Episode 77: Q & A Session

This episode is a Q & A session where I take questions from listeners and provide answers. A range of topics are covered and explored. 

Tension sits at the heart of modern music careers: protect your rights, move faster, and still make work that feels like you. We take that knot apart with practical guidance on AI, publishing, growth, and the day-to-day moves that actually change your trajectory.

First, we separate AI’s ethics from its utility. Training models on copyrighted catalogues without consent or payment is unacceptable, but opt-in, time-saving tools can remove drudge work and speed up mixes, edits, and idea generation. The difference is compensation, consent, and control. From there, we dive into whether songwriters really need publishers. If your goals include cuts, writing camps, sync, and rigorous global collection, the right publisher accelerates everything. If not, smart self-admin plus your PRO might be enough. We also unpack distributor “publishing collection,” outlining when that extra 20 percent is worth delegating and when to keep it in-house.

Growth strategy gets concrete. Bands win when streams and ticket sales rise together—that’s what agents call a catch. We share simple steps to turn online traction into rooms that move: gig swaps to test markets, live video that proves demand, and ads guided by real audience data. On playlists, we point to credible platforms with strong curator standards, so your spend behaves like targeted PR rather than wishful thinking. If you’re stepping into management, start with an IP audit to lock splits and performance clearances, then map a clear 12-month plan to clarify costs, cadence, and the team you’ll need. Writers and producers get a session blueprint too: ask goals, prep references, bring tailored sketches, and start strong.

We close with a frictionless EPK checklist: three bio lengths, high-res images, quotes, music files as well as links, live footage, achievements, future plans, and clean contact info—hosted in a well-organised, instantly accessible folder. Across every topic runs the same theme: clarity. Know your rights, your aims, and your next small move, and momentum starts to compound.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more creators can find it. 

Chapters

• 0:15 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:53 How The Q&A Works
• 1:54 Is AI Fair In Music
• 6:42 AI As Assistant Not Replacement
• 9:48 Do Songwriters Need Publishers
• 13:35 Will The AI Bubble Burst
• 16:55 Book Second Edition And Platform Changes
• 19:15 Why Not A Video Podcast Yet
• 22:11 Do You Need A Music Degree
• 25:24 Streams Vs Live: Building Both Sides
• 30:45 Trusted Playlist Platforms
• 32:54 Networking Without Trying Too Hard

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Welcome to you. You're listening to the music business buddy with me, Johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book, The Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback, and ebook format now. I'm a music creator with a variety of credits as a writer-producer. I'm a consultant, an artist manager, and a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business. Wherever you are and whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. Okay, so it's time for another QA, everybody. With me, Johnny Amos, your host of the Music Business Buddy. I've only run one of these before, but it seemed to be quite popular. People seem to enjoy it. For anybody that's not familiar with the format, the idea is simple. I take questions from you, the audience, the listeners. Now, of course, I'm actually very touched, by the way, when you send in questions, you know, whether it's through social media or through the pod website or whatever it might be. Email is always good as well. Um, I'm touched because actually you could take these questions and put them in Google or ChatGPT, and maybe you do, but the trouble is with that, of course, is it can churn out a range of different results, and it can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming and kind of, you know, not consolidated enough, perhaps. Well, ChatGPT is pretty good for that. Certainly far more intelligent than I am. But anyway, I appreciate you putting your trust in me and sending questions, and I will always give you my honest, truthful answer that is informed not only through my own experience and my own outlook, but also through my observation and experiences of others. Okay, so let's get rolling with the QA. Here we go. Okay, first question is from Kabir in Warsaw. Uh he asks, Do you think AI is actually fair? What is your actual opinion? Because I heard you on BBC Radio recently and you explained it well to people, but what is your actual view? Uh good question, Kabir. You've gone there early with the can of worms, aren't you, with the AI? Um, thank you for your question. Um Do you know, honestly, Kabir, and to everybody, I I I I I don't know yet. I I I um I I know a lot of uh, you know, the the top CEOs at big createch companies that are building AI. Um I I don't know so many people at the very, very big tech companies, uh Microsoft, uh Google, etc. And I know that they're scraping data very differently. Um I'm still trying to inform myself of my view, but I'll try and give you a deeper answer than that, Kabir. Um I think it depends on the context of what is training the AI, right? So um there's been previous episodes on here where I've interviewed a lot of um people from Createch companies that are training their AI very, very fairly. But um uh as you may have heard me when I when I talked on the BBC about this, is that um I kind of split this answer into two categories, right? There's two problems that generally people have with AI. One is how it's training, right, which is the music industry's biggest problem with it, i.e., if if an AI tool is being trained on copywritten material that is not remunerating the rights holders, i.e. the songwriters, the performers, the artists, the record labels, etc., then you know, we have that's where the beef is, right, with the music industry, understandably so. But over on the other side, we've kind of got this issue where music creators are extremely worried and offended by the use of AI replacing their kind of cognition, right? So they're two actually similar things but quite different things. Um, my view is uh I am absolutely with the music publishers, the record companies, the rights holders, the songwriters, the performers. When copyrighted material is used for training data, it absolutely disgusts me. I very, very rarely actually air my views here, by the way. So you've asked me, so I'll tell you the truth, because that's what I'm here for, right? Uh that side of it I find disgusting. Um however, the other side of it, the bit that kind of um, you know, is sometimes seen as something that replaces humans, I don't necessarily buy it. Um the reason I don't buy it is because it's very often there to assist us. So I don't know if you remember my interview uh with with Dave Ronin from Rolex Audio, but he explained it very well. He said, you know, what we're doing, we're building stuff that saves people time, right? Um so in his thing, it was like, you know, we we are creating uh an AI mix tool, we have created an AI mix tool, uh, but it's not there to replace mixed engineers, it's just to speed up the process for them to take out a lot of the kind of legwork and the heavy lifting before they actually get to do the creative bit. And I love that answer because I think it falls in line with um our understanding of what AI should be doing for us, right? If it saves time and it doesn't take work away from other people and it can kind of automate itself to do tasks and run tasks for us that does save us time, then it can only be a good thing, right? That's how I see it. Um I also see it as something that can assist but not replace the music creation process. I know some people hate that, so I'll just explain what I mean by that. Um, so if, for example, I'm writing a song and I've got somebody next to me and they're kind of sharing ideas with me, and then I might kind of go, oh, that's quite a cool idea, and maybe not this, and maybe not that, but that one's quite cool. For me, there's no difference between that and kind of having like a MIDI, a MIDI generative tool that can kind of kick out some different ideas for let's say I'm going, right, here's some chords, you know, make me something rhythmic with those chords, and it kind of might generate eight or nine things, and then I kind of pick maybe one or two of them and I use that. For me, that's very, very, very different than you know, ripping off someone's voice model, right? It all kind of gets thrown under the rug of hey, this is AI, but actually, when you break it down, there are huge fundamental differences between it. And I think we just have to kind of get used to the idea of A, embracing it, and B, accepting it. And by that I mean just kind of accepting it for what it is, and also kind of maybe even building parts of it into our workflow. Here's the really weird things we're actually doing it without always realizing it as well, everybody. That's another thing to think about here. It's like somebody said to me the other day, Well, can you explain FinTech to me? I was like, Well, it's all around us, you know, when we tap our phone and we pay for a cup of coffee, that's that's financial technology, it's all around us, and it's the same with AI, it's so built in, it's so fully integrated in an invisible fashion in so many ways that actually people might say, Oh, I don't like AI, but they don't realise they're actually using it, you know, in different ways. So, yeah, Kabir, thank you for your question. That's my honest answer. I'm still trying to gain an understanding of it, but hopefully that gives you some kind of uh perspective of mine on that subject. Uh Dylan from Portsmouth asks, Do songwriters really need publishers? Um, I think it depends who you ask. I suppose you're asking me. Um, yeah, I think they do. Uh uh it depends, right? It depends on what the songwriter's trying to do. If a songwriter is kind of like a self-contained songwriter, they're performing their own music, recording their own music, and they don't really plan to do much in terms of creative licensing, uh, then no. Uh, but if you're looking for a partner that will be able to kind of exploit, you know, your songs further and gain further traction, further visibility through, you know, creative licensing with uh, I don't know, media campaigns or perhaps with you know, sort of video games creators, programs in development, films, you know, uh and also then somebody to be able to look after the administrative side of that and also be able to offer a kind of much more rigorous approach to collection so that you're actually getting the money that you actually deserve. It's not impossible to do all of that without a music publisher, but it's certainly a lot harder. So, do you need them? Uh probably not, depending upon what you're doing, but um you know, if the goals fall in line with the things that I mentioned there, then you know it would be a whole lot easier if you did have a publisher, although it has to be the right publisher, doesn't it? And um, yeah, that could be tricky to find sometimes, right? Um, I think if you're a songwriter that is writing songs for other artists, um it can be considerably fast-tracked uh if you have a music publisher because they can just open doors uh not just on a solicitation level, but certainly in terms of like getting you on camps, uh getting you in the right room with different writers, producers. Again, these are the things that you can in theory do for yourself. It just might be a bit harder if you don't have the network that they have. Uh hopefully that answers your question. And thank you for that, Didn't. Um, Will, the AI Bobble Burst asks uh Will from St. Albans. Hi, Will, thanks for the question. Um, do you know there's been a lot in the news about this recently? I saw uh just a few weeks ago the uh the CEO from Google come out and kind of start to predict this. Um who knows, right? I do have a little bit of a theory on this, so um I will share it with you. So um, okay, so if you look at how a lot of um uh AI companies are funded, right? So where they get their seed money from, it's VC money, right? Generally speaking. It's sometimes it's angel investors, but generally it's venture capitalists uh that invest big money as seed money with the hope of a return. Now, why am I telling you that? Well, because VC VC will always want their money back, right, in some way or another. Um, so you know, we're gonna invest in this thing over here, and hopefully people are gonna buy into it, and then we'll make our money back and more. That's the idea, right? So if we look at something, how something is actually funded, it kind of gives us a little bit of an indication as to then what needs to happen next. Now, the reason I tell you that is because of the following: if people don't buy AI creator tools, um, then that bubble will burst. Uh, the overall AI bubble will probably not burst because there's um there's immense strength to it in various trades, in various walks of life, um, and in various different industry patterns, right? Uh but in music alone, um, I don't think it will burst in regards to how it's used on the business end. It's used quite well for forecasting, for predicting, for automated tasks, for financial tasks, all that kind of stuff. But how it's used in terms of music creator tools, um, you know, uh it could well be it could well burst because if people um if music creators don't buy into those tools and the you know uh the the funders don't get their money back, then they're not going to invest further, which would then mean that they might. Um so who knows? But uh I think that is what um a lot of people are referring to when they refer to that bubble. Uh by the way, it's very confusing, isn't it, to talk about AI as one subject. It just isn't, is it? It's actually multiple industries connected to two simple letters that we can kind of categorize into one thing when the reality is it isn't one thing, it's many, many, many things. So actually, when we focus in or rein in on a on a microscopic level as to where it's used and what role it plays, I guess what we're largely talking about is A, how it's used in the music industry, and B, how it applies itself to music creator tools. The bubble on that is probably more fragile than it is in other areas, especially in things like financial services and science computers and stuff like that. So, yeah, um, will it burst? Uh no, probably not. But in regards to music creator tools, it's fragile, right? There's my answer. Will there be a second edition of your book and what will be in it, Jed from London? Hiya, Jed, maybe so. Yeah, I hope so. Um I mean the idea has been mentioned between uh myself and um and and the publishers at Routledge. Um, to be honest, uh I think so it was published in what June 2024? So in some ways that wasn't that long ago. Um, and in in terms of publishing, that's not that long ago, but in terms of the music industry, it's like a lifetime ago, right? Because you know, there's a lot of changes in this business, probably at a faster pace now than it ever has before. Um, and if you just look at some of the key topics that I've explored in the podcast in just this calendar year alone, it's already superseded further, you know, the knowledge base that I had a year ago, right? So uh the technological technological shifts, um, the changes potentially to political landscapes around AI and stuff like that. Uh, that will take time to change, but it may well change at some point. There's certainly a lot of you know uh people wanting to change stuff there. Um there's also a lot of things that have changed in terms of uh the algorithmic landscape around Spotify. Um so yeah, and and and also around YouTube. So there's there's certainly a lot to dig into if there is a second edition. It has been talked about, but nothing's been agreed yet. Thank you for your question, buddy. Uh, why don't you do a video podcast? Asks Manny in Sheffield. Yeah, good question, Manny. Uh you're not the first person to ask me that, and uh um I I'll be honest, I guess it's because um I tend to not really do things in halves, Manny. If I'm gonna do it properly, I'm gonna do it really, really, really properly. And right now, I think that the idea of doing a uh a video podcast would take, you know, um uh perhaps a different space than the studio I use and uh multiple cameras, and I'd want to do it really, really properly, and I do plan to do it, but um for the time being I can kind of churn out uh you know uh episodes when it's audio only a bit quicker, and uh, you know, there's the whole kind of like family work life balance, right? I have a little four-year-old boy at home, and uh, you know, he always wants me to be at home and play battles and play with him, and so if I was doing a video podcast, maybe I'd have less time, and uh, you know, he's gonna be older one day, right? He's probably not gonna want me to battle with him, so maybe uh when I've got more time on my hands, I'll start to do video podcasts. I do understand the need for it. There's certainly more, you know, more growth and more uh visibility to a lot of video podcasts, but uh for the time being I'll stick to what I'm doing, and uh there will be a video uh version of this podcast in the near future. Thank you for your question, Manny. Uh do I need a degree in music to build a career? asks Shanice in Kent. Yeah, you know what, Shanice? That's a good question, right? Um, and it's also it's a question that I sort of um do strongly allude to with many uh music industry professionals. I don't know if you've noticed that throughout the podcast. I do often ask the role of uh the impact of you know many people's music education on where they ended up. And there's always a link point, right? There's always a link point. Uh I mean there's always a link point in in music education, right, between uh attendance and attainment, right? But there's also a link point between um the people that you know at university and then how you end up working with them further down the line. So you could be as bold as to say no, you don't need one, but you do need a network, and probably one of the fastest, the most effective ways of building a network is through an established music university. It'll widen your knowledge base, uh deepen your networking, it will just introduce you to things that you may not have known about, and I think that you would turn professional faster, right? So I'm 46 right now, right? Um the courses that are available now in many uni, you know, uh music universities didn't really exist when I was younger, but I'll tell you what, if they did, I would definitely be going because I'd have got where I where I got you know by my mid-30s, I I'd I'd have got there by my mid-20s, I think, if I'd have gone, you know, to music university and uh and done that route. So uh no, but uh I recommend it. Um I'm in a band and our streams and playlist ads have grown dramatically over the last year or so. But how important is growing the live side of our act uh if our streams continue to grow? Uh love the pod, thanks for what you do, Liv Doncaster. Hello Liv, thank you for your kind words. Good for you. Um Well done for doing what you're doing. Uh okay, so Liv, imagine a triangle, right? Uh the one side of the triangle on the left hand side is what you're doing with your streams, right? Um, the other side, the polar side, the right side of that triangle, is what you're doing live. When those two things connect, you're considered to booking agents to be what's called a you know a catch artist, right? So somewhere where you've caught the algorithm and you've managed to balance that against live growth. I will come and answer your question more directly in a minute. I'm just going to try and set it up by saying this. It's when those two things that actually interconnect that you start to see a much more kind of what I would consider to be a much more investable um proposition, right? Um so I would say if you're in a band, it's very important. Um it's a it's a surefire way of building loyalty, right, amongst people and often an experience that can't really be replicated with recorded music in the same way. So you're in a band you mentioned there, Liv. So I would say um how important is it? I'd say very. Um however, if you were, you know, an electronic act or a pop act, I'm not saying it's not as important, but uh well, it's not as important. Um enormous generalization, but it's kind of true. So uh yeah, as a band, I'd say it's uh I'd say it's really important. Um it it it's an interesting one though, Liv. I mean, just in this city where I am based, Birmingham, right? Um, that I can think of a band that has millions and millions of streams that really struggle to sell 30 tickets to a local gig. Um I can also think of another band in this city that can easily sell out a 300 cap venue and they don't have any more than 15,000 streams. So um I'm not saying one's right and one's wrong, but there's certainly a disalignment between the two, as we all know. I think when the two connect with one another, um it's it can be a really, really good thing because it can you can start to see a much more kind of exponential growth when the twos begin to collide, right? Um and I think a great way of doing that, because I think a lot what what I think a lot of uh bands struggle with generally is trying to sort of get out of their city or town. Um, and I think a great way of doing that would be to do gig swaps. It's an age-old thing, right? It's worked for decades, and I think it will work for many, many more to come. Uh so the idea of researching bands that are similar to you in style and similar in size and looking at their cities and then proposing gig swaps with them, right? Not everyone will get back to you, but I think if you were to kind of you're based in what, Doncaster, right? So if you were to kind of reach out to a band in Newcastle of a similar size and go, hey look, we really, really love what you do. Why don't you come to uh to Doncaster uh and to come and come and support us, you know, and play to our crowd, and we'll do the same with you. And I think if you can build up a few of those and you start to then venture out and start to play more and more and more cities, you'll start to see a different type of growth, and it will also start to inform you as to what those uh what those fans actually look like, which is really important by the way, because when you start talking to marketeers about brand things that are on brand and off brand and so on and so forth, they'll start to kind of hone in on what your audience looks like and what kind of things they're into, because that then helps to target them through ads and all that kind of stuff. So uh I think that would be a great thing to do, but how important is it I would say for you and for your band? I'd say very important. Uh good luck, Liv. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, happy to help. Um, okay, question here from Nico in Braga in Portugal. Hi Nico, uh, what playlist companies do you endorse and recommend? Okay, yeah, so uh I endorse um there's really I mean I know there's loads out there, but there's really only two main ones that I really endorse, and that is uh Submit Hub and Groover because they're both very, very effective. Um, they have a very, very rigorous approach to the curators that they work with. Um I think they're good value for money as well. Um, you know, I I mean there's a friend of mine who I was just talking to today, he manages um two or three artists, and he's told me great things about Playlist Push. Um, but they mean they are a little bit more expensive, but I've heard some great success stories out of what they do as well. But yeah, those are the two that I always recommend. By the way, Nico, I should add this as well, right? So I was I met with uh uh the director of streaming for a very big indie label a few months ago, and I asked him, I said, Where do you tend to sort of you know get your best results out of streaming? And he said, Ah, submit hub every time, submit hub. We we put like you know, we buy a few hundred credits each month for uh, you know, campaign rollouts, and uh and we uh you know that gets our best results for playlists and stuff, which I thought was very telling. So uh yeah, those are the two companies that I recommend and endorse. How do I come across as cool when I go to networking events? That's from Ayan in London. Ayan, what are you asking me that for? I'm only joking. Um actually, do you know what? This is an area that um I think a lot of people really worry about, and I I I definitely used to worry about this a lot more than I do now. I guess that's because when you get older you kind of care a little bit less, right? Uh but um okay, so uh first of all, I I I would definitely not go to a networking event with the sole intention of kind of selling yourself, right? Because I think that one of the things about music industry networking events is the the common ground is that everyone's got music. So I would hunt for other topics to discuss with people. Because I think people, yes, people bond over music, but that's on a kind of you know, consumer creative kind of uh recreational level. I think we have to think slightly outside of that, or it helps to think outside of that when we're trying to network on a business level by finding common ground in other things, right? To start and kind of stop you from overly selling yourself or coming across as stiff or coming across as kind of like selling, right? You don't really want to, I don't I think that kind of doesn't always build bonds with people. So um I tend to find that I bond with people over things that have nothing to do with music, right? For my if for me it's often sports or um you know films or something like that. Um and I just talk to people about things like that because then it kind of comes down to I say, What do you do? Oh, I do this, oh do oh do you know oh cool, cool. Here's my card, you know, that kind of thing. Um so I think um uh you know you don't have to be the loudest person in the room. Um definitely don't get drunk. Uh sounds really boring, doesn't it? But it is true. Definitely uh, you know, behave yourself because I think sometimes with uh music instrumenting events, especially when they're an evening thing, generally I tend to go from kind of six till eight to six till nine. I don't really drink that much um because uh yeah, I don't want to be there getting drunk, right? Um so um that doesn't look good. So yeah, I'd I'd sort of you know, um br you know, be be brave, right? Go and talk to people and uh talk to them about things other than music when you break the ice. That's my advice. I'm new to collaborating as a producer writer, I want to get better. How do I go about the session so that I understand the artist and get the best result from the session? That's from Mahandis in Delhi. That's a good question, Mahandis. Very, very, very good question. Okay, all right, let's simplify this, right? So you've got your goals as a writer-producer and what you want to get out of the session, and then there's also the person that you're working with, right? Now, um, I think it's very important for you to try and quickly ascertain what is the goal of that person that you're working with, and then for you to try and be reactive to that, right? Because you know, it might be that you've got an idea for an artist that you're working with. Oh, I really think you should do this, this, this, this over here, and you may well be right, however, it may well be that they also have their own agenda as to where they best fit, and you could come up with the best song in the world that day, and it won't get used if it doesn't fall in line with their ideals. So, with that in mind, what I would try and do is to, and then you can do this before the session, by the way, as well, is to kind of just start with uh, you know, what do you where where are you hoping to get? Have you got any kind of stylistic, you know, kind of intentions? Like, where do you want to be genre-wise? Who do you listen to? It is what you listen to similar to how you want to sound. Where do you see yourself? Where are your goals going forward? All that kind of stuff that will inform what your creative choices can then look like and what you bring to the table. And then you could also then start that session with hey, here's some titles, or here's some chord formulas, or here's some little four, eight-bar track ideas that I've put together just for you that may work. That is a great way to kind of get the best out of a session. I think sessions generally tend to yield better results if they start well. That's a great way to start a session. I've noticed that some distributors offer publishing collection. Is it worth it? That's from Elijah in Cedar Falls in Iowa. Oh wow, Iowa. Um, oh wow, I I spent a few weeks there as a teenager. I loved it. Um Elijah, hello. Um, is it worth it? I don't know. It depends really. I know what you mean. There are okay, so here's how it works, right? So when you look at your streaming royalties, 80% of your streaming money is collected by a distributor because it relates to the recording. That's what distributors do. They release your recording of your song. Not your song, but your recording of your song to the stores, right? And they'll collect on that money. But there is another 20%, you're right, and that falls under the bracket of songwriting, and that's not collected by a distributor because they're collected on the rights of the recording, not the song. So that's where the publisher comes in. So to answer your question, I would say it's as simple as this, right? If you are signed up to your um, so in your case, it would be like BMI or AskAp or whoever your collection society is. Um if if if that publisher, that 20% from the distributor, if they are not doing anything to kind of you know exploit the songs, then I wouldn't bother because you can do it yourself, you can collect that extra 20% yourself. Um if however you're not signed up to a collection society, then them collecting that extra 20% could be worthwhile, right? I mean, we all know that there's not a huge amount of money in streaming, right? So the value of songs is not necessarily in streaming, and by that I do mean the song copyrights, not the recording. That's good to differentiate between these two things here because the 80% that relates to the recording, the 20% is the song. Now it can feel like they're the same thing when it comes to being, let's say, the artist that wrote the song and recorded the song. However, they're not, they're two totally different things, they sit in completely different fields of intellectual property, and the 20% of the publishing relates to the song. Do you want to give that away? Well, it's up to you, right? I guess your question would then have to be, what do I get in return? Now, if you can answer that question by saying, Well, I'm not with a collection society and they'll collect that for me, then great, do it. However, if you want to hold back that 20% and collect it yourself through your performing rights organisation, through your collection society, and then also offset it and build up your stock and eventually work with a music publisher, then no. I've just started managing an artist. What should be amongst the first things that you would recommend that I do? That's from Ella in Dumfries. Hello, Ella. Welcome to the world of artist management. I wish you every luck. You'll do well, I'm sure. Thank you for your question. Um, so uh there's two things that I would do immediately. Check do an inventory check on all intellectual property to make sure that there's no kind of um uh so that you know the what the song splits look like and you know who you know the actors worked with before in regards to engineering and production and if anybody owns a part of any of those things because you're gonna need to kind of find clearance on all that kind of stuff, and you don't want that coming up further down the line. So I would check that immediately just to see what that looks like. Maybe there's some ex-band members that have you know performed on certain things. If there isn't, maybe there's I don't know, a violinist or a horn player that's a friend of a friend that played on it, um, and that's lovely, but it's a problem because you're gonna need that performance clearance at some point or another, right? Uh, not just because of Spotify's expanded, you know, uh song credit system, but also just generally a very good practice, especially in terms of sync licensing and stuff. We need to get clearance on those things. So that's the first thing I would do is to look at you know who owns what in those songs and the recordings, right? And remember they're two different things. Um, the next thing I would do is to sit with the artist and formulate an ideal next 12 months, right? What do you want the next 12 months to look like? And I'd be asking that question to the artist, and if they don't know, you can then make recommendations. Well, let's try and do this, let's have a look at what the costs are going to be if you were to record all these singles that you want to put out. Do we need to do we want them to fold over into EPs? Do we want to work towards an album? If you can plan what that next 12 months looks like, I think that would be a great place to get started. By the way, once you've done that, you can kind of then figure out you know who is missing from that plan, right? Who which team members do you need? You know, do you want to isolate the opportunity to be able to go, let's go and pitch to a booking agent, or let's leave that until after the festivals are done in the summer, and then we'll go take this streaming data and present that. Or uh, you know, do we want to work with uh a distributor, a different distributor than who we work with? Those team members, that wider team, will start to become clearer once the ideals are set for that next 12 months. I hope that helps you and good luck, Ella. Okay, final question, and it's from Freydis in Bergen in Norway. Oh, I love Bergen, Freydis. That's a lovely place to live. Good for you. Um, what should be in your EPK? Well, okay, so first off, a good bio, right, is very important to have in an EPK. And by that, by the way, what I mean is four things to focus on, right? Um, who you are, where you're from, uh, what you do, and where you want to be. That should be the bio in a perfect world because you don't necessarily need to know all of the things like you know, I've been playing violin since I was six, or it's lovely, right? But it's not always that interesting because it's not always useful for copy, right? For uh for blogs and for reviews and stuff. So those are the four key things to focus on on the bio. Um, I'd also split the bio into three different bios, right? One which is a very short one, like a 50 word bio, another one which is like a hundred word bio, and another one that's like a 200 word bio. They're really, really useful to just keep inside of an EPK for people to pick and choose from, especially bloggers when they're looking for copy to write about you. It gives them a nice little way of being able to present that information in different ways. Um, I would also, um, of course. Put music in there, right? Um, and by that I mean the actual files, by the way, because um not streaming links, actual files, web files, or you know, etc. of the actual uh recordings of the songs because um it may well be that people want to use them like on a YouTube channel or uh you know on a podcast or something, they'll actually need the file to be able to do that. So um I would also make sure that that's in there. Music videos is also another thing if you've got music videos, um, even if they're just lyric videos, something as well, that can be really useful, or even if it's just stock footage, any kind of visual aspect. Um, live performance footage, I'd say as well. If it's good footage, um, I would use that. Um, any past kind of press and media coverage is good. I've seen some people just do like a one-page thing for just quotes, right? So that people can pull quotes and use them. Uh, streaming links, of course, um, just for kind of past recordings, because very often when we're pitching EPKs to people, it's kind of like uh, you know, it might be people writing about a future release, right? So they might want to look at past releases and see what you've got there. Um what else? Contact information, that's a big one, isn't it? A lot of people forget that. It's crazy, innit? But yeah, contact information. You know, how best to contact uh you know the points of who are the who's the point of contact? You know, let's say it's a group, you know, who do they contact? The band, or do like somebody in the band, a representative of the band, the band's manager. Um, also um things like key achievements, just little highlights, bullet points. Someone did that in the EP Chaos all recently. It looks really good. Um, any accomplishments? So I also future plans can be really good in there. Not a lot of people do that, but it's a really good thing because a lot of booking agents, especially, will ask you, right, you know, what's your plans over the next year? Or distributors or labels that are looking to invest will also ask that. Like, what are your ideal plans? Even if those plans change, it just kind of presents an act uh that has future plans as some as as somebody or something or an entity that is gonna go ahead and do those things with or without investment, and it looks assertive, it looks confident. So, future plans like a little kind of bullet point or kind of like a little outline going forward, uh, can also be really really good. Um, high-res pictures. Did I mention that? No, I don't think I did, did I? That's very important, isn't it? Um, I think the thing about high-res pictures is they do have to be high-res because people are gonna pick and choose them and put them into different publications or online, and they're gonna need to shrink them in order to fit into their editorial ideals, and for that to work, they're gonna need not only some choices but also a large size to work with. It's easier to make something big down to something small rather than something small into something big because that's where things then get grainy with file formats, etc. So I think a lot, you know, a good choice of um of pictures. And when I say pictures, be very, very careful about the backgrounds, right? It's very easy these days, isn't it? To take backgrounds out if we don't like them. But a background behind an act can tell an awful lot about that act, about their suitability, about their style, their genre, where they're from, or whatever it might be. And it's it's great to get that right, and it's really easy to get it wrong. So those are the things that I would say to be in an EPK, and I'd also put it, by the way, in um in uh, you know, together with like logos as well. I'd put logos in the EPK, but I'd also have it in some kind of um downloadable format or accessible online format. So things like uh, you know, a OneDrive, uh Dropbox, things like that, where people can just kind of find one click and they can go and find all the creative assets um that they need. That's really, really, really good. Um, also, I think things like little short videos about the story of the song or a little acoustic version of it, anything like that that can just tell that tastemaker a little bit more about the act, um, the more the better, as long as it's all filed and organized well and accessible. Also, be careful if you're gonna put it onto a Google Drive account. Nothing wrong with that, it's great, works brilliantly. However, people often forget sometimes to tick the box that says request access. So sometimes people might click on your EPK and then they go, Oh, you have to approve it, and that can be a bit frustrating for some tastemakers. So, yeah, that's what I would put in your EPK. Um, and uh the more detail the better, but also make it you know, kind of um digestible, so kind of click to not just everything whacked into one folder, but just kind of subcategories, subfolders, you know, low logos, uh pictures, uh press, that kind of thing, all wrapped up into one neat place that can be accessible and also edited so that people can access it and further down the line and you can update it, etc. My goodness me, that was a long answer. I hope that was useful. Okay, there you go. That concludes the uh the QA uh for this particular episode. Thank you to everybody who sent in questions. I hope that you feel that the answers have been useful in some way. If they haven't, please do reach out to me and tell me uh if you want further detail on any of those answers. And to everybody else, I appreciate you listening. Thank you for being here, thank you for committing this time to understanding more about the music business and all the practicalities around it all. Um, I'm here to help everybody. Reach out anytime. Thank you for listening, have a great day, and may the force be with you.