigging musicians specifically and doing corporate events, there might be a frame to shift the idea of merch around to exactly that. Like, can you find ways to commemorate the experience that a customer is having with you as a performer at their event? Now, I don't know what that might look like in the, in the specific context of any given musician that, you know, maybe has their specific niche of events that they go after. But a little bit of creativity can go a really long way here, I think, in trying to figure out offers that you could make to your customers to get them to buy again. Because, you know, in the, in the frame of a corporate event, like, obviously your. Your big moneymaker is the event itself, but then you have an opportunity to add on additional revenue, increase the lifetime value, we like to call it, of a customer, the amount of money that they spend with you over time by making more offers to them. And so I don't know if that's something that you ever. You have talked about on the show before. I've talked about with other folks, but it's an interesting. It's an interesting idea. You think about, like, ways that you could bring physical merchandise that commemorate an event that someone is at and offer that under your umbrella as the entertainment. And if you can do that kind of thing. It probably, it probably is another spot to differentiate yourself from, you know, the other artists that are, that are pitching, you know.

Jared
Yeah, that's a, that's a great idea. It's a really good aspect to it. A couple other thoughts that come to my mind. One is just kind of a little bit circling back to the physical CDs and vinyl thing. I read an article recently in 2025 that Gen Z in particular is kind of having a resistance to the over digitalization of everything. Like there's, there's been a push towards like physical, physical photos, like cameras are coming back into vogue. You know, like what are those old like Polaroids are, are coming back.

Jack
Yeah.

Jared
And then this also applies, this is a really wild statistic because I would have never thought this, but Gen z, on average 50% of Gen Z is sending 1 to 2 physical snail mail letters a month. Which, that is super cool, mind blowing because I can't remember the last time I sent a physical snail mail letter. But the way I think this ties back to what you're saying is that physical merch, physical commemorations of these events are probably going to be trending upwards because of that resistance to how digital everything has become, how AI ridden everything has become. And so I think that's, that's kind of timely.

Jack
Yeah, that's, that's super interesting. And that's also a question that I get a lot when I'm talking with artists is like, well, are the people that are buying physical music or physical products, is it just boomers or like Gen X? And the truth is is it's really not. And that stat really backs it up. I think what's also really interesting is I get another question about like email marketing a lot when it comes to owning your customer list and your subscriber list. And it's like, well, are kids even using email anymore? But there are studies out there already from plenty of marketing tech companies that are pointing to the idea that Gen Z is actually, their email usage is going up and they are expecting it to go, continue to go up. And these are studies as recent as last year. We had actually done a podcast episode on that a while ago on, on Creative Juice, our podcast. And so in a similar vein, I think there's adoption at the, you know, at the Gen Z consumer as well. That is sometimes a worrying point for artists and their teams, musicians, bands, kind of across the entertainment industry. About like, well, I hear what you're saying, but what if this market segment doesn't do it? And that's the market segment that we really want. But that, that study and data that you shared, I think is actually really interesting. And we've seen that with a lot of our clients as well at the agency, where when you look at the demographics of sales, you can see, okay, there's plenty of Gen Z and Millennial people that are buying these records. Great. Like, they're not just, you know, they're not just streaming. And, you know, it's, it's interesting. I think, like as a whole, when live events, you know, had their pause moment early on during COVID you know, 2020, 2021, I think when live shows, touring came back, the desire to take home a piece of experiences from in person events, I think that desire grew even more than it ever had been before. I think fans of music, like, found themselves in moments where they were like, I didn't know if I was going to be able to do this again. Just in the same way that artists and bands and performers of any kind were like, when they got back on the road, they were like, oh, I didn't know if I was going to be able to do this again. I'm glad that we're here, you know.

Jared
Yeah.

Jack
And so I think there's, I think there's a natural sort of evolution of that to fans wanting to take home something cool from experiences that they have in person and they don't just live online.

Jared
Yeah, for sure. I can anecdotally relate to that partially because, you know, I go and see a lot of shows here in Denver. There's a beautiful venue, Red Rocks. Have you ever been?

Jack
No, I haven't been, but I definitely know of Red Rocks.

Jared
Okay, you gotta come.

Jack
I've seen tons of photos, have had tons of friends go out.

Jared
Yeah, for sure. But anecdotally, ticket prices have just gone way up since COVID which may partially be because there's a higher demand, you know, supply and demand. There's more demand because of people want these in person experiences. That means the supply decreases, that increases ticket costs. But, but then there's just so much more merch available at these. Even the venue itself has started selling these commemorative tickets where it's like, have you seen that too? Yep, yep, for sure. And if, if you haven't seen it and you're listening to this, they're like these beautifully designed tickets that you're meant to like, treasure as a souvenir. It's not just the printed ticket on the standard Ticketmaster letterhead or whatever. They're like, I think they're maybe vinyl or some really nice material. They're shiny, holographic, kind of like Pokemon cards that you'd be excited to get out of a pack. And I think that just kind of speaks to your, what you're saying people want to take home a, a piece of the experience. You know, I really. Oh, go ahead.

Jack
They're taking a, they're taking a bit of a play from the sports world with that, you know, into music, because sports teams and, and stadiums have been doing that forever. You know, those kind of commemorative. You see it in football, like the NFC championship tickets, the super bowl commemorative tickets, that sort of thing. I think that that's really cool. And I, I guess the big thing that I always want to impress upon artists or musicians of any kind really is like, you should do that. Don't let someone else do that and sell that to your fans and customers. You should be the one to do it. Like that's your benefit to have.

Jared
Yeah, for sure. That way you control it.

Jack
Right? Exactly.

Jared
You said something earlier I wanted to touch on too, which was. Oh yeah, so adding this onto like a corporate event or a wedding, for example, first off, you're selling me on this concept too, by the way, so I appreciate the conversation and the way that I feel like this really does fit within like the whole philosophy of what we do here at the Gigging Musician Podcast and Book Live is like one of our big philosophies is do fewer gigs but still make money, which in order to do that means you have to charge more per gig. We've got people making six figures a year playing, you know, 50 gigs a year, which is. Or fewer in some cases. And this is a way to even let you do even fewer because you, as you, you increase the revenue 50 gigs in order to make a hundred thousand a year. What's that, like two. 2,000 bucks a gig?

Jack
Yeah. Yep.

Jared
And in order to like say you added on an extra thousand in merch sales, which I don't know what the expectations like, what's realistic or not, but say you added on an extra thousand in merch sales, that's 3,000 per gig. And to, to get to that same six figure revenue, that's only 34 gig gigs roughly, instead of 50.

Jack
Right.

Jared
Which is less than a gig a week, which is super awesome for those who are not trying to maximize how much you're playing, but maximizing your revenue.

Jack
Yeah, it's a, it's a really good point. And you know, I bring this to the same, the exact same concept really, to Artists of any kind, like touring artists of any kind. Think about the idea of bolting on private events into your tour schedule where, you know, you might charge more to do a private event than you would, you know, at a, at a local venue or something like that, or a, or a club. And you give fans a really cool experience. You can charge more money for it. It's a, you know, it can be a more intimate kind of experience if you want to go that route with it. You know, if you're, you know, if you're a multiple person band, for example, maybe you're doing something more stripped down acoustic, something like that, out of the, out of the norm for you. And it gives you the opportunity to create for, number one, like an experience with customers. And I use the word customers very purposefully. Like, we're not just talking about fans, we're talking about people that are, you know, pulling out their wallet and spending money with you directly. It gives you an opportunity to create something special for them that they will never forget. And that is way more valuable, way more exclusive, way more personalized, you know, high touch, one to one, if you want to put it that way, I guess. And I think more artists should lean into that at all levels of music. I'm not just talking about, like artists that are, you know, starting to tour for the first time. I tell this to artists that have hundreds of thousands of fans just as much, because what you can do with that, the kinds of relationships that you create with that with your customers can create customers that, you know, really become like the classic idea of a patron. Right. Like going back way into music history, you create those kinds of relationships. And I think that that has a bit of a one to one.

Jared
Sort.

Jack
Of relationship to gigging musicians that are booking corporate gigs. Same kind of thing, right? You create these networks and these relationships with specific customers over time, and they become people that book with you again and again and again and hopefully for more and more money.

Jared
Yeah, that's awesome. And that kind of. I have so many directions I want to take this, but we have to pick one. I want to address the idea of fan base because in our gigging musician world, we, a lot of us feel like we don't have fan bases and that we don't necessarily need them in the traditional sense of the word fan base. Yeah, but like, I feel like there's. That's not entirely true. Like, I imagine. Correct me if I'm wrong. You would probably say that my customers are in my fan base. Is that correct?

Jack
Definitely. Yeah. I Definitely think a fan base exists, you know, in stages, people who are. And this is something that we teach and really talk through with every artist that we work with at the agency is like when we look at a fan base, we look at people who are aware of you, we look at people who have engaged with you, we look at people who have maybe signed up for a list that might be to get early access to your music. For example, in the case of an artist or a band, then we look at customers, repeat customers, people who pay you on a recurring basis, fans that bring other fans into your circle. So maybe that's like people who head up a street team or something like that. It kind of exists at all levels. So, yeah, customers definitely fit into that.

Jared
Yeah, for sure.

Jack
How do you.

Jared
I guess I'm going to combine a couple directions I wanted to go. How do you, how do you build a fan base in. In your methodology? And also, how did you discover this whole method?

Jack
Yeah, that's a, that's a loaded question.

Jared
I know.

Jack
Yeah. You build a fan base through content. As an artist in a band, you build a fan base through content. And usually that starts with your music, right? You make great music, you create great content around it, and you advertise that content. And the way you advertise that content starts with social media in a lot of ways, oftentimes organically. One thing that I talk about, and we really lean into these days more than ever, is once you have content that fans are discovering online on their own by the, you know, the ways that you're posting it on your channels, like you're Instagram profile, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, wherever it is that you engage online. Once you have, once you have pieces of content that are starting to get traction on their own on those platforms, then you can put paid advertising money behind it. That's kind of like step two to building because that allows you to then reach more people at scale with just dollars to do it, instead of like frequency of posting and algorithmic arm wrestling. So you build audience that way. That's like getting awareness, right? Creating attention, we call that then capturing attention is like the next stage of the fan customer journey. And that happens with giving fans a reason that they'd want to go a step deeper with you. So continuing to create more content, getting fans to engage with that, engage with you online, and then getting them to raise their hand to say, oh yeah, I'd like to part ways with my phone number or my email address so that I get something that I want from you. A Lot of times this looks like early access to merch or new music, especially for artists that are super prolific in releasing stuff. But it could be anything from giveaways to behind the scenes content, to access to, you know, a launch campaign that we might run. Anything that you can do to ethically bribe your fans to give up their contact information so you've got a one to one channel with them where you can communicate, and then it's about creating customers. And that's just making offers. And the way we love to do that is with E-commerce. Merch offers physical music offers, making offers, doing that regularly on a sales promotion kind of calendar cadence. That's what we do at the agency for our clients as we help them kind of build out years and years worth of offer cadences as well as help them launch their products and their merch. So that's how you create customers and repeat customers. So that kind of like unpacks, I think, like the three stages of building a fan base. Right? It's create attention, capture attention, monetize attention. These are the, these are like the big tent poles of fan base creation, I would say. And that goes from attention all the way through customer creation and repeat customer optimization.

Jared
Yeah, that makes sense. What, what would you say to artists who haven't recorded any of their music?

Jack
Well, I would say what's stopping you from starting is the question. I would, I would probably pose a question to an artist and be like, well, what's stopping you from starting doing that? Is there a reason in your business model that you don't need to have recorded music or it doesn't make sense for you to have recorded? Because as we've kind of been talking about here, I think in the case of gigging musicians, maybe that's not what they should do. You know, recording covers and selling them might not be what they do. However, on the flip side of that, having recordings of performances could potentially be an interesting reason to record their music. I think it kind of, it kind of depends. For most artists that are, you know, going the traditional artist route or bands that are going the traditional band route, recording your music is kind of like ground zero for starting. You know what I mean?

Jared
Sure, yeah. Yeah. The reason I did ask that is that I'd imagine most of the listeners on this podcast haven't recorded their music. Perhaps they've recorded a couple performances, and if they're doing corporate events and weddings, things like that, it's almost 100% certainty that they have videos of themselves performing. Because a bride or a groom Or a corporate event planner won't even consider you if you don't have at least a couple decent videos of you performing.

Jack
I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that because I actually think that's. That's probably the reason to record the music is to get great content that really shows off. If you're a gigging musician and you're trying to get great corporate gigs, like, if you can create great content with the music that you perform, even if it's covers, or especially if it's covers and it shows off, like how energetic and amazing an event that you put on is, that is like such a powerful asset. And I've seen that. I mean, that that goes into play for all kinds of artists, but especially artists that are going after events. That's really powerful. That's a big reason to record the music. It's just that the medium that you're recording it, the end result is for video as opposed to, you know, artists that are recording for the purpose of releasing, like studio albums and physical copies of it. But that's true as well for touring artists. Like, you want to have great video of your music so that when fans. Actually, this is a great story. One of our agency strategists, actually, he's in a band, his name is Andy. He's in a great pop punk band called as December Falls. And they tour and when they're on the road, they capture content of all of their shows. And. And when it's time to go to the next city, they're posting content from the previous shows and advertising that to the next market that they're playing in to show the people that either are buying tickets or will buy tickets. Like, you want to be at this because look at how amazing this looks. And it's. It's a really powerful lever to get people to actually show up. And after Covid, that was actually a big issue where people would buy tickets and then there would be no butts in the seats at shows because people just wouldn't go out. So this is a big lever to pull, but it just shows the power of like, recorded music for the purpose of video. Content is, I think, really, really important.

Jared
Sure, yeah, that makes sense. Follow up question is, how did you and your agency, how did you guys discover this whole path to building, creating, capturing, creating and monetizing an audience?

Jack
I love this question because I get to share kind of like backstory a little bit on how I stumbled my way into music marketing and digital marketing. So I was just out of College in like 2014. And I was on the road actually. I was working as initially a guitar tech and then a touring guitar player. And I was kind of between gigs and looking for stuff to do. I was producing bands in a home studio at the time, writing songs. And I found my way into social media marketing working with actually a small charity as a consultant locally. And so I cut my teeth in digital marketing, actually outside of music. And so I learned about customer journey, kind of frameworks for businesses and looking at the process of someone becoming aware of a business and what they have to offer to becoming a customer, to becoming a repeat customer. And in that process I learned, you know, digital marketing and how to run advertising and how to write copy and email marketing and funnel building and all of this stuff. And it wasn't long after that that I met my business partner here at Indepreneur, circa Kyle, and he was starting to teach the same concepts that I was deploying for businesses. And I was like, oh, this guy knows his stuff. Cool. I actually Indopreneur had been launched already and I was actually one of the first customers I bought initially. What was the Fanfinder Master course it was called. And the Fanfinder method is one of the trainings inside of our indie pro community, which talks about video advertising for artists and bands and musicians to help them grow an audience. And so I was one of the first customers and then Cirque and I became friends and eventually business partners and I came in and started growing the agency here. And so that was how I learned digital marketing and started to apply it to music. What's interesting is, and I mentioned this, I think at the top of the episode is like, we've done numbers of studies over the years just on like keeping a pulse on what's going on in the music industry. And not too long ago, we did a study on the Billboard Hot 100 artists just to see what was going on in their marketing. We signed up for a whole bunch of email lists, we audited a bunch of stores and websites and we looked to see, you know, where is the. Where are the missing opportunities still going on? And is our thesis still true that E-commerce is being left on the table? And it was pretty wild what we saw during this study period. We signed up to a bunch of Hot 100 artists. The whole, actually all of the Hot 100 artists email list, my inbox was full flooded for months. But during the quarter that we were running this study, it was wild to find that 84% of those artists on the chart Weren't running any sales promotions to their list to their fans over a whole quarter's worth of time, which was crazy. And of the 16% that were, each artist was only sending like a single email. This was around Memorial Day at that time and there was really like little going on in the way of offers. So that was kind of further validation for like this opportunity that exists for artists when it comes to E-commerce and, and digital marketing, music marketing, which is really like it's kind of the arbitrage that our agency exists within. But yeah, just to give you like kind of the full 30,000 foot view of how I found my way into this, how Indepreneur built kind of its framework coming from, you know, digital marketing or marketing in general, direct response for businesses and applying it to music businesses and what we've seen time and time again, unfortunately or fortunately, the opportunity is there. But I wish more people were taking, really taking it by the, by the reins and running with it.

Jared
But yeah, that makes sense. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear like your backstory actually kind of in a way mirrors mine too because the way that I cut my teeth, like I've been a musician my whole life too, played violin since I was eight years old, went to music school twice, once for an undergrad of music ed, a master's in orchestra conducting in neither of those degrees did they actually teach any business skills. So I cut my teeth on the business skills doing this for non musical businesses too also, you know, learned funnel building things like that. I'm curious, did you study with like Russell Brunson, people like that?

Jack
Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Jared
I got certification award right there.

Jack
Yep. Oh yeah. Ryan Dice, digital marketer, was a big influence on me, especially early on.

Jared
Yeah, for sure. And it does take like a certain business minded musician to first see how this kind of approach to your music career as a business really will propel it forward. I'm curious, in your experience both running the agency and the the more like I guess, membership type site, where do people get stuck on this? Where do musicians have the hardest time executing it?

Jack
Exit the bottlenecks exist in a few different places, I would say for musicians that are just starting out or really just trying to build an audience for the first time. Their bottleneck is actually with the music and the attraction of an audience, which really is just like a symptom of content creation. Either the music is not up to par and that's like a hard pill to swallow for a lot of musicians. Right. Is that like being told that your music Just isn't up to snuff. It's hard, but the market will tell you. The market unfortunately will tell you whether something is what. What it wants to see. And fans will find the things that they find to be awesome. And so oftentimes it's. The music isn't quite where it needs to be. Whether it be the songwriting, the actual performing or the production value, or it's just about getting content right and learning how to create content that attracts an audience. So that's like bottleneck number one for musicians that are trying to grow an audience. And then for. I would say the second bottleneck is once you've got like audience growth solved and you can get attention really like the next big thing. And this is what I consult so many artists on their team and their teams about at the agency level is really just about finding the offers to sell and doing it consistently and well. And this is something where I think in the industry as a whole, a lot of artists are pointed in the wrong direction and led to believe things that aren't true. For example, I see this all the time where an artist will launch a record and they'll talk about it for a little while and then basically it will die off. They'll go on tour, but they'll stop promoting it. They'll stop offering it to their fans. The promotional output goes down substantially after the week leading up to release and, you know, the two weeks after it. Whereas really all of the focus and energy should be continuing to post market and continue to sell after release date. And this is. It's a really interesting common problem in music. And it's almost manufactured. Like artists have recreated the digital marketing launch problem, right? Like we run a webinar and then we launch something and then we go away for a while and then we run another webinar and we go away for a while. They've recreated that with albums where they really don't need to. And something we focus on a lot at the agency then is building in these milestones of, you know, run sales promotions every month. Flatten the revenue roller coaster, I like to say, by continuing to offer things to your fans in new and exciting ways so that you stabilize revenue over time. And that's probably like the next big bottleneck when it comes to growth and marketing.

Jared
Yeah, for sure. And it kind of leads me to think a little bit more connecting the dots. Is it because they stop sending emails?

Jack
That's definitely part of it. For sure. 100%.

Jared
Yeah, for sure. I'm curious if you guys obviously like, you guys are smart. You're probably encouraging your clients to use ChatGPT for some of this now because that does a lot of the heavy lifting. Is that correct?

Jack
Yeah, definitely. You know, it's funny, I find myself getting asked questions about AI more and more. There's so much that you can do with it. There's also a lot. There's still so much of a learning curve too, about how to prompt Chat GPT or Claude or whatever tool you're using to not give you what people affectionately are referring to now is AI slop, right?

Jared
Yep, for sure.

Jack
But 100. There's so much you can do with it. I think where I often encourage musicians to dig into AI tools is in lifting you out of the kind of monotonous small tasks that might take up more of your time than it needs to. And not so much on, like the talk to Chat GBT about your specific music marketing strategy. Because truthfully, like, the domain expertise with general tools like that just isn't where it should be. You're going to get answers that don't really make sense for an artist or a band of your specific size with your specific career goals or the specific projects that you're working on, or from a gigging musician's perspective, your specific market, or the type of target customer that you're going after and so on and so forth.

Jared
For sure. Yeah, the better the prompts, the better the output. But yeah, it's. It doesn't know the, the details. It's never, it's never put two feet on stage and played a gig.

Jack
So.

Jared
Yeah, it can't know everything. Not yet. Well, I don't actually. That's like, actually another, you know, possible thing we could chat about, but I know we're running limited on time. Yeah, I don't, I don't want to go into AI music. I don't feel like it's ever going to replace live performers. What do you think? I guess we're going to go into it. What do you think about that?

Jack
You know, I've had a number of conversations about the AI music tools like Suno and Udo and things like that. To be honest, I haven't really dug very far into like, those personally, like trying them out. I messed around with Suno maybe about nine months ago. I've had a number of really good conversations with a friend of ours. He's a music lawyer named Ryan Schmidt. He's an awesome guy. If you are interested in learning about, like, what's going on at the intersection of AI and The legal side of music. He's like an amazing person to follow because he's really tracking it closely. And it has been involved in a number of cases related to it already, which is amazing. But I think as a, as a music producer myself, I think AI tools are going to become more and more commonplace within the next year, two years, three years, and how they get used in music production workflows is going to only increase. As far as my speculation about whether AI musicians will be performing and being on stage, man, I don't know. I honestly, I honestly don't think about it too much. I kind of, I kind of encourage artists to focus on what they can be doing right now to drive their businesses and their careers forward and not be doom worrying about like, yeah, but what if there's a robot on stage instead of me in five years? Because I don't think, I don't think you can future proof yourself from that eventuality if it ends up happening, you know what I mean? And I think there's so much other low hanging fruit that you can concern yourself with as a musician that can move you forward today and this quarter and this year and next year that like the, the, the spiraling of AI concerns can distract you. And that might be, maybe, maybe that's, maybe that's a take that a lot of people aren't giving right now when there's a lot of conversations around AI and where it might take entertainment and music. But I really think that as business people we need to, and especially for artists that are trying to take control of their careers, while you need to have a healthy outlook towards the future, you also need to have healthy anchoring into where you are today. And where you are today, most likely for 99% of artists, isn't, isn't about worrying about the, the AI tech and what you might be able to do individually as an artist to somehow overcome it. You know what I mean?

Jared
Yeah, I do. And I also, my perspective on this is that getting back to something you said earlier is that people are looking for an experience, especially in live, live shows, live entertainment. And oftentimes that experience includes connection to another human.

Jack
Definitely.

Jared
And in these like private gigs that our musicians are playing. I think that's even more true. For example, just like on Saturday I played, I performed for somebody's wedding ceremony and cocktail hour and at someone's like deeply intimate moment, the beginning of their marriage, they're not going to want a robot performing. They want like a real live violinist playing romantic music. Yeah, I feel like that's one of the reasons. And that's also true, like, at the corporate event level and birthday parties, things like that. The reality is, for these kinds of performances, the automated option has existed since DJs existed.

Jack
I was just gonna say that. So true.

Jared
So true. So, like, for our live performance world, I feel like doomsday arrived back when turntables became a thing, and yet we're still here.

Jack
That's a great. That's a great point. Yeah, I totally agree. And, I mean, there's something so special. The wedding kind of moment is a really good one. But I can think, you know, sitting in college at. At recitals and stuff, there's something moving. Especially now I'm picturing you playing violin at a wedding and, like, getting goosebumps on my arms. But, like, there's something moving about those kinds of moments when you can see it and process it with your eyes and your brain and your ears. And you're right. Like, if the person who hired you had hired just like a violin playlist or a dj, that moment wouldn't have been as special. It wouldn't have been what they wanted.

Jared
Exactly. Very cool. Well, we are getting close to the end of this episode. I mean, this has been a brilliant conversation. So thank you so much for. For everything you've shared.

Jack
Yeah, this has been so fun.

Jared
Was there anything I didn't ask that you wish I did in our last couple minutes?

Jack
That's a. Oh, that's a great question. No, I don't think so. We covered so much. We covered so much ground, and I loved being able to kind of bridge the gap between gigging musicians and, you know, the more traditional sort of like, artist path of releasing music and building a fan base that way. This was really fun. It's not often a con. I. I feel like it's not often a conversation that I get to have that marries those two worlds and finds the. The connections between them because they're often viewed as totally separate paths. And I. I truly think that there's more overlap between them than is sometimes recognized.

Jared
Oh, yeah, for sure. I was thinking if we had more time, I would actually treat this as, like a coaching session where you would coach me as a gigging musician, how to build a merch store and a fan base and see what we could do. But, alas, we lack the time.

Jack
Maybe another time.

Jared
I'll take you up on that, Jack. Awesome. So if any of our gigging musicians want to explore that path, where would you suggest they connect with you?

Jack
Yeah, for sure. So if you are interested in learning more about what we do at Indepreneur, you can check us out over at Indepreneur IO and you can see everything from our Indie Pro community to our Indie Founder coaching program, which is really where you can get into the weeds with us on learning digital marketing and kind of going down that artist path. If you are an artist that has a big old fan base for any reason, or you manage a team that has a artist that work with people with big old fan bases, Indie X might be something that you're interested in. And you can learn more about that over at Indopreneur IO about Indie X. That's the place to go to learn all about the things that we're doing at the agency. And you can find me on Instagram. I'm over at the atlasjack where I post and talk about this stuff. Also share music and just the things that are going on in life and business and all that good stuff. So you can hang out with me there. Feel free to shoot me a message and say hi. I don't bite. So I'd love to meet you.

Jared
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jack. This has been awesome to our listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of the Gigging Musician Podcast and our tagline, you'll love this. Your music will not market itself.

Jack
Ooh, love that. Thanks for having me, Jared. This was a blast.

Jared
You got it. Take it easy, Jack.

Jack
You too.