The Most Valuable Data Point in Music, w/ Jason Feinberg

Jason Feinberg (00:00)
Core tenet is know your audience. And with the Guns N' Roses campaign, we really knew who we were talking to and who we were trying to convert. And we thought through the behaviors, their wants, their desires, what would motivate them, what would appeal to them, what would spark curiosity, all of the emotion that then translates into appreciation of the art and leaning in and then giving us feedback. It's the example you just gave. What a great chance.

for an artist to get direct feedback from the fans that care the most.

Jimmy Mikaoui (01:11)
Welcome to the music to your ears podcast. I'm Jimmy Mikaoui with my cohost and we're very excited today to have Jason Feinberg SVP at Cobalt and the head of their new platform, Cosine Jason. Welcome.

Danny Garcia (01:16)
Danny Garcia.

Jason Feinberg (01:28)
Fantastic to be here.

Jimmy Mikaoui (01:30)
Danny, how do you wanna start today? Any hot topics?

Danny Garcia (01:33)
I mean, Jason, you know, we're just getting to know each other. I would love to understand a bit of your background. Just start there and learn how you kind of got into this role. What led you to even work in music in the first place, right? Kind of a crazy industry to choose or be chosen into, right? So I would love to start there.

Jason Feinberg (01:54)
Happy to. It's always fun to talk about the origin story. I'm to go back to when I was like six and I promise it's relevant. ⁓ My dad was a CPA and a software developer and he'd sat me down at a computer when I was about six and started showing me how to program. So I got in really early into writing code and by about 10 I was actually getting pretty good at it. About the same time I met this much cooler older kid.

who was way into music. And he started playing late 70s, early 80s punk rock for me. And I was like a 10, 11, 12 year old. And it blew my mind. I was just like, I don't know what this is yet, but it's loud and it speaks to me and it's interesting and I'm learning about the world. And those two things, being really early into writing code and understanding tech coupled with just this mind expansive experience with music.

jammed together and those were my instant lifelong passions. And as we'll talk today, you'll see there's a through line, technology and music powering everything. So that was the original, the OG OG story. You know, obviously I didn't quite get into the biz at 10. So I go through high school, do the thing, I play guitar, writing code, taking computer science courses. I go to college and this was Las Vegas, Nevada is where I

started college anyway. And I've been listening to the college radio station, KUNV, in my high school years, because Las Vegas, late 80s, early 90s, not the most culturally magnificent city in the world. So you had to find it where you could. And we had this college radio station, KUNV, where you could hear the misfits into Miles Davis into Ice Cube in the same like...

Three songs, right? It's just the coolest stuff. So I get to campus, I knock on the door, I'm like, let me in. I wanna be a DJ, I wanna do whatever I can. So I started college radio DJ and eventually music director path while learning computer science and information systems and ended up with a business degree focused on IS and CS. And graduated and moved to Seattle to finish college.

writing code, managing bands, audio engineering. Just again, you see this through line. I found my passions early. And not only my passions, but what I was good at. And that's a lesson I'm sure we'll come back to, because I talk about it as much as I can in life. If you can find that overlap of what you're good at and what you love, and eventually what the world needs of you, it's actually a philosophy called Echigai, a Japanese philosophy. If you can find that, you're set. You find joy, you find fulfillment. But anyway, we'll...

Come back to that. I graduated college, keep playing guitar, managing bands, but I'm writing code during the day, software engineer. But one day I realized I had it backwards, and I was up in Seattle at this point. I had it backwards. I needed to focus on music full-time, and the software and technology bit could be my gig on the side to pay for life, exactly, until I got my footing. Moved to LA in 2001 and just hit the ground, running as hard as I could, networking, hustling.

I ended up interning at the Recording Academy. And so, you know, very cool to get to see behind the scenes around the Grammy Awards and Musicares and all the programs they have in place all year long for the benefit of artists. That led to a couple experiences, meeting people, ⁓ expanding my network. But the real moment, the real in ⁓ was I ended up...

incredibly fortunately with a guitar lesson with a guitar player named Steve Vai. Seemed familiar? ⁓ You know, only perhaps the greatest living guitar player was certainly in that short list. Yeah. And it's a very long story for another podcast.

Jimmy Mikaoui (05:44)
There you go.

One of his ⁓ guitars, the Ivan S one as a kid playing guitar, not his, his, his model.

Jason Feinberg (06:03)
The gem with the handle. Yeah. ⁓

Jimmy Mikaoui (06:07)
My guitar teacher was like really trying to imprint that culture and push those guitars around to his students.

Jason Feinberg (06:15)
Did

you get into like forehand tapping?

Jimmy Mikaoui (06:19)
I

tried hard, not sure I ever succeeded but ⁓

Jason Feinberg (06:23)
I think that's the story of my guitar lesson with Steve was we jammed, which was like, know, I'm sitting there looking at my hands and I look up and it's Steve Vai playing guitar right there. And it was like, I don't have words for it. At the end of it, because we had met through the recording academy a few times, he was on the board of governors when I was interning there. And of course, I was this massive Steve Vai fan, tried to play it cool and talk to him down again. At the end of it, we talked about the music business for a couple of hours. It was incredible. And so at the very end of that, he's like, look,

I can't use you as a guitarist. I've got my live guys, got my studio guys, which was a nice way of saying like, you're so far from talented enough to play with me. But he was very cool about it. But then he said, but you seem to get the business. You seem to be a record guy. And I can't make someone a record guy. You are or are not. You understand artists, you understand, you have a vision for what you want to do. I could use sort of an assistant right hand at my little record label. He had this record company called Favored Nations and it was

musicians, musicians. It was often side projects from really established guitar players and other bands. Brian May from Queen, Vernon Reed from Living Color, Marty Friedman from Megadeth. They would all do solo records with us. So like two weeks later, I'm working for Steve at his label. Then he learns I know tech. I can build websites. I knew about this new thing called MySpace. And so suddenly I'm running digital.

I'm getting our music up on iTunes. It just launched. Steve and I flew up to Apple to be a part of this meeting where Steve Jobs comes out and says, hey, welcome to iTunes. Just the overlap of tech and music at the right time, the right passion, the right skill set, what the world needed of me, it just worked. Not by pure happenstance. I I hustled, I networked, I had a lot of no's before I got to the yes, all the things that we all experience.

I'll pick up the pace because I don't like... no, But I like to tell that bit of the story in detail because I heard stories like that when I was getting started and it helped me understand that there's a million paths into the business. You could go to school for it, which is great. Get an education in music industry, get an internship to the program, get a job and you're up and running. That's awesome. You could also be the brother...

Danny Garcia (08:21)
I'll get to.

Jason Feinberg (08:44)
of a guitar player and you're doing social media and art for the band and they take off and suddenly you are riding that with them and then you become the manager. The next thing you know, you're the CEO of a multinational management company. You might've even dropped out of school, right? Like your path just took you there and there's everything in the middle. And so I think the detail of these unique paths in is to me at least was fascinating. So.

I worked for Steve for a couple years on staff. then left to launch my own digital marketing agency. And this was the early days of digital marketing 2003, 2004, started my company, brought Steve and his label with me as clients. But then I very quickly started working for all the majors, a bunch of management companies, distribution companies. And I spent seven years running my own agency, which was great. From 2003 to 2010, a fantastic time to be in digital music, seeing the launch of

the modern streaming services we see today, the launch of the social networks, the business models that some remain, some failed, some evolved. I just got to be a part of it. And I'd like to think I contributed in some ways to some of the things that we still have today. From there, my biggest client was Concord Music Group. And through an incredible happenstance of meetings, actually, I'll go into a little detail here because this is another example of like, I could never have made this up.

Yeah. But it launched me to a new level. I was a partner with a music platform that Concord was interested in. This is when I still was running my company. I set up a meeting for the three of us go in. I have a conference room full of 50 people, chief officers, the marketing team, the A &R team, everybody. The other company got the day wrong and didn't show up. Luckily, I had the keys to the account because I was the partner in the middle. So I ran the demo.

And I'm just going on about like, think this is the future direct consumer and e-commerce and digital strategy and super fans, right? This is 15, 16 years ago. Super fans is not a new thing. You know, and at the end of it, one of the chief officers says, let me talk to you for a second, go in his office. And he basically says, I don't know most of what you just said, but I know we need it here. So would you consider giving us up as a client and coming in house and running this building this team?

running e-comm and digital strategy for Concord. So I wound down my company and got a job as vice president at Concord overseeing a lot of their digital strategy and digital biz dev. And then that went into a similar role at Epitaph Records as a young punk fan. ⁓ For context, those two cassettes I was telling you about that the much cooler older kid were Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat for any punk fans checking this out. mean, those are like stone cold classics.

So to go to Epitaph was a dream come true. Ran digital strategy there for a few years. Pandora recruited me from there to launch and run Pandora AMP, their artist marketing platform. So marketing tools and data tools to help the artists on their platform. Again, that overlap of tech and music. It just kept surfacing. From there, Universal recruited me to run marketing for the catalog across the entire organization. So getting to work in the same day on The Beatles, Kendrick Lamar, and Slayer.

Right. was just like the coolest gig in the world. From there, left to join a startup. Didn't quite go to plan, consulted for a bit. And seven weeks ago, I joined Cobalt to head up a new business venture called Cosine. And that brings us literally to today.

Danny Garcia (12:20)
Yeah

Jimmy Mikaoui (12:21)
Amazing. What a journey. A hundred lives in there. ⁓

Jason Feinberg (12:26)
And everyone was a mix of fascinating and challenging and the highest highs and the lowest lows. But again, like every single one of those was at this overlap of what I loved and what I was good at and what someone needed and just so fulfilling. I could not be more grateful and feel luckier that I've had 25 years spending almost every day doing what I love.

Danny Garcia (12:52)
That's incredible. think, you know, this this whole common thread theme is in music and tech is super interesting. And I think bringing it into just like the marketing conversation as well, talking about common common threads from when you started right in the industry to today. Are there any that come to mind? Like, I mean, one that just hearing you talk fan engagement, right? Like back then, it's 15, 20 years ago was a thing.

still to this day, I was on a panel yesterday at Indie Week about email marketing and fan engagement, right? So it's still very relevant. Do you, first of all, agree that fan engagement is very relevant and also are there other themes, common threads in the marketing world, particularly that are relevant today that might have been back then as well?

Jason Feinberg (13:39)
Sure.

Fan engagement's a great example. It's been relevant since music was commercialized. It is nothing new. It just looks different. Think about thousands of screaming fans chasing the Beatles as they're getting off their plane and getting into the car to go play the stadium 50, 60 years ago. That was fan engagement. They had their version of that. There was a fan club.

There's incredible documentary about the woman that ran the fan club, right? This is 60 plus years ago and the fundamentals have never changed. You have creators creating art that speak to people and the connection between those two is so strong and so unique and so personal. There's always been tactics and strategies and ways to benefit from that connection. You can benefit commercially, right? There's ways to monetize it.

You can benefit altruistically, like giving something to the fans and that feeling of connectedness and community. There's education. There's a million ways to capitalize on that, but it's been with us forever. But the key difference, as I mentioned, is it just looks different. We have different ways to do it. It went from IRL, where you're sending in a letter and hoping to get something back, or...

wading by the backstage with your record, hoping to get an autograph or being a part of a fan club to now incredible platforms that make it really efficient and effective to reach fans at scale, but make it feel like it's small and personal. To cut out companies in the middle taking an artist's share so that the artist receives more compensation for their work, more profit margin, being discovered in more effective ways.

All of these are just evolutions of what has been with us from the very beginning and the fan engagement. And there's a lot of threads there. mean, marketing, it's always marketing, again, looks wildly different. And maybe the calls to action are a little bit different. And the value you get may be a lot more of smaller values along the way. But the fundamental value proposition is always the same. Someone creates art that resonates with someone.

And that connection point creates both art and commerce at the same time. And facilitating that is what we've done since the inception of the industry.

Danny Garcia (16:09)
Completely, yeah.

Jimmy Mikaoui (16:10)
There's been a lot of press and noise around the launch of Cosine. For listeners who aren't familiar with the new company you're heading, do you mind giving us a little download on what Cosine is?

Jason Feinberg (16:28)
Sure, happy to. The simplest way to think about it, the tools that Cobalt has built over the past 20 years, incredibly robust publishing, registration, collection, a global PRO or an XUS global PRO with AMRA, all of these tools that Cobalt has used internally for clients like Paul McCartney and Phoebe Bridgers and Childish Gambino and thousands more.

that are best in class but proprietary inside Cobalt are now being made available to an entire new cohort of artists outside of Cobalt. So you don't have to have a publishing deal with Cobalt to take advantage of these tools. You simply apply through the Cosign website. If accepted, which we can talk about that in a minute, if accepted, you deliver your works, your basic publishing information. Once you're through that process, you are within Cobalt.

all of the same registration, the collection, ensuring you are getting every dollar your publishing and songwriting royalties are generating, ensuring you're collecting every last dollar owed to you the same way it happens for Paul McCartney and Phoebe Bridgers. The exact same technology is what CoSign clients get access to. Not only are you inside the building in that sense of using the same tech stack, but you're also inside Cobalt. You could imagine over time,

as an artist develops and emerges and they're ready for a formal publishing deal, Cobalt is right there. You're already registered with us, we're collecting, the A &R team, the sync teams are watching. So there's even opportunity for growth within CoSign up into Cobalt. We think for a certain cohort of artists, ones that have a little bit of momentum, are generating publishing revenue, are developing and growing, we think it's the strongest value proposition of publishing admin on

Jimmy Mikaoui (18:23)
Yeah, it's certainly very unique and what I really love about what you guys are doing is the fact that it's not a tiered service. The fact that you took the entire tech stack and made it available to developing artists without having, you know, tier A, B, C and so forth ⁓ is a super powerful proposition. ⁓

It's also one of the areas where it was really needed because there's few things that are ⁓ lesser understood that publishing registrations and how to do it well and the results at yield. yeah, good to have a new player in the game.

Jason Feinberg (19:09)
We're happy to be in the game. Yes. We I think that's a lot of the genesis of why we launched this is you find publishing admin is one of the most complicated topics publishing in general, but especially really understanding how to collect all the money being generated, even to understand where all the money is being generated is difficult. We have artists come to us or songwriters or producers all the time that think they have comprehensive collections happening.

I'm registered with ASCAP, I'm set. You're on the way, absolutely. You've done something very important, but you're not comprehensively set. Let's talk about that. ⁓ Being able to go to one place within CoSign and ensure all of your royalties are being collected is a big step forward for independent artists that either haven't had a need prior to that to focus on this or haven't dedicated the time yet to understand it or, and,

with full understanding here, they want to be artists. They don't want to be thinking about the nuances of ensuring they are registered globally and collecting everywhere. And we take care of all of that. It's really as simple as you sign up and you deliver your works to us and Cobalt takes care of the rest. Again, the same way it's happening for thousands of artists already within the Cobalt ecosystem.

Danny Garcia (20:30)
I think like one of the things tying it back to like the independent artists or like the earlier stage artists, I think if there's number one, it's overlooked, right? Like the publishing side. I think the DSPs make it very like addicting, right? To care about monthly listeners, followers, that kind of thing, but not really all everything else in terms of like, you know, publishing and stuff. What would be, I mean, at what stage do you recommend an artist that's just starting out to start?

caring about that? Is it just from day one or do you like to see certain metrics, KPIs that start popping and then go into the publishing side or how do you get started in that world?

Jason Feinberg (21:14)
It's a little different for every artist and songwriter depending on where you're focused and are you aggressively working to develop and grow this into a career? Is this something you're doing as a hobby and you're more focused on creating art than making sure everything is fully monetized? Everyone's different and that's what's great about art is everyone can be different. But having said that...

It's generally never too early to at least get fully educated on what it takes to be compensated fairly, to collect what is owed to you, and then think about the right strategy there. In the very early days, it's important to be educated, but if you're not really commercializing your music too much yet, you can take a second to really think about the right strategy, because there are different paths here, and getting educated on that, could spend an entire

Danny Garcia (22:07)
Another broadcast.

Jason Feinberg (22:09)
On that one, but where we're focused in that is the mid-tier of artists where you have some momentum And so you are generating a little bit of revenue already It's not an incredibly high bar to hit but there is a bit of a floor that we look for in artists because we want to avoid a few issues that are sometimes present in the market when you're open to everyone regardless of your levels of income your levels of ⁓

how you're working to develop yourself. Now it's great that there are options for everyone in the industry. I if you are owed a dollar, you should get that dollar. I am a firm believer in that. But there are also sometimes you run into occasional issues with the volume of content. As we see a lot of the conversation right now in the industry around fraud, the impact of AI. There's a lot of major issues we're trying to solve as an industry. And I think the approach we've taken has been by having a bit of a floor,

It alleviates some of those issues and allows us to focus on what we find to be what we're best at and very important to our clients. And that is collecting every penny owed and ensuring it's done efficiently and effectively and transparently. But I think the fundamental answer to your question is it's different for everyone. Just like when do I need a manager? When do I need a label? Do I need a label? Like all these questions are so unique to every artist depending on their trajectory and needs.

So I'd say the first step is just get fully educated on how this works and then figure out of the multiple paths, ⁓ trying to get a formal publishing deal, working with Cosine where it's a flexible term. And by that, mean effectively no term. You can join us on Monday, leave on Friday after a bit of a collection period, just by the nature of how publishing works on cycles, you're free to go elsewhere. So if, this is example of a... ⁓

and answer your question that we're seeing, let's say you are getting started, you have some momentum, you want to ensure you're collecting your revenue, so you sign with Cosime, and then you get an opening slot for a huge artist and suddenly explosion of career, and you want a formal publishing deal with an advance and sync services. Well, because we have effectively no term, you're free to then move up to that publishing deal almost instantly.

And that is the most flexible arrangement in the industry. So we've tried to build it to compensate for what we're talking about with this question of every artist is different, their timetables are different, their desires are different. And we think the flexibility and the quality of what we do allows for all those use cases.

Danny Garcia (24:51)
course, yeah. mean, that's an awesome setup there that you just described. I want to kind of zoom out a little bit too. mean, going back to your background in marketing, obviously a lot of people listening to this are listening from that digital marketing context. What's one of the craziest or most surprising marketing campaigns you've ever run or most interesting in terms of...

working in the industry for so many years.

Jimmy Mikaoui (25:22)
Sure. The outcome can be positive or

Jason Feinberg (25:26)
Okay, let's dive in maybe try to do both Positive of one of the my favorite campaigns I've ever worked on it was for Guns N Roses We reissued appetite for destruction when I was working universal right a classic Yeah, you greatest selling debut of all time and a stone-cold classic record right anyone with ears could probably agree that record is incredible

And I was fortunate enough to run marketing and product management for that entire campaign. And we did everything from just remastering and putting it on CD to a full on thousand dollar, like 45 pound box set with seven, 12 inches and 12, seven inches and buttons and flyers and DVDs and the whole thing, hidden cassette. That was like a reproduction of the original demo. Like we went all out, but to launch it, we wanted to.

create a moment, a shared social moment that would tap into what fans felt originally when it came out ⁓ in 1987. So a very long time ago, but still a blink of an eye. But we also wanted to make it modern in a way that new generations of fans could connect to it. So we in the vault had an unreleased, officially unreleased track that was recorded at the same time.

called Shadow of Your Love. It had been bootlegged here and there, they played it live now and again, so people knew the track, but there was not a properly mixed, mastered, official version. so we made that, and that was our launch track. And what we did, as sort of a throwback to the radio, the FM radio days that propelled this record into the stratosphere, but also a modern take on how to engage fans,

We started putting up Snipes in multiple cities around the world, either Snipes or billboards, digital ads, bus benches, everything. It made a very big presence. And it was a slightly remastered graphic treatment to the skulls from the record of the band members with a URL, gnr.fm, no other context. I think it's a destruction is imminent or destruction is coming. And

Naturally, the Internet explodes billions of impressions upon launch. But we if you went to the URL, this website popped up with a geolocation like beacon or icon. And if you were near those snipes, it would lead you to a very specific place. And what we were able to do was on the website, if you were within this geolocation of those snipes anywhere in the world,

It at first would be radio static and as you get closer and closer you would start to hear a song bleeding through and when you got close enough it was a snippet of that new track or the new old track. And so the real fans that knew this instantly took to social and were like, my God, this is something, this is something. And for anyone else that wasn't familiar with the song, at least they were like getting in the mix. We were then collecting data and understanding.

Danny Garcia (28:39)
interactive right yes it got you know the song yeah

Jason Feinberg (28:43)
Yeah, it got people out in the world, which of course then it gets more people out in the world because they want to hear the track. And then of course we then launch it. We drop a video for the song. We even do a radio campaign and do premieres on major radio stations. And then of course we announce the box and all that. And amongst many other marketing swings around this release. But I think that's the one that really it worked. Yeah, it did. It got the mission. We got that record into the top 10.

For the first time in decades. That was my personal goal was I want this to be a top 10 record again and we did it

Danny Garcia (29:20)
That's incredible. That's like, ⁓ what's the Pokemon Go, right? Like that's basically like music Pokemon Go. ⁓ That's incredible. mean, there's so much to learn from that. And I think like just the point of it being interactive for fans ⁓ is huge. And people can replicate that at a very small scale, right? Like I was talking about this, ⁓ putting up songs on your Instagram, letting people vote.

Jason Feinberg (29:28)
to like find them all.

Danny Garcia (29:48)
Unreleased songs right letting people vote on which one they like better and then releasing that one like that's obviously at a very very small scale what what you're doing there but that helps the person or the fan interact with the music before it's out and feel a part of the release that Then I think guarantees a better conversion rate into listeners upon release. So I'm

Jason Feinberg (30:10)
The

core tenet of fan engagement is we've been exactly coming back to the core tenet is know your audience and With the guns roses campaign We really knew who we were talking to and who we were trying to convert and we thought through the behaviors their wants their desires What would motivate them what would appeal to them? What would spark curiosity?

all of the emotion that then translates into appreciation of the art and leaning in and then giving us feedback. It's the example you just gave. What a great chance for an artist to get direct feedback from the fans that care the most. And some artists may not want that and I respect that. If you have an artistic vision and it is what it is, by all means. But a lot of artists are open to feedback. It makes them better. It makes them understand their audience. From my point of view as a marketer and a product lead and a business lead,

I want as much feedback as possible. As much as I've done, as much as I know, and as incredibly brilliant as the team that surrounds me, we're not the customer. Not every single day. They provide us the best feedback available, which will inform our product, our business structure, our marketing campaigns. And the same goes for an artist. If you're willing to listen to that feedback, sometimes it's reassuring, sometimes it challenges you.

Danny Garcia (31:35)
Yeah,

but it's a data point, right?

Jason Feinberg (31:37)
Yeah,

and arguably one of the most valuable data points in the arsenal.

Danny Garcia (31:42)
Yeah, 100%. 100%. I wanted to now kind of look ahead. We mentioned AI a little bit, but what kind of tools, innovations, like tech, given your background in tech, like, are you most excited about right now within the context of music? Aside from Cosine.

Jason Feinberg (32:02)
Yeah, of course easy answer. Yeah. Yeah, look at everything in this industry as a spectrum between art and commerce on one side Doing it purely for the art like it doesn't matter if it makes a scent It's your purest expression and on the other side. It's let's make every scent we can regardless of its artistic value and if you think about where marketing trends and technology and platforms

exist, you can kind of plot all of them on that spectrum somewhere. Some exist closer to the artistic side where the goal is helping artists express themselves, creator tools, right? Using AI to help. Like this is the tool I've seen that I love where you have a melody and maybe a verse and a chorus and you need a bridge and you're like, hey, give me 10 chord progressions that could connect these.

expressing different emotions. That's huge. What an incredible, incredible tool to have in your arsenal to help you find the exact language to express what you feel inside. Phenomenal. So that's more on the artistic side. Then there's tools that are in the middle, but maybe lean a little more commercial. Things like the fan community and super fan tools and platforms where you'll aggregate your biggest fans. So it really is about community and expression and connectivity.

But the ultimate goal of that is for better monetization for the artist. So by going direct to their fans, by pulling in the biggest fans that want the best experience, the artists can make better margin and sustain themselves and keep creating art. And the fans get a better experience because it's a deeper touch point, a deeper dive into the artist's expression and their community. So.

There's all these tools that fit somewhere on this spectrum. And to answer your question, which ones excite me, there's ones across the entire spectrum. It really depends on what the mission is. I think the two examples I gave are ones that you're starting to see a lot more in the marketplace. Tools to help an artist express themselves in new ways and deeper. Tools to help them monetize and build community and connect, absolutely. But I'm also a very big fan. This is somewhat a

about my position now, seeing the perhaps less glamorous side of just collecting royalties and tech platforms and registrations. There's a lot in that category that may not get all the headlines and may not be like the super fireworks and jazz hands of the business, but are critical. Things like asset management tools, ensuring you have your house in order. You have all of your assets.

all of your splits, all of your metadata, everything in one place so you can very quickly activate when it's time to get a deal and they need your stuff. Let's not waste three months pulling it together and it's incomplete and it's missing things. That just delays everyone doing better. So those are very important tools that maybe not every artist needs, but you should at least be aware of them because as soon as you might need them,

it's worth spending the time to ensure your house is in order. So those types of tools excite me a lot. I spend a lot of time building them, consulting with them, and now running one of those, something similar to that. So that's kind of the spread. I think like across those different use cases, and we could go on and on, but I'd say those are primary examples of things that are truly functional. Maybe that's the best way to sum this up. Functional tools that do something valuable, not just,

solutions looking for a problem, which we're full of as well.

Jimmy Mikaoui (35:49)
That's really the magic word. And I think artists are really going to welcome this because we've asked a lot of artists the last 10, 15 years. They've had to become experts in many different areas. They've had to become CEOs of business and the time they have for creativity as their career progresses.

diminishes a lot because of all those tasks. So without getting into the creative ethics side of it, ⁓ I'm really hopeful that a lot of those tools are going to streamline artist time a lot and they're going to be able to focus on more creativity. And if they do collect more money in the process, because everything's optimized, ⁓ should bring more investment or oxygen to the system as well.

Jason Feinberg (36:45)
Absolutely agree. That to me is the highest value, both financially and philosophically and spiritually and artistically, are tools that can add efficiency and effectiveness to the routine, automatable, sometimes mundane aspects of being an artist and growing a career, because every minute not spent on that can be spent creating.

engaging with your fans and developing your skills and developing your art. And that's I mean, we are at a place in the industry where tools exist to do almost everything that we're talking about and make it better. So the trick is being educated, educating yourself, putting yourself in the environment where you can really learn about what's available and just as much understanding your needs.

taking the time to figure out where you're at, where you wanna get, what the paths are, what the tools are to get there. And you're right, we're asking as an industry more of artists than ever before, both on a backend perspective to manage their business and also on a lean in, be here, do this, create, create this, be on this network, create this content, add to this conversation. It does feel unsustainable for a lot of artists to do all this. And especially if you're on your own. If you have a team,

It's not easy because that team then the need scales with the team. But if you can get realistic about where you're at and what the next phase looks like and the connection points between the two and a handful of tools, I typically guide my artists that you don't have to be everywhere. I think that's a misconception. Being everywhere matters. You have to put in the same effort everywhere just in case you never know where you're going to find your fans.

There's a small truth to that and I think there's ways to dip your toe into it. But you find this with social, you find this with content creation, you find this with platforms that if you can center on the handful that best suit your current station and where you're headed, you can cover 80 % of this very simply. And that frees up so much time to be creative and get back to why I would guess

100 % of artists got into this and that's the creator.

Jimmy Mikaoui (39:12)
I'm a hundred percent with you on that because the more platforms you're trying to hit, if you're trying to do it well, you need to adapt the tone, the language, the content, and you dilute the authenticity a lot by doing that. Absolutely. And ⁓ I usually highly recommend just choosing a handful.

that are receptive to the way you're delivering the vision and the message and keeping this 100 % true, then trying to do it in the style of this platform and that platform and then lose yourself in the process.

Jason Feinberg (39:53)
That happens all the time and there's this pressure on artists to do so. And I understand where it comes from. I was part of where it comes from in the early days of this where you never knew what platformers were going to take off. They were all so different. Now they're all marching towards a similar center anyhow. And where we're at today, it's a lot of what you said. Find the platforms where you can be authentic because there's no room in the marketplace for inauthenticity.

fans can see through it from a mile away because there's so many authentic artists creating great art.

Jimmy Mikaoui (40:29)
That they have to do themselves. mean, without dating ourselves, you know, there was there was a community manager. Yes. Yes. That used to take one piece of content and then translated into all the different platforms, which is really not the same thing as an artist having to open their phone and deliver the message. Yeah.

Jason Feinberg (40:51)
talk about this a lot with my students, I should add. I also teach in music industry major at UCLA. So I designed a digital marketing course for upper division for the music industry majors. And about half my class every quarter are artists that are taking these programs because they want to run their empires. They want to know the business to then be artists and make the most of it. And we get to this topic every single time in the social media focus of the course.

this question is always coming up. Do I need to be everywhere? Do I need to focus on all these platforms? How do I find my voice? How do I find my fans? And that's the fundamental piece of advice I give them every single time. It's what you're saying that find the ones where you are willing and excited and interested to lean in and be authentic because the fans do not want anything else. They want to hear from you. The days of

talking about artists on their platforms about them is over, right? Now it is them, it is their voice, is expected and should be their mouthpiece. And you can't do that everywhere. You don't need to. The best platforms, the best channels you see, the best profiles by artists are the ones where you can tell they love using it. And if they don't,

It's so obvious and there's no engagement and it's a waste of time and it can almost hurt because then it's almost pandering like, I'm here too. But when you see someone who really gets the power of TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or whatever their platform of choice, that's where real engagement happens and the fans just feel it.

Danny Garcia (42:40)
Yeah, mean, Jason, think, you know, looks like we're coming up on time. But I, yeah, goes time flies when you're having fun. But we do like to leave time at the end for one kind of macro question. ⁓ What's the best piece of advice you've ever received that you would want to impart on anyone listening? In your career, in life.

Jason Feinberg (43:04)
Hmm. So many.

Jimmy Mikaoui (43:07)
You can have to.

Jason Feinberg (43:08)
Okay, yeah, that'd be fast.

Danny Garcia (43:10)
Now you see why we leave a little bit of time for that.

Jason Feinberg (43:13)
It'll be faster to give you two or three and then try to think of one. A transformative moment in my career actually happened when I was interning for the Recording Academy where I got to know a very senior A &R executive major label and she was kind and we had great conversations and one day I said I would love could I intern for you or could I at least come to the office and just talk to people and understand what you do and she said

Danny Garcia (43:16)
Yeah.

Jason Feinberg (43:41)
Do you want to be an A &R? I said, mm, not, I don't think so. And she said, then no, you can't. I'm not going to waste your time and you're not going to waste my time if you don't want to do what I do. So figure out what you really want to do and then find the me of that thing and they will probably be thrilled to help you out. And that was.

transformed. It sounds so obvious, like almost all good advice. It sounds so obvious once you say it. But when you're in the thick of it, it's hard to weed through all the thoughts and the opportunity and the stimulus and figure it out for yourself. But what a great piece of guidance. There's a thousand paths in this industry. We've talked about this a few times already today. Finding the two or three that are most likely to be fulfilling, that you will enjoy, that you'll

good at, that there's a future in that you want to commit to. Figuring that out as early as you can is critical. And you often have to try a few things to get there. I mean, I don't think anyone gets it right the first time, occasionally, I guess. I didn't. Hardly anyone I know did. But I had enough of a sense, and people like her, to like, say nope, that it helped me very quickly dial in.

You know, because the conversation from there went to, well, what do you want to do? And I was at least aware enough at that age and that time to realize that technology was a piece of it, given my deep love of writing code and managing tech. And then as a musician myself, and I was in a band gigging around LA at the time, I just sort of figured like something there. And that

kind of led to marketing and that led to digital marketing and digital strategy as a very natural progression once I took a step back and thought about that. So that was one massive piece of advice that transformed my life. I've had a few other really good ones along the way and some are a little more unique and specific but I'll give one that made a tremendous impact on my life.

There's a, he's passed away now at 101. He passed away a years ago. A legendary TV producer named Norman Lear. He's, look him up, I couldn't even begin to tell you the transformative things this man did for television and politics and charity and everything else. He was one of the owners of Concord Music Group when I worked there and I was really fortunate that he took an interest in me. He was always into learning new things and technology and he was like 90 at the time, right, late 80s.

And I was really fortunate to get to spend a lot of time with him one on one and just have these deep conversations. And as I love to do with people that are either further ahead than me or do something very different than me or just anytime there's something to learn, I love to ask them, what is your motivation? What is your driving force? If you were me, what would you think about? He basically said, be curious every day of your life.

Danny Garcia (46:51)
Hmm.

Jason Feinberg (46:52)
Be

as fascinated by the bad times as the good times. Be able to learn something from your struggles just as much as you can learn something from your celebrations. And if you can do that, there may be challenges, there may be strife, there may be hard times, but every day is meaningful and every day can teach you something. if you're curious and always learn something new, then you'll never run out, never run out of path.

never run out of new opportunity. And what's interesting about that advice, again, it sounds so obvious, is I realized that that's exactly one of my core values was curiosity. I was so, and I am to this day, I wanna learn every single day about something. And it doesn't have to be anything to do with my job or my hobbies or my interests. Watching an expert do something expertly, no matter what it is, glass blowing, I don't know, is fascinating.

So I think the advice there, if I had to sum it up, is if you're fortunate enough to have curiosity inherent in you, lean into it. And if you're not curious about things, push yourself, try to be, because it opens up a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of approaching life. And when we come back to the artist side of things, curiosity is what allows you to accept new stimuli.

that then come back out through your lens and your filter as personal expression and art. So I think it applies to everybody.

Danny Garcia (48:29)
That's amazing. Thank you so much, Jason. That was a very eye-opening ⁓ thing. So thank you so much for tuning in to the Music to Your Ears podcast. We'll see you on the next one.

Jimmy Mikaoui (48:42)
Thank you, Jason.

Jason Feinberg (48:43)
My pleasure.