Better Than Social Media: Authentic Music Marketing w/ Nikki Fair

Nikki Fair (00:00)
People kept using this particular song over and over and over. So it just really grew this fan base and the artist was really dialed in with those fans, started a Discord server and really helped facilitate fan meetups in different cities. And then when she would go to those cities, she would just drop in like, meet me at this park, art activities together, we'll read poetry.

Danny Garcia (00:22)
Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. You're listening to the Music to Your Ears podcast. I am your co-host Danny Garcia.

Jimmy Mikaoui (00:30)
and Jimmy Mikaoui here.

Danny Garcia (00:32)
And we're very excited today to be joined by Nikki Fair from Network Music Group.

Nikki Fair (00:38)
Hi guys.

Jimmy Mikaoui (00:39)
Hi, Nikki. Thanks for joining us this morning.

Nikki Fair (00:41)
Thank you.

Danny Garcia (00:42)
know, dialing in or tuning in or whatever you want to call it from the, ⁓ from Atlanta today. So really happy to be out here. ⁓ and, and to be joined by you, I, you know, I would love to start just from the top and, and, know, I know your background started at Lions gate, moved into Rhino now network. I'd love to hear from your perspective, like how you got started in the, in the, marketing space, how it kind of rolled into the music side and just your story in general.

Nikki Fair (01:12)
I am kind of that typical LA story where I moved out after college from Ohio. I wanted to work in entertainment, but didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. just, I really wanted to work in film. So I ⁓ started, you know, as a receptionist, you know, at a small little, you know, indie film place and ⁓ ended up at Lionsgate and worked in the marketing department there. You know, I started working

as an assistant for the head of marketing and really just listened and learned and raised my hand to do everything. Any department that needed help, I was there trying to learn, which was a really great experience for me. I was there for six years, learned a lot, just by chance had an opportunity to jump over to music, an agency I was working with at the time.

suggested me, they said, hey, know, there's somebody at this other label, a catalog label of Warner Music Group called Rhino. Really cool music. You know, they have like these great legacy catalogs like Led Zeppelin and Grateful Dead and things. I'm like, I like that music. That's great. So I ended up bouncing over there and the skills were pretty transferable. mean, marketing is marketing. So I went from marketing film to marketing music and was at Rhino for another five years.

And, yeah, I finally ended up, I'm at network now, indie label, very different vibe going from a major label, ⁓ to an independent and working like new frontline artists and developing artists. And we have all ranges of artists now on the label. But when I first started, you know, it was, ⁓ really more of a singer songwriter label and now it's branched out and we have genres that kind of cross genre everything and every size of artists too, which has just been.

really refreshing.

Jimmy Mikaoui (03:08)
And speaking of network, it's a very modern company with a management division and a label. How do you find collaborations with your colleagues across the board compared to a more siloed process at Rhino?

Nikki Fair (03:24)
Yeah, well,

you nailed it. It's not siloed at all. It's very collaborative. And we've grown immensely in the past. For five to six years, we've really grown immensely. I had a team of four people that I oversaw when I first started there. And I'm about 54 now. Wow. That's impressive. That's just under the marketing umbrella. we've grown immensely. But somehow we've retained the.

collaboration because we do have offices all over the world. So we have offices in London and Hamburg. We have some people in Australia. And so we meet weekly as a team. And it's not just siloed to one country, but the whole label meets once a week and goes through all of our projects worldwide. It's really different that way. ⁓ The teams are working collaboratively. We work every day with

The A &R people, example, production is heavily involved in what we do. The analytics team is super important in what we do. But sales, publicity, sync, radio, everybody. I'm sure I'm missing a division there. we're in constant touch every day, which is really nice. We even brought in, I brought in a lot of services in-house too. we have an advertising team in-house and the marketing team, for example, which has been

super helpful in terms, you know, instead of working with third parties, which are very helpful and great, but it's not the same as being in our weekly meetings or the artist meetings or being able to join artist calls and really understand the audience. Of course. And same with, you know, we have a content team in house now too, which is just important for everybody these days, short form content and ⁓ influencer marketing, fan engagement team is in house. So I just think all of those pieces are really important because

Everybody needs to understand the artist and the audience and the music and what they're about. And we're storytelling. So it's really hard to kind of form that stuff out, I find.

Jimmy Mikaoui (05:34)
Yeah, mean, Danny and I are a bit obsessed about all those topics. I'm to refrain myself from going too deep, but the storytelling element is really what it's about. it's very often overlooked. What's your best advice on that and how to articulate, you know, who the artist is and brand artists in general to new audiences?

Nikki Fair (06:00)
Yeah, I mean, it is super important and it's a collaboration we find between ourselves and the artist because simply put, authenticity is still, you you hear about that all the time, but authenticity is very important and fans are savvy now. They know when they're kind of getting fed a line of bull or something that's manufactured. So it really needs to be authentic to the artist. that

sometimes means you're not chasing the latest trends that might not be authentic to you. And that's okay. I think it's much more important to just be open, be who you are and invite fans into that world. you know, we have an example of an artist that's just built this fandom. The fandom loves this artist's lyrics, right? They're really involved in the lyrics. So, okay, how do we start to tell the story of the artist through

the visuals that we're giving people, the kind of content you're producing, what they're willing to share. Some people are willing to share and get more personal with their fans, but if they're not, that's okay too. If that might be authentic to them where they're just like, I wanna hold some of my personal life back, that's okay too. But how can you connect those fans together then? there's a lot of, social platforms are great for that because fans can gather themselves even if the artist isn't involved.

they can kind of enter that world and say like, okay, let's get a discord server for this artist and start like, where's the fan art for this? Like where are the lyrics? Like, you know, what are the different elements from that artist's world or vision that you want to present to people? And there's, there's ways to present that to people then, you know, you can, you can encourage fans or ask fans to like send each other, write each other notes.

to each other from the merch table and pass them out during shows and get them to connect. We have artists that do that and it's really effective. You get tapped on the shoulder and get a note from somebody, like have a nice night. it just makes your day. I've gotten one, an open one. I'm like, I got a message. That's so exciting. And it really does get you invested in that world then. But it really is through the art, the visuals, the content, the posts that you're sharing. It's a lot.

And it is a collaboration with the artist and label and like, what are they willing to do and share? And how can we help augment that and kind of scale it? Like maybe sometimes we'll do more of that for them if they're feeling a little mentally burned out, you know, and they need to reserve some of that energy to make music still. And then some people are really hands on and really have a clear vision of what they want to do.

Danny Garcia (08:42)
So as an artist, it's great that you have so many options to tell your story ⁓ in terms of the channels that are available to you, whether it's DSP pitching, PR, social media ads, et cetera. ⁓ If you have limited resources, which a lot of independent artists do, how do you choose where to focus your marketing energy and resources to find the best avenue to do that storytelling?

Nikki Fair (09:12)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to just do an analysis of where your fans are at. A lot of artists come to us and they have a really good grasp on that already. But it's really all of these platforms have great analytics as well through them. So you can really just get a gauge and say, who is my demo? Who's my fan base? What age are they? And what platforms do they like to react on best and meet them where they're at?

You're right, you can really spread yourself thin if you're trying to be everything to everybody. So sometimes it is, there's nothing wrong with focusing on one or two platforms and saying like, this is where my audience is, this is where I can really invest my time and energy, and this is where I want to meet them. And that will vary from, you know, I don't think there's like one necessarily better than the other, but something like YouTube.

is so accessible for everybody. And I feel like that's really top of the funnel. There's still a lot of discovery going on there. Music discovery and using long form and short form. And then you've got the music platform, you know, and you can go live and connect with your audience too. There's a lot of possibilities on that platform and a lot of potential for discovery as well, which I

Danny Garcia (10:32)
really like. What I love about YouTube is number one, it's the most widely used around the world. Like, you go to any other country, it's YouTube. And then number two, I feel like the video discovery algorithm works really well. Like you'll end up actually getting shown even if you don't have that many subscribers or listeners or anything, which on other platforms, there's definitely a little bit of like some tricks you have to do, whether it's like, you know.

Playlisting or things like that to actually get the tires moving. think YouTube I've seen it work really well for artists starting at zero that actually get you know, really good exposure from from not much, you know, I agree So that's that's that's a good shout

Jimmy Mikaoui (11:15)
Absolutely. And just to dial it back one step, you oversee a lot of departments and it might be a bit scary for an independent artist to realize that a team of professionals potentially working their music down the line is composed of seven or eight different departments. And we're talking only about the marketing department. ⁓ Yet ⁓ they might be by themselves or just have a manager and

need to move the needle alone, where do you recommend they focus their attention at the beginning of their careers?

Nikki Fair (11:51)
I think really again, building on YouTube is a great place to start because of that recommendation engine that you're talking about. And you can really start to see what's working even in the comments. I mean, you'll see comments like, hey, I didn't know about you, but I just discovered you or you were my recommended and this was a great find. That's always ⁓ a great starting point where you know you're onto something. And then, if you're just working with one of those independent distributor, distribution companies, just making sure.

All of your stuff is you're using all the tools you can on Spotify, you know, and all of the DSPs, but you know, you're making your playlists and your playlists, you're putting in artists that you think you're aligned with, you know, musically so people can come in and discover you that way as well. Making sure your bio is updated, you know, all those, seems very simple, but it's extremely important. And I see a lot of artists that don't do that. They're not putting, they're not linking their social.

profiles from Spotify, for example. They're not putting their bio information in there, not connecting any tour dates if they're touring, those are all easily accessible tools that they should be utilizing.

Danny Garcia (13:02)
Yeah, keeping a cohesive image ⁓ across all of them, right? Because I've found certain artists myself that I love the music, I scroll down on Spotify, I see their images, I click out to Instagram, and then their Instagram is completely different to what's on Spotify, which is so- It's confusing. Yeah, it's a little confusing if you're just in the discovery, like prospecting, whatever you want to call it as a fan. that's definitely another interesting point there. ⁓

I also want to kind of go back to the beginning. One of the things you mentioned that piqued my interest was the catalog versus frontline approach, like looking at your background at Rhino and then going into network. There's obviously a big switch there. Are there any frameworks? If you're approaching catalog marketing versus frontline, is there a huge shift in how you approach the?

the thought process behind marketing it or are there a lot of similarities?

Nikki Fair (14:05)
I find there's a lot of similarities, it depends if the artist is still alive or they're not. That's a big one. But I found the line. The exciting thing about the time we're in now is that we used to look at catalog as just being, ⁓ anniversaries, right? Like you're kind of building around a big temple. there's a big anniversary of something. Let's celebrate that now. Now people are listening to catalog every day.

whether or not they even realize it. And short form platforms, of course, have really pushed that to the forefront because users can go and put their own songs to anything. Sometimes they're just searching for a keyword that fits the mood of what they're wanting to convey and not realizing, ⁓ this is a great catalog song from this artist you might not have heard before. So there's a lot of opportunity now in everyday marketing to just market catalog. We do that.

for artists that are still active on the roster, we market catalog right alongside frontline and new releases. especially, again, we talk about that top of the funnel. That's the top of discovery for people. say you have an artist releasing new music, but you know that not everybody's heard of this artist yet, and you still want to continue building an audience. You want to use the most popular song that maybe people have heard. There might be one catalog track that people are like,

I didn't know the name of this artist, but I know that song. I've heard that song somewhere, you know? And so we're not precious about that, you know? Any door into getting artist discovery is a door. It doesn't have to be the brand new song. It can be a catalog song.

Jimmy Mikaoui (15:50)
That's great advice. Thank you.

Danny Garcia (15:53)
Imagine like two, or maybe you can tell me like it's almost easier to get, you know, from an ad perspective, probably like get clicks on the cat, like the known art, the known music, right? And using that, maybe putting it on a, like sending people to a playlist, right? That has the new track under the old track, things like that. I'm sure our...

Nikki Fair (16:15)
You nailed it. Putting those tracks into playlists too is super important and driving to that. So you're not just driving to one track, you're driving to a body of work. Yeah. Yeah. Getting people in there.

Danny Garcia (16:27)
Is there anything that's not working? we're talking a lot about, you know, tactics that do work. Like, is there anything people should be like omitting from their marketing strategy or like anything that's changed, you know, over the past few years?

Nikki Fair (16:41)
Well, omitting,

I don't know if it's omitting because I don't know if anybody, everybody's doing it, but chasing trends, think is just not, it's short-sighted. might get you a quick little bump, but unless you have a plan or strategy to keep people around and more invested in you beyond like just a ⁓ blip, you know, dance challenge or something like that. And again, I think people are kind of getting burnt out on that and they just want the authenticity.

Jimmy Mikaoui (17:12)
You're absolutely right, but there is still confusion from artists on that point. Very often we hear that the one post that got the most engagement on a given month was the one about the breakfast burrito or the avocado toast versus any promotional related tool to the new video, the new track, whatever it is.

And so it's almost as if they would love to not do it, but the metrics are telling them otherwise.

Nikki Fair (17:47)
Well, and but then you have to think of like, why was that popular? Because it's relatable and giving you a viewpoint into that artist's point of view and maybe reframing that and saying, okay, maybe people, fans and non-fans, people that have just discovered you, but said, hey, who is this person through this? What are they connecting to exactly? And how can you make that part of your voice and, and

feel comfortable with it, I guess, you know, is what, because I'm just like, maybe they're just reacting because they're like, hey, I never knew this about this person. And that's super interesting. you know, I like knowing those facts about them.

Danny Garcia (18:24)
Cool. And that's in a way why you look at, know, just thinking about myself, like why you would kind of go and seek out an artist on social media. Usually it's about what's behind the curtain almost and understanding like who they are as a person. What are they up to? Like are these someone that's like in the studio all the time? Are they traveling the world? Like it's kind of like, I don't know, maybe, you know, kind of trying to get an inside view on them. And I think it helps a lot to have that.

I see a lot of artists doing that. I mean, think Dua Lipa is an awesome example of a huge artist that her Instagram feed is, it looks like just like a normal person's feed, right? And she posts not very highly edited images. They're all very, know, t-s-i-e-y. But it works. I mean, she's really highly engaged on Instagram and obviously a huge artist. But I think a lot of people can be taking that. And there's a fine line. You don't want it to be too personal, right?

Nikki Fair (19:10)
That's salesy.

Danny Garcia (19:24)
There's, you know, there's room for what you were mentioning. think it's, it works.

Jimmy Mikaoui (19:29)
Yeah, but I do understand the confusion from the artist side because we're saying two opposite things. The more you open the door and make your ⁓ post personal, the higher the engagement will be on one hand and on the other, trying to still focus the conversation on the art somehow. And some artists have become more famous for the...

Let's call it the side hustle or the side interest versus the more principally try to push forward.

Nikki Fair (20:01)
the actual.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's a fine line.

Danny Garcia (20:07)
But I think, like, mean, going the other direction too, I mean, you can think about it as like using that as the top of the funnel, right? In marketing, it's like I can make a funny post about a burrito that I ate this morning and, you know, as an, there are tools that can help you do this, but as an independent artist, look at all the likes and the comments and maybe retarget them and send them an automated DM and be like, hey, go check out my new song or like things like that, that's like, you wanna get as much.

coming through that page as possible. So you can try and retarget. So there's, mean, it depends, Going back to your storytelling point, you don't want it to be completely inauthentic, right? It should go with your vibe as an artist. So I guess you could go either way.

Jimmy Mikaoui (20:55)
It's a nice

Danny Garcia (20:57)
Yeah, looking at like going back to like, you know, executing campaigns and everything for artists that balance between storytelling and like driving like results. Like how how do you guys at network balance that? Like is it is it all hey, we need to drive as many streams in week one as possible or maybe we can forgo some streams because the artist has like a really amazing video that they want to put out that's not necessarily optimized for the most conversions or is is you know, is there any

balance there at all or is it usually?

Nikki Fair (21:29)
Yeah, we kind of look at, we just look at like a release. So let's say we're releasing singles and then going into an EP or an album. Like that EP or that album release is part of the marketing timeline, but it's not the end all be all. If that makes sense. You know, like the work continues.

for weeks and months and sometimes years after that release where we don't just go up to the release and say, okay, we're done. We hit week one and this is where we're at. We're constantly checking the analytics of course and streams and seeing how we can keep things going and keep music relevant and like, hey, this is a song that raised its hand that we didn't release as a single.

but it's doing well and fans are, you know, the metrics are showing us it's doing well. Should we release another version of that or should we do another standalone single or, you know, should we make a video element for that? We didn't make a video for that one because we didn't know it was going to be so popular. So there's things to the conversation going. ⁓ It doesn't just stop, I guess, with that release. ⁓

Danny Garcia (22:38)
and like fan engagement and email list and like phone number list and all that. I know that's a big topic right now. Is that something that you focus in on and where does that fall into like, you know, overall the overall marketing of a specific release or artist?

Nikki Fair (22:56)
Yeah, well, those own lists are very important. ⁓ Most of the artist teams own that because that is their data and their information. But we work with their management teams or the artists themselves if they don't have a manager to come up with the strategy for that. A lot of people use services like a Lalo or MailChimp or whatever, know, to send out their information. We make sure that they're in a steady cadence with that, that they're continuing to build the email lists.

You can't just post about it once and never post about it again. You have to continually remind people that they exist and maybe incentivize and say, know, unlock, you know, ⁓ video content or unlock, you know, a song demo or something else, you know, to incentivize the set, like the sign up, make sure that you have all that signage at the merch booth if you're touring and talking about that there's, there's, there's a lot of great services that help with that as well. But

Yeah, mean, that's a really important part of the whole puzzle. Making sure that you're marketing to your fans and the people that have signed up for your email lists, of course, are your really dedicated people. you want to make sure you're continuing to super serve them. We don't personally handle like artist merch, you know, per se, but, know, that's a really powerful tool for that as well.

Jimmy Mikaoui (24:18)
In terms of direct connection to fans, what would be the craziest example in your career where fans really took something and ran with it and it became the driver of the campaign?

Nikki Fair (24:33)
Yeah, I mean, we have an artist that wrote a song that ended up becoming ⁓ kind of a feminist anthem. And the fans had a huge play in that. I mean, it really just the UGC, the user generated content, videos that people were posting and using the song and telling their own personal stories because they related to it so much. And it was kind of like those trends that the fans took over. was like, this is what it's like to be a girl or would you rather fight?

a bearer man in the woods, all of those things that came up, people kept using this particular song over and over and over. So it just really grew this fan base and the artist was really dialed in with those fans, started a Discord server and really helped facilitate fan meetups in different cities. And then when she would go to those cities, she would just drop in like, meet me at this park, we'll do.

art activities together, we'll read poetry. They're very much like into like, like fairy lore and books. She linked up with Little Free Library and started book exchanges at her merch booths at all the shows. So people are showing up at shows now with books, you know, and being able to like, yeah, trade books with each other. These are fans that were writing fairy messages to each other and exchanging them at shows and just trying to brighten, you know, a stranger's day and make a new friend. And

the artist was very much involved in that and would give, know, when she did her album release, like we did activity books, like, here's what you can do on the day of release to connect with the community. And it's like, go out in nature, like, you know, read a book, do this and like share all of the things with each other and tag, know, tag each other, use a hashtag with that too and connect. And so it's been really fantastic to see the fan base just really coalesce around this and everybody.

comes to shows like Dressed Up and Crowns and beautiful dresses. And they're meeting up with each other and they're making friends with each other and they're messaging about it. And it's just growing and growing and growing.

Jimmy Mikaoui (26:42)
love that. For me, this is when it all comes together in a completely unpredictable way. And it's just about being able to emphasize and grow the movement. But it comes from the fans in the first place.

Nikki Fair (26:58)
Yeah, yes. the fans would do that regardless, but the artist is really involved and has really jumped in and really knows this because this is how she is too in her life. she's just like, yes, I'm one of you. She comes out at the end of every show and actually after the show encore, they stick around and do a dance like the

dance in circles with each other and hold hands and dance around and she'll often come out and jump in the middle and dance with them just as a fan. know what I mean? She's like, I'm a fan too. I love this community and they dance together and it's really lovely.

Danny Garcia (27:39)
Yeah, that's what I love about this is the fact that the, I mean, a lot of artists, independent artists, I think make a mistake where they try and look at hacks and like use these tools as a way to like, how do I actually like get views through the tools? But what I loved about this is that it's about just getting, building an actual community off platforms and just using the platforms as a conduit to like just organize.

Yes, you know discord for example, ⁓ and the meetups and all that so I think that's definitely a huge takeaway for independent artists is like just use these platforms as what they are a tool but have an actual greater kind of strategy or ⁓ know, whatever it may be Yeah, it's not going to be fairy lore, right? Whatever it is and whatever the community you're building around your music, you know is about it's not about like

Nikki Fair (28:29)
But whatever your passion is.

Danny Garcia (28:37)
trying to use tricks to expose the music. It's a lot more about doing actual ⁓ community building.

Nikki Fair (28:45)
Well, and you might start off with, there might be 20 fans there, but 20 really passionate fans that understand your music and get it. And if you build that connection and you're really authentic with them, they're going to bring a friend to the next show and that person's going to bring a friend to the next show. And that's how it builds. And we've seen that a lot. A lot of our artists where it's just that word of mouth and fans really advocating for these artists. It's really fantastic to see.

Danny Garcia (29:15)
And one of the, this might be a rabbit hole, but I can't not mention it, the artists, that's amazing for artists that can tour and play live, right? But there are certain artists out there that are more digital and just, whether it's the genre or anything like that, is there anything in the digital world, mean, email list is probably the closest thing, right? Or maybe Patreon or things like that where it's digital community building or do you have any?

like experience on that end.

Nikki Fair (29:45)
I mean, even something like YouTube or TikTok or Instagram all have their live ⁓ features that can go live on there. ⁓ Instagram has broadcast channels, although I think you do need a certain minimum of fans to unlock having the broadcast channel. Anybody can build a Discord, but again, you want to have some fans to be able to go in there.

Jimmy Mikaoui (30:09)
Nicky, you talk about Discord a lot, which I think is awesome and not widely used yet. Do you think it's because of the audience on Discord being quite specific and the fact that you can't necessarily take any fan to Discord the same way you meet them on TikTok or on Instagram, or there's something magical about that platform itself?

Nikki Fair (30:37)
Yeah, there is something different about that platform in terms of the way people like really connecting with each other and with the community instead of just leaving a comment and not really interacting with the other people or the other fans. You know, so if you're on a meta post, Instagram, for example, you leave a comment on an artist, you're not necessarily then kind of chatting with the other people that are commenting under that artist as well. ⁓

Discord has been surprising. I have brought it up a lot because it's been surprising to me in the past year that it has worked across various genres of music, various demos of people. Like I would have made an assumption before that it was younger leaning and sure, there's a lot of young people on there, but there's audiences. You can find anybody on there. ⁓ There's different pockets of people like waiting to engage. And I think if they're

passionate and if it's a space where they're getting something else from the artist so they're connecting with other fans and able to have conversations and if the artist pops in from time to time especially to like that's also yeah you that feels a little more personal than maybe a live stream like somewhere else if even if they're just popping in the comments too and just you know reacting to people and being like hey I'm hanging out here I'm reading this stuff there's there's something to be said for that

Jimmy Mikaoui (32:05)
And for those who aren't familiar with the platform and the process, how involved does the artist or management need to be after it's set up? Do you see that it's a lot of work or some fans just take over and become the manager of the... Yeah.

Nikki Fair (32:23)
You can do any kind of level. Yeah, you can hand over the keys to a fan, a super fan, you know, have a conversation and hand over the keys and they'll take it. Or you can be more involved if you'd like. It's certainly, I think, more like successful if an artist can drop in from time to time. But it doesn't even that doesn't need to be daily or weekly. It could be once a month, you know, once every other month. There's some that don't jump in at all.

and the fans are just happy to have a community to talk to each other. But yeah, as an artist, I would think if you could commit to going in like once a month and you don't even have to schedule it more of a surprise and delight model, then that can be really effective.

Jimmy Mikaoui (33:05)
It's very rare for us to meet marketeers who started their careers in the film industry. What do you think that the film industry does better than the music industry or something that the music industry hasn't gotten to experiment with marketing wise? Or if the music industry does it better, we'd love to know that too.

Danny Garcia (33:27)
Yeah,

yeah, the grass is always greener

Nikki Fair (33:30)
Well,

mean, you know, I'll be biased here and say and the music industry, mean, just music is more accessible. We talked about YouTube earlier. mean, YouTube is a prime example. Like anybody anywhere in the world, most of the world can go on YouTube and stream music. Yeah. Discover new music, hear music. I guess there's a few platforms out there for film that do that.

but they don't have everything and everything's fragmented. So like there isn't a platform where you can go watch every movie. And music is different like that. You can go to Apple or Spotify or YouTube and pretty much find anything you want at your fingertips, which I think is pretty amazing. It's incredible. So I'm going music.

Jimmy Mikaoui (34:18)
Music are better global marketeers, basically.

Danny Garcia (34:21)
Yeah, I like that. The thing with music that's tough is the attribution, right? Like, I feel like that's that's hard, you know, because I mean, film, traditionally, you're selling a ticket, right? So you can ultimately understand that that sale was made. Like if you're talking about digital ads, one of the things as a mark, you know, just coming from my my perspective is sending a fan to like Spotify or YouTube. You can't put a pixel on those.

streaming services. it's hard to see exactly what happens after you send people. Where did they go? What did they do? And even if you do have that data, it's hard to match it up with the clicks coming through. that's one of the, think, hurdles in our space that affects at least everyone I've spoken to. that's one of the things that I would probably call out. ⁓

Nikki Fair (34:53)
Where did they go out?

Jimmy Mikaoui (35:12)
Spotify,

please let Danny-

Nikki Fair (35:14)
Thanks for having me. Let's talk API. ⁓

Danny Garcia (35:19)
Yeah, but I think my final question would be just what's the best piece of advice you've gotten professionally and within the music world that you impart to other marketeers, independent artists that are looking at marketing their music, things like that. ⁓

Nikki Fair (35:37)
This is a wide ranging question here. mean, the best piece of advice just personally working in entertainment in all scopes is, you know, take mental health seriously. You know, have a life outside of your job. I think it's really important to also have other interests to fuel to come back and like revitalize and come with fresh ideas and perspectives and not be just 24 seven.

robot because you will burn out very quickly. What was the second half of that question?

Danny Garcia (36:12)
I mean, yeah, just that's that's really good. Yeah, I mean it because it goes towards artists as well I mean it was it was asking a little bit about like from a marketeer or an artist perspective but I think it goes very like well towards artists because well, yeah, they arguably they're you know constantly like

Nikki Fair (36:30)
It's more important than ever for artists. There's a lot of demands on artists and we're trying to be, coming from the label side, very cognizant about what we're asking of artists because it is not just creating music now. We're talking about all these ways of like artists as collaborators and contributors and like marketing their music with all of these platforms. And we understand that's really overwhelming.

And it's our responsibility to find out like how can we do that on our end, even if an artist is just like, I'm not going to participate at all. Okay. Like we have other ways. Like we, we got you. We can do this. Yeah. It's a really important topic.

Danny Garcia (37:13)
Yeah, agree. Agree. ⁓

Jimmy Mikaoui (37:15)
Thank you

so much, Niki, for taking the time to join us. I know we have ⁓ busy schedules to attend tonight at the conference and we're grateful for your time.

Nikki Fair (37:26)
Thank you very much. I enjoyed speaking with

Danny Garcia (37:28)
Yeah, likewise. Well, thank you so much, Nicky, for the insights and thanks everyone for tuning in and listening to music to your ears. We'll see you on the next episode.