Are you a music creator who's serious about growing the audience for your music, but at the same time, you're a grown-up? Like, you've got adult responsibilities in life—kids, a partner, a mortgage, a career outside of music? Are you someone who sees music as a super vital part of their life and a part of who they are, but it really can't be the whole of your life the same way it might be for some rich 18-year-old kid with all the time and money in the world to burn?
You might be someone who has minutes or hours at most each week to do things like promote your music and tell the story of your music in an interesting way so that anyone gives a damn. So, you have to make that time count. You're not going to re-mortgage your house to, you know, fund your next album. You're not going to spend your kids' college fund in order to go on tour. You're not going to be racking up credit card debt to do some sort of new promotional thing.
You don't want to be switching platforms every six months and chasing the new trend. You don't want to be posting on social 15 times a week. And when you go online—maybe on podcasts or YouTube or whatever it might be—searching for good advice, you find it. You find mountains of good advice. But the problem is, it's good advice for the rich 18-year-old kid. It's not going to work for you and your real life. It's not going to fit into what's realistic for you.
And so, if you try it, it might not work at all. Maybe you try it and it works a bit, or maybe it works a lot, but it's so exhausting that you're like, "Yeah, never going to do that again."
Well, where does that leave you? It leaves you in a spot where you actually start to believe the other thing that some of these same people tell you—which is, if you don't grind and hustle and burn it all at the altar of this music passion, you don't deserve success. And that is [bleep]. It's absolute [bleep].
Some of my absolute favorite songwriters working right now—people whose music makes me cry every time I hear it—are not household names. They are far below the radar. And yet, they have carved out a little corner of the universe for themselves and their fans. They have a cottage industry that they've built around their music in a way that is sustainable, that they can keep doing week after week after week and feel not just creative growth but business growth too.
They're making the best work of their lives. They're getting better with age. And as long as they don't lose focus, and they prioritize the right things, and they tune out all the stuff that won't make a difference for them, they can actually find more meaningful audience growth too. And that's what I want for you.
I want to carve out a little corner of the universe where we can discuss these things like grown-ups. And if you can be a grown-up about your passion, you may be able to turn it into a business as well.
So, through a new podcast called Scratch Track and through my new business called Demo, I want to guide artists toward a better system for promoting their music—again, where they can tune out the [bleep], tune into what works for them, and do music promotion in a way that is sustainable and rewarding.
Because again, when the idea of telling a piece of your music story inspires you, you'll keep doing it. So that as you get better and better, you'll reach more and more of the right people.
My name is Chris Robley. If you recognize me or my voice, it might be from all the many years I spent co-hosting the DIY Musician Podcast, which is something I co-founded all the way back in 2007—back when I barely even knew what a podcast was. And over the years, it's consistently been cited as a top music business resource by places like Spotify for Artists, Ari’s Take, and Variety.
And that grew into the DIY Musician Blog, which I edited for 15 years. Which grew into the DIY Musician Conference, which we hosted year after year all over the world. We got to meet some really cool, passionate, smart musicians.
I've spoken at a lot of conferences like Music Biz, Indie Week, Folk Alliance International—and really, the list goes on and on. My writing has appeared in books by Martin Atkins and Michael Warner. And I've contributed video instruction to Berklee Online for some of their courses on music marketing.
Through all of that, my favorite thing has been talking to and learning from musicians who are finding success without the help of—or even in spite of—labels and tastemakers and the big music industry.
One of the things I'm most excited about in this podcast, Scratch Track, and with my company Demo, is that I no longer represent someone else's company. I feel like I always did a good job of speaking my mind, for sure. But there is a limit to how fully transparent you can be when you answer to a boss or a CEO or a board or shareholders.
So, this is the place where you're going to get the full, unvarnished truth from me—at least my truth. To the degree that that helps me help you focus on what will truly move the needle for your music, I'm excited about that. I hope you'll be a part of it with me.
And the first thing you can do, obviously, is listen to the first few episodes. And if you like them, if you hate them, if you have things to say—things you want to argue about, questions to ask, your own perspective and experience you want to offer—comment. Share it with friends.
If you have musician friends who you think would benefit, please pass the word along. That would mean a lot to me.
And with that, let's get into it.
