I started having conversations for my podcast in December 2021. The last episode I released in 2022 was number 74.  Considering I started off with an "Episode ½" on 31st December, that's a total of 75 episodes over the last year.  

What have I enjoyed about having a podcast?  The best part is the conversations.  First of all, this is a way for me to do what my doctor instructed me to do.  Last year in November/December, I was in a pretty dark place from a mental health standpoint... darker than normal.  My doctor said that one of the things I should do is to have a meaningful conversation every day with someone who is NOT my wife.  Now, in the last few months, I've been awfully lax in getting my daily meaningful conversation in.  (If anyone wants to help with that, I'll take volunteers.)  That said, every time I record a conversation for the podcast, that totally counts. Second, it turns out that people are awfully interesting if you let them talk about something they are passionate about.  Just taking a moment to listen to people and ask appropriate questions is pretty cool.  Third, sometimes I feel like this is a useful endeavor for the community. I really miss Gem City Podcast and the fine work they did. I especially looked forward to the Wednesday episodes featuring a local musician or band. Now that they're gone, there's an empty space in the Dayton area for someone to talk to local musicians about their work. I've been making an attempt at filling that space, and hope that eventually, listeners will come to look forward to my conversations with Dayton artists the way I looked forward to Izzy Rock's conversations.

Of course, there are parts of the process I don't like.  Sometimes, the tools I use fail. I recorded a great conversation with Paul Monnin of Age Nowhere, and somehow the sound ended up completely distorted and garbled. If you listen really hard, you can figure out what is being said, but it sounds awful and grating, and I wouldn't foist that upon anyone. Also, editing the podcast... that's not so much fun. One might not realize how many times things like "uh", "um", "like", and "you know" are said during conversations, but there is a level at which using those terms over and over becomes distracting, so I tend to prune them out of conversations.  That's incredibly time-consuming.  After editing, I usually do another listen in order to glean ideas to write the Show Notes.  There was a time when I would consistently use time stamps in the Show Notes to mark highlights of the conversation.. that's even MORE time-consuming, so I haven't done that in awhile.  Hey, as a podcast listener, is that something you'd like to see more often?  I don't even really know whether putting in that extra work is adding value or not.  I've thought about hiring someone to handle that work for me, but I'm pretty sure I can't fairly pay the going rate for that work at the moment, so I'll keep on doing it myself.  At least that's another skill I can put on a resumé, right?

Of the 75 episodes, 30 of them include women.  That should be 50 percent of the episodes, and I didn't quite get there, so I'll try to do better in 2023.

 

 

Here are what I think are the most notable episodes of the last year:

 

The longest episode

The longest episode is also the most recent episode, number 74, featuring Juliet Fromholt and Taylor Ruckle. We're talking about our favorite albums from 2022, and the duration is one hour and forty-five minutes.

 

The most popular episode

More people listened to my Episode 7 conversation with Tod Weidner than any of my other episodes. It's clear that he means a great deal to the music community here in Dayton.  This one went up way back in February 2022, so it's about time I have him back to nerd out on songwriting and music some more.

 

The most important episode

You might think differently, but for me, the most important episode is number 30, with Brian "Z" Zisook. He is the cofounder and Senior Vice President of Operations at Audiomack. He's a professional journalist who now is now an executive helping to run a music streaming service. 

In his own words: This isn't a company created by and of silicon valley based tech bros... this company was founded by and employs a lot of creatives who come from backgrounds in the fine arts... these are people who understand the plight of the aspiring creative...

This episode is important for musicians who release music.  If you are one of these people, you should pay attention to how truly passionate Z is about music and the people who make it. He wants to see us succeed. He and the team over at Audiomack are building their platform in ways that allow listeners to directly support us financially. That's not the case with the other streaming services, where we are only a source of content. Z wants people to hear us. Educating us on how the business works and helping us to improve are also very important to him, and he is often handing out useful advice for free on his Twitter account.

This episode is important for music listeners.  The folks at Audiomack work on their algorithm to ensure that it serves you the music YOU want to hear, as opposed to giving heavy priority to whatever the most popular major-label song of the moment is due to labels having a stake in the service. Audiomack World is an excellent source of discovery, consistently providing editorial recommendations from actual real humans. If you are a listener who values the people who create the music you listen to, recognize it as hard work, and believe that one should generally be paid for one's work, Audiomack has a way for you to directly support an artist you believe in, if you choose to do so.

This episode also contains a direct message from me to my fellow musicians in Dayton.  Sure, I don't think anyone really paid attention to it, but I meant it at the time and I still mean it.  If you would like to know what that is, well, listen to this one.

 

The interesting stranger who I'd love to have a beer with episode

An excellent multi-national band called Jenny and the Mexicats were going to stop at Levitt Pavilion here in Dayton for a concert. I really wanted to see this show, but I was going to be out of town. I volunteer at Levitt Pavilion, and thought that I might be able to help to promote the show a little bit.  When I contacted the band, bassist Icho Van responded, and our conversation in English is Episode 52.

Icho has an interesting life story. He's a hard worker, doing the tasks that would normally be handled by a band's manager. He's out there living his dreams, playing music he believes in, touring the world, and finding delicious things to eat everywhere. His band has had the privilege of playing an NPR Tiny Desk show. Despite all of his success, he's quite normal. Icho is easy to talk to, friendly, and cool.  (Part of this might be because he plays bass.)  I'd love to grab a beer with him, and maybe watch a game where his beloved Buffalo Bills are playing.

 

El episodio con el desconocido con quién me gustaría tomar una chela

Una banda excelente llamada Jenny and the Mexicats tenía planeada dar un concierto aquí en Dayton, Ohio.  En su gira, iban a tocar en el Levitt Pavilion, y la entrada fue gratis. Quería mucho asistir a este concierto, pero tenía que viajar fuera de la ciudad. Sirvo de vez en cuando como voluntario en Levitt Pavilion, y pensé que por lo menos podía ayudar con promocionar el concierto un poco.  Cuando escribí al grupo, fue el bajista Icho Van quién me dio respuesta, y nuestra charla en español se halla en Episodio 51.

Icho tiene una historia bien interesante. Trabaja muy duro.  Hace las tareas que normalmente haría el gerente de una banda. Este señor está viviendo sus sueños, tocando una música feliz y energética, haciendo giras alrededor del mundo, y decubriendo bastantes comidas muy sabrosas. Tiene mucho éxito, y un nivel de fama, sobre todo en México. No obstante, es completamente normal. Icho es amable, muy buena en conversación, y uno se siente muy a gusto con él. (Sin lugar a dudas, una razón por eso es que toca el bajo.) Me encantaría tomar una o dos cervezas juntos, y quizás mirar un partido de fútbol.

 

The episode that changed my life

Even though Episode 9 aired in February, the conversation actually took place in December 2021.  My guest was Becca Wonka, a delightful and effervescent French musician who lives in Los Angeles. We talked for nearly three hours.  Yes, only one of those three hours was actually recorded for the podcast.  We hit it off.  The conversation meandered back and forth from French to English.  If you listen to the episode, I estimate that 70% of it is in French, but I put time markers in the show notes so you can skip around to the parts you are likely to understand. 

This is probably not a surprise to you, but it is extremely difficult to make a living as an independent musician.  It's not impossible, but there's a long path and a lot of work to get there. I am not remotely close to profitable as a musician yet.  When Becca and I had this conversation, I had recently left my corporate job.  Shortly after our conversation, her lovely husband introduced me to his industry, the business of adaptation. To shorten what would otherwise be a long story, that's now my gig that actually pays.  I owe a debt to Nico as a mentor that I will never be able to repay.  I owe the same debt to Becca for recognizing that this line of work is something that I can do, and for recommending me to her husband.

A great deal of the mental health progress I have made over the past year is attributable to being much MUCH less stressed out by work.  By no means am I "cured" or "well" - and I likely never will be - but I am in a better place now, and even occasionally feel slightly optimistic.

 

La conversation qui a changé ma vie

Bien qu'episode 9 est sortie en février 2022, la conversation entre Becca Wonka et moi avait lieu en Décembre 2021. Elle est française, d'origine nantaise, et habite maintenant à Los Angeles. Becca a une passion profonde pour la musique, et elle parle avec joie et enthousiasme. On a bavardé pendant trois heures, dont une heure est enregistré pour le podcast. Si vous en écoutiez, vous allez trouver aux "show notes"que j'ai mis quelques indices pour dire quand on a parlé en français et quand on a parlé en anglais.

J'imagine que vous savez déjà que c'est extrèmement difficile gagner la vie comme musicien independent aux Etats-Unis. C'est pas impossible, mais on doit bosser beaucoup et il faut être très patient. Je ne gagne pas encore ma vie comme musicien. Quand j'ai bavardé avec Becca, je venais de quitter un boulot d'entreprise. Quelques jours après qu'on a parlé, le mari de Becca m'a parlé pour m'inviter à apprendre le business d'adaptation. Actuellement, c'est ça ce que je fais pour ètre payé. Je dois un dette envers Nico que jamais je pourrais lui payer, et c'est pareil avec Becca pour comprendre que je puisse faire ce type de travaille et me recommander à son mari.

 

*****

No matter how long you've been listening to my podcast - whether a year, a month, a week, or a day - thank you very much for choosing to spend some time listening to me talk to interesting people. I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed sitting in on my conversations, and warmly invite you to keep on listening.  If you have something you are passionate about and would like to talk about it, contact me, and you could totally be a guest. 

In 2023, I'm planning to release a new music project that I poured so much of myself into, and when I start promoting it, I'll have podcast conversations with the wonderful and talented people who collaborated on this project with me. I can't wait for you to meet them and all of the other individuals who I'll be speaking with.

 

To begin, I'd like to make it clear right up front that Audiomack is not sponsoring me in any way, and I am not being paid to talk about them. All of the experiences I am going to relay to you in this post are one hundred percent true, although the empirical sabermetrician in me freely acknowledges that the sample size is small. Your results may vary, though I strongly doubt it. Hey, maybe try out some of these things on your own and talk about your experience?

One of the more popular music streaming services has been in the news lately, as a couple of well-known Canadian artists have had their music removed from the platform in the last week. In the musician social media circles I tend to read, there are individuals canceling their paid accounts with the popular platform in question. This particular blog post is not intended to discuss the controversy. This particular blog post is intended to offer an alternative to the most well-known streaming services, an alternative that is certainly a better choice for artists, and one that may also be a better choice for listeners. How did I arrive at that viewpoint?  Let me tell you a story.

Remember Greg Owens? This gentleman wrote a song with me. He's an Americana artist. He had a song out called "Love in the Rain". My wife listened to that particular song on the popular music streaming service that I have been clearly avoiding mentioning by name. That service followed up "Love in the Rain" with "WAP" by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. This didn't make sense to us. Shouldn't the algorithm for this service take note of the song's genre and style, and then follow up the selection with something similar?  Why would it default to what was, at the time, the most streamed song in the United States? Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, and Atlantic Records really didn't need another stream of that hit to go with the millions of streams they already had, but an indie artist like Greg surely could have used a stream for one of his other songs. This did not sit right with me.  Interestingly, I later had an opportunity to ask an industry expert about it.

This industry insider has specific expertise in the streaming platform in question. I listened carefully as he described how their music algorithm works. I took away two main points from listening to him speak. The algorithm on this platform leans heavily toward genre. The algorithm looks at locations of listeners and likes to categorize by location. Based on those two criteria, "Love in the Rain" should have been followed by a song from an Ohio-based Americana artist. We have a few of those. "WAP", popular though it was, does not fit here in any way. When it came time for a question-and-answer session with the gentleman, I explained the situation above in detail, and asked how we can reconcile the platform's behavior with the explanation we were just given of how the platform is supposed to behave. The response that I got was telling.

At first, the gentleman used humor to deflect my question, stating that the platform was messing with me, then deadpanning that "WAP" is a great American classic that deserves to be heard over and over. Finally he said quite seriously that the component that I am leaving out of the equation is time.  In other words, since this was my wife's first visit to Spotify, the algorithm couldn't possibly look at her location or the genre she selected, and instead was obligated to serve the most streamed song on the platform until she had enough listens in order for it to make a better choice.  This, dear reader, is nonsense, and frankly, I found it insulting.  Does it sound true to you?

Do you remember Pandora? That's one of the older music streaming services. Do you know what the follow-up song is when you play an Americana song on Pandora? I leave you to try it if you wish, but let's just say that you won't get a chart-topping hip hop song next. Pandora somehow manages to figure out the genre you want to hear right from your first listen. This is how I knew that the explanation I was being given was absolutely untrue, I have experience with other platforms that don't behave like this.  Maybe the real answer was "I don't know".  More likely the real answer is "this platform has a vested interest in serving whatever major label artist is at the top of the charts right now, and that will always be the default behavior"... at any rate, the lack of a real answer kind of bummed me out.  

All told though, streaming music sure is convenient.  Even for people who still love listening to music on CD (like me) or vinyl, sometimes the convenience is difficult to pass up. And, for full disclosure, I host my podcast on a free platform that is very easy to use, and that platform happens to be owned by the very same service I am discussing above.

Audiomack is an option that I enjoy.  Here are my reasons:

 

Listener Experience

I tend to do most of my music streaming from the same location I am typing this blog... on a desktop PC. The website has a simple interface to use. It does not require installation of an app, but if you stream via a mobile device, that is absolutely an option. For you audiophiles out there, a subscription to their premium service gets you higher quality streams, along with equalizer controls, a lack of ads or banners, and the ability to download playlists. Like other popular platforms, Audiomack brings me a personalized feed of music that they think will suit my interests. The ability to playlist is here as well, of course, as I alluded to briefly. The Audiomack World page reminds me of the music journalism over on Bandcamp, it's a good place to discover new artists. In order to find what songs are most recently added, well, they have a Recently Added page that you can sort by genre.

Of course, does any streaming service actually CARE about their listeners? Aren't we all just numbers to them, a way to collect those advertising dollars? Well, I reached out to Brian Zisook, co-founder and Senior Vice President of Operations for Audiomack, to ask about what kind of experience they are hoping for listeners to take away from their platform. Brian says: "We want Audiomack users to find pleasure in leaning into artist discovery, rather than sitting back and letting an algorithm tell them what is popular. If you use Audiomack and frequent our Trending sections, by genre, or Audiomack World, our editorial arm, it's nearly impossible to not find your next favorite artist." 

What if you enjoy streaming music, but you know that musicians are getting paid mere fractions of a cent for those streams? Oh, sure, there are plenty of listeners who just don't care, but let's say you're not one of them.  Let's say that you recognize the amount of hard work that goes into writing music and getting it professionally recorded and produced in order to bring you quality art. Let's say you want to stream, but you also want to compensate the artists. Well, the Supporters feature on Audiomack is perfect for you!

My wife and I repeated the "Love in the Rain" experiment. Here's where that song lives on Audiomack. The next suggested song was by a completely different artist named Greg Owens. That is not the ideal result, but I can understand why that happened. I would like to have seen a recommendation in the same genre, but this brings me around to one drawback: rock and rock-adjacent genres are underrepresented on Audiomack. The platform is strong in hip hop, pop, EDM, rap, and afrobeats. This brings me to the part where I talk to other artists.

 

Artist Experience

 

Hey there, fellow artists and musicians. We all want people to find our work and listen to us. The emphasis here is on people... actual real human beings with emotions and soul, not bots. I think that Audiomack has the potential to be the best platform for us, but it won't be if it doesn't grow its listener base, and it won't grow its listener base unless more artists put their music over there. Do you see the dilemma?  Let me tell you about what I like about Audiomack from the perspective of an artist.

You can upload your music there on your own, without the need for a distributor. For the majority of the other streaming services, we have to go through a distribution company to get our music onto their platform.  This is not the case with Audiomack.  Sure, you can use a distributor to get your music to Audiomack if you wish, they work with a few of them.  However, this is not a requirement.  You can absolutely build your profile and upload your songs all on your own without a distributor.

The process to get music to an official Audiomack playlist is transparent.  There isn't a great deal of mystery about it.  In fact, there are specific places on Audiomack where you can submit your newly uploaded songs directly to the curators of the "trending" lists, and if they like your song, it goes up there.  This, of course, gets you a bump in the amount of plays you get. I know this can be done, because I have done it. If you're an artist who makes music in a rock-adjacent genre, well, there is less competition for listeners than other genres on Audiomack at the moment, there's an opportunity here.

They believe in artist education at Audiomack.  There is a specific section of Audiomack World that is for artists. This section contains simple explanations of the inner workings of the music industry... glancing at that page right now, I see articles explaining the role of a booking agent, what a manager is supposed to do, how publishing works, how to protect oneself as an artist, how to deal with the MLC, and all sorts of other useful business advice. This page is free, but the advice here is useful. 

Despite there being fewer users of this platform than other platforms, I tend to get more listens on Audiomack than I do elsewhere.  I also have FAR more monthly listeners on Audiomack than elsewhere, and again, this is in spite of the fact that their subscriber base is lower than a certain other service that I have touched on before. Growth in listens on this platform feels organic. I come away with the feeling that when I get a stream on Audiomack, there is an actual person on the other end listening, and I don't always get that feeling on some other services. Ok, I'll admit it... I can't quantify that in any way.  That's a feeling.  You need something tangible.  You need some evidence that Audiomack is trying to support artists.  Well, here comes your evidence.

Audiomack recently launched a Supporters feature.  Insider dot com wrote about it here. Simply put, this feature gives an opportunity to artists that I haven't seen anywhere else. A listener who truly loves one of our songs or one of our albums can monetarily support that piece of art via this feature, and that money goes directly to us. Money from the listener to the artist for streaming our music.  Other services are not doing that.  Our listeners may be paying for subscriptions to one or more services, but as artists, we know that we are never seeing any of those funds.  This is different. It has the potential to be a game-changer. If you want to know what Audiomack says about it, I recommend reading this article here.

I asked Brian Zisook what this new feature would bring to artists.  This is what he said: "Supporters not only provides Audiomack creators with the opportunity to generate more revenue for their songs and albums, which in the current streaming ecosystem is of vast importance, but it also allows them to earmark and filter through their superfans. We bolstered this direct connection by giving creators the ability to send thank you messaging and offer their fans perks or freebies, strengthening the fan-artist union and removing the feeling of it being purely transactional."

Did you get that?  If a listener loves our music enough to support us financially, we'll be able to thank them personally.  We'll be able to offer them perks for being there for us.  We'll be able to bring them into our world. That's a pretty great idea.

 

Summary

 

I am just one songwriter who plays bass. I don't have "clout".  I'm probably not going to change many minds. That said, I've noticed a shift in the direction of the streaming winds so to speak, and if that ends up being an actual thing, well, here is a streaming platform that I think deserves more attention. How many users will Audiomack really be able to take away from the established giants in this space? That remains to be seen. From the standpoint of an artist, this is definitely a service worth investigating. If you see the same potential there that I do, why not give your listeners a gentle nudge in this direction? 

My page on Audiomack is here.

I invite you to have a look.  I invite you to listen.  I invite you to click around and listen to some other artists on this platform.  If perchance you wish to support me, well, I would be most pleased if you would make use of the new Supporters feature. Really though, what I am looking for - and what musicians in general are looking for - is a person to listen to us with whom we can make a connection. That is a challenge on streaming services in general.  Audiomack makes that a little easier for us, and simply put, that's the key takeaway.