Switched on Pop - Music's New Success Model

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Specialized platforms and social media have empowered musicians to tap into niche audiences, igniting a quiet revolution in the music industry. Despite the dominance of viral hits, a new wave of artists, labels and businesses are redefining success by building dedicated fanbases with focused, niche strategies. This conversation, live from SXSW, features Charlie leading a conversation with: LP Giobbi, a producer, jazz-trained pianist, and activist who spends 300 days a year touring between festival stages, club floors, and studios. Nabil Ayers, president of Beggar's Group, home to multiple indie labels including 4AD, Matador Records, Rough Trade, and XL Recordings. Dani Deahl, a DJ, producer, and head of communications and creator insights at BandLab, the most popular digital audio workstation worldwide. MORE Subscribe to our newsletter to receive your own bingo card! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. I believe that the future of music might not be about going big. It might be about going deep, digging into a niche. Let's set the stage. A decade ago, the music industry was struggling, right? Digital distribution, in the form of Napster and the iTunes single,

killed the cash cow of the business, CDs. Since then, though the music recording industry has balanced. back with subscription streaming services like Spotify leading the Renaissance. In 2024, the music recording business hit $28.6 billion in revenue. Not quite an all-time high when you account for inflation, but still a remarkable recovery. But the landscape, I think, is changing. The industry has consolidated around three big labels and distributors owned by the biggest tech companies in the world. But despite this consolidation, indie artists now own nearly 47% of the global music market, according to Billboard.

The rise of tech platforms means that there are more ways than ever to build success outside the traditional industry model. Just look at Wolfpack.

No label, no Billboard hits, but they sell out Madison Square Garden. Sophie Tucker, they've had 350 plus sync placements dominating a niche

revenue stream. What's more niche than Tiny Desk concerts? NPR's YouTube channel has 600,000 subscribers, but NPR music has 10 million largely driven by a niche

format, the most niche. literally a concert at a tiny desk. I've always wanted to come down and be by the desk. There are whole galaxies of success beyond the charts and the majors, and that's what I want to explore. What does it take to carve out a niche and turn it into a real success? A few weeks ago, I was at South by Southwest hosting a panel on this very topic

with three industry leaders who have each mastered their niche from very different angles, from building artist brands to running indie labels and shaping the platforms that fuel independent success. I spoke with L.P. Gobi, a producer, jazz-trained pianist and activist who spends 300 days a year touring between festival stages, club floors, club floors, club floors, club floors, clubfares, clubbler's studios. And finally, Danny Deal, a DJ producer and head of communications and creator insights at Banlab, the biggest digital audio workstation in the world. So here's my conversation with LP Geobi, Nabil Ayers, and Danny Deal about the music industry's new success model. Okay. So you've each built a career inside a niche, but no two niches work the same way. Can you each briefly describe the space that you operate in and what niche success looks like for you in your world? And Danny, do you mind starting out?

In some ways, my niche is actually similar to Leah's. We both operate in the space of trying to create. create space for other people in dance music who may not get their fair shake. A lot of my brand is based on activism. And I try to use the fact that I have a platform in order to empower other people to feel like they too can have a platform. And it's that sense of building community and shared belonging that has developed a really robust group of folks that have been my ride or dies for a long time. Could you speak just briefly also about sort of like the niche that band lab itself fits in, which you're also representing here.

Yeah, so I also work for Bandlab, which is the fastest growing social music creation platform on the planet. We have over 100 million users across the world. Only about 30% of those users are in the U.S. So really big fast-growing markets for us are everything from the Philippines to Indonesia to Brazil to India. And we find that a lot of the people on BandLab, are not established musicians.

In fact, they are people that have never thought about being a musician at all. They are making their first songs on Band Lab. It is often their first touch with music production. And it's their first touch with collaborating with other people who are interested in music. And we find that mostly people that are on the platform may not even have aspirations of becoming a professional musician at all. Amazing. Okay. LP, tell me about what niche are you operating in? And what does success in your niche look like for you?

Well, only 2 to 4% of producers are women. And I am a producer. So just by existing, I operate in a niche, if you will. And I started a nonprofit, Femhouse, that teaches women and gender expansive individuals how to produce music. And I have built and cultivated a community that is small but mighty. And then I also do this very weird thing where I combine house music with the grateful dead.

I want to talk more. And I call it dead house. And some people hate it. But the people that, some people really hate it. But the people that don't hate it really love it and appreciate it. It's almost like living in Austin, keep Austin weird in the state of Texas. Like we double down on our beliefs. And so I find that the people who like what I'm doing have doubled down on liking it too.

Cool. The deal. How about yourself? It's funny. When you ask the question, my knee-jure. answer was indie rock is my niche. And it's not because I think that's necessarily true, but I think it's what people want me to say because I just own a record store in Seattle where we really dealt in the sale of indie rock extensively. And we're kind of there for that, that sort of early

2000s explosion. And that kind of turned into my job running 4aD in New York for a long time, which turned into my job as president of beggars, which is part of the same company, and releasing tons of indie rock records on labels that are known for indie rock. But really, to me, and especially in the last 10 years, I mean, all five beggars labels have released so many different records, jazz records, hip-hop records. It's not about the style of music. It's about the sort of common ethos that the artists have and that the labels have as a result, which is really a lot of artists who have a vision, know what they want to do, want to be on a label, want to be someplace with resources and money and all those things, but don't really want to be told

what to do. And we're really good at that. I would say our niche is very much helping artists do what they want to do. I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble here because I'm realizing I'm trying to enforce a false artifice that we each represent different little pieces of the supply chain of music. And one thing that is immediately clear is that you have all been in different niches in the music business. You are all musicians. You have all run music businesses. You have all worked to elevate other people in the music business through various nonprofit programs. And so I want to just try to get some of your expertise from your various areas, but recognize that you all have depth in lots of different niches.

Danny, I want to go back into BandLab for a second. How many of us here are music makers? Okay. And how many of us use Ableton or FL or Logic or Pro Tools? And how many of us use BanLab right now? So isn't that wild? It stood out like you said 100 million users. It's the fastest growing.

It's going to be the biggest doll in the world. It's primarily people primarily use it from the phone. You have all kinds of creators that maybe aren't represented at South by Southwest, probably because they're probably a little bit younger than the average attendee at Southby. A lot of youth creators. I imagine there's all kinds of wild niche genres.

Could you tell me about something unexpected in the world of music that you have uncovered in BandLab? The fact that nobody in this room uses BandLab is actually not a surprise. There were two people over there. Sorry, there were two people. Who are those two people that use BandLab? Maybe.

Three. Nice. Okay, so the average bandwab user is under the age of 24. And like I said, they're not based in the United States. They're all over the world. And they, as Charlie alluded to, they make music on their phones. One thing that we did not expect to find on bandlap, but it has sort of happened is that there's this very niche sound

that has become popular and so many artists coming out of the platform embody the sound. And it's this very like lo-fi, emo rap, punk revocel. alternative grunge, whatever you want to call it, but they're artists like, thanks so much. And David and 310 baby. All of these young musicians that have found this specific niche working with other people on Bandlab and have gone on to have very successful careers and get signed to Interscope, Sony, you name it. But for whatever reason, this very grungy alternative sound has really found a home on band lab. And we find that it's more popular than some other genres that you might hear on the radio all the time.

Okay. So, LP, Dead House. When I think of niche communities, immediately jam bands, deadheads, like one of the biggest, right? One of the biggest touring acts in the world at any given point is some variation of the Grateful Dead or Fish. amazing careers, no charting music. They had a touch of gray, I think. They had one. One of their last songs.

And then the other would be electronic music, right? Just the most dedicated niche fandoms, but also the two fandoms that have a lot of gatekeeping. So could you speak to what indicators you were receiving of like either this is working or not working by trying to merge these two? I would imagine very disparate fandoms. Yeah, you know, I didn't even think to do. I was raised by Deadheads.

So, you know, Jerry's voice was like my uncle's voice in the house. Like, it just was so familiar to me. And I remember taking my dad to his first rave. And he stepped out in the field and he was like, okay, if I was born now, I'd be taken Molly instead of acid. But pretty much everything else is the same. This like concept of nonstop dancing. You don't know what they're going to play next. You know, the peace, love, unity vibe.

There's a lot of similarities. And the rave scene was called. the second summer of love in the 80s. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I, when I was asked to remix Jerry's first album by his daughter and the people I owned his estate,

I was just like, heck yeah, like I see the through line. It's going to be amazing. And, well, I started wearing being a woman in the industry as a DJ, I wanted to be taken seriously, and so I started dressing like a boy, which is sad and we can

unpack that later. But that is like I you know trying to figure out what I'm wearing to go play a show is sadly overwhelming you know I just didn't want it to be about that so my parents gave me a bunch of grateful dead shirts that they had collected over their you know years of touring over their hundreds of dead shows they went to so I was like okay I just don't want to think about I guess akin to you know somebody wearing a black turtle neck I'm just going to wear a different vintage dirt shirt and at these shows children of deadheads were finding me like oh are you a dead head like my dad's a dead head or whatever you know and so I'm like oh we're from the same tribe that I feel like I know you. I know how you were raised. I know, you know, but there's a kindred spirit there. And so when I did remix Jerry's first album, the people who were raised by deadheads were now listening to dead music. They're like, oh, like, finally I understand my parents' music.

You know, like they were so excited about that. I also got death threats from deadheads in my DMs. You know, Cherry's rolling in his grave. And I was like, yeah, on ecstasy, he's rolling in his grave. But, you know, I actually, like, I was just, I was raised by like the, the most hippie loving deadhead. So I didn't realize that there's a, there are some people in that community who really feel like, you know, this is our music. And I respect that, you know, but the coolest thing that came about from this is family means everything to me. And I played my first dead house set

in Eugene, Oregon, where I'm from. This dad comes over to me after the set, and he's like, I flew in from New York and my son flew in from L.A. We have a really bad relationship. We don't get along that well. We can't be in the same room for more than an hour together. He's a raver. I'm a deadhead. And this is the first two hours of joy we've shared. So thank you. And I was like, okay, that's it for me. That's everything. That's all I care about. I really want you and John Mayer to exchange like die hard deadhead hate mail. I think you could really bother over that. I went to the, I went to Bernie the dead's manager currently. And I was like, dude, this is a lot. Like, you know, this is the community that raised me and now they hate me. This is really intense for me.

And he's like, people were showing up at my house trying to kill me. I brought in John Mayer just weather the storm. Whoa. And I was like, okay. But okay, that's heavy. Cool. Also, but like, you got to go see LPs dead headsets on YouTube. They're amazing.

They make music that I've never heard combined. And what an amazing niche. Second generation deadheads. Who would have thought, right? So specific. And what a potent community. And in the same, like I entered the electronic space because I just didn't see myself. represented enough. And I just wanted to like open that door and just bust through it and have

other people follow me. And the same way, the jam band space, you know, name an all female jam band. You can't. So I hope to take the same tools that, you know, that we learned at Femhouse and bring that to the jam community. Yeah, the closest thing I can think of is Bertha, which is a really great drag deadhead group. They're so good. I play with it so many times. I love them. Yeah, but not a lot of representation for sure. Okay. Nabil, you're in a difficult position because you represent so many people under your umbrella beggars group, right? And I love that you kind of opened up talking about representing indie rock. There's almost like this crisis of confidence. I'm not saying you have one, but inherent to the brand, you have so many of the most critically acclaimed artists in the world

under Beggers Group. And most of them aren't necessarily chasing Billmore hits. They have unbelievable niche fandoms. Could you speak to somebody who's really leaned into their niche within beggars that has reaped really big rewards by doing so? Yeah, there are a lot. The one that comes to mind, and people might scoff at me calling them niche,

but it's the National who are one of the biggest fans on our labels are on 4-A-D. The question pounds my head, what's a lifetime of achievement? If I pushed you to the edge, but you were too polite. But the reason I kind of include them in this bucket

is that they started, God, almost 30 years ago, which is crazy. Of course, there's a dead through line. 30 years ago, self-releasing music, put out two and a half albums, two albums and an EPI on their own, toured, built it up, you know, off the ground themselves, signed to Beggers banquet, one of our labels, and we put out now, I think, nine records. It's so many that I'm not sure. And they've done the very gradual sort of what you want to do, assent, and gotten bigger slowly, have never had a real hit, but last year sold out Madison's Square Garden, sold out Hollywood Bowl, can sell out the O2 Arena in London, have won a Grammy, have played Saturday Night Live.

I mean, I can go on, have collaborated with Taylor Swift. But, and I might be wrong, if you walked out in the street, not the South by Southwest Street, but further away, and said to someone, sing me a national song, I doubt a normal person on the street would be able to do that. Weird goodbyes. What's that? Weird goodbyes. But sing it.

That's not fair. But anyway. My point is, you know... Specifically, because the national I love because it has empowered baritones all over the world to say. Right, right, right. So it's just not in your range. Yeah, thank you.

I'm not a baritone. That's the problem. But, you know, so there's not a hit song. There's an incredible career of tons of great albums and sort of building something and communities and doing it the sort of very long slow road that has gotten them to this point. And they're incredibly ambitious.

None of this is anti-success or anti-wanting to be big. It's just wanting to do it, making the music they make, doing it on their own terms, and getting, I think, arguably sort of as big as you can get without having a true breakthrough thing. So, yeah, does that answer the question? Yeah, I mean, I also just think one of the things I really admire about them is that there is such a consistency of the music that they are giving to the world

makes you feel a certain way. And if you want that feeling, they're going to deliver it so successfully. Every time I take off on an airplane, I listen to weird goodbyes. Oh, really? Yeah, that's fine. So, you know, I travel. I'm on every other day. every day I'm on an airplane.

So I'm listening to it a lot. That's great. Thanks for the screams. Okay. So building long careers, you know, there's just so much obsession in the music business about blowing up big, getting the biggest broad appeal that you can. I feel like Danny in your career, whether it's through Band Lab or as your career as a DJ and producer, I feel like one of your underlying philosophies has been all about empowering the long tail.

Could you speak to how you have a different approach than that? the broad go big blow up all the sudden kind of strategy? I think a common misperception is that popular music has longevity or the aspiration should be to become popular. And I think if there's one thing that radio has taught us, it's that what you hear on the radio might dictate what's popular, but what is niche can often be powerful. And those are two very different things. and it's it's the music that is powerful that moves you in some way that is going to make you identify with an artist to compel you to go to the show to make that connection to become friends with other people who are fans of that artist to build community it's almost why I don't like the word fandom I like the word community it's cheapening for me personally a little bit feels like a little transactional perhaps maybe a little transactional yeah

because a fandom feels very one way. Someone is a fan and they are a fan of the artist, whereas a community is a fan of the context in which the artist lives in, and the ethos and the values and a whole different set of criteria that doesn't fit neatly underneath the term fan. Was there a community that you first fell into?

Oh, raves. Yeah. Was there like an artist or a scene or a particular thing that you could name that? That was my spot. Yeah, I was bullied my entire life. growing up. I had no friends. In high school, I asked somebody to a turnabout dance. And the day of the dance, I remember sitting on my bed, had a brand new outfit of my mom and taking me shopping,

gotten my hair done, the whole thing. And he called the house and he said, I'm not going to come because people are talking. That's how deeply uncool I was. And so I remember the first time that I went to a rave, I immediately had this sense of belonging in a way that I'd never experienced in my life. And I thought, I finally found home. I'm even getting emotional thinking about this. These are my people. And within five minutes of walking in, I ran into my childhood bully from grade school. And we hugged each other.

Wow. That's big of you. Thank you, Charlie. But this is all to say, music exists beyond the listening experience. Right. It informs how we operate in the world. it informs the choices that we make and the way that we build relationships. Okay, I'm going to try not to use the word fandom anymore.

Can we just, that was really, really beautiful. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you, Danny. I appreciate you sharing. I just saw, you know, some random algorithmic thing thrown at me the other day, this very beautiful thing that reflects a similar idea of a guy who had found his first feeling of belonging in community in extremist groups and was deep.

and was de-radicalized by going to raves. Yeah. He said, oh, actually, what I was needing was, like, a feeling of belonging. I knew raves could save the world. Yeah, like, I think, like, most, like, there's a reason why teenagers should go to raves. It's like, don't go into extremism. Go dancing. Right.

Yeah. I'm curious, L.P., could you speak a bit about your relationship to your community? and some of the things that, are there any specific community practices that you see observed, any sort of rituals that might happen around this community? Yeah. When it's a headline tour, we have messages up, you know,

when people walk in on what we expect from the space and from each other and, you know, safety and love. And I think that one of the things that keeps me going is when I'm playing and I look out in the audience and there's, my front row is usually filled with women. And I can see them see me and I can see them thinking like, like, heck yeah, sister, like, yes. After one of my first shows ever played in D.C., a woman found me and she said, I've been coming this venue for 10 years.

I've never seen a woman up there. And I don't want to be an artist myself, but I feel like I can go home and do anything now. And I just, I see that sense of, I don't know, empowerment happening out there. And it's just, I feel so grateful to be Amir to reflect back to them that they are powerful. And I would say, I just, I don't know, this is a little bit off topic, but I did a Taylor Swift remix, an official one last year, which was, you know, a big deal. And I was very grateful for that. But talking about like niche and, you know, pop. And there are now some people that come to my shows because they just want to hear that.

And that's not actually really what I do or what I, you know, that's not kind of the music that I make or play. And so it's almost been a bit of a blessing and a curse. You know, I'm obviously, I'm grateful. I think Taylor's great. I'm grateful for the opportunity. But, you know, this pop thing doesn't actually really fit in with this niche thing that I do. And it has confused people. And that's been an interesting lesson for me.

The co-host of my show, I hope I'm quoting him correctly. We'll often say, like, I think that the Taylor is the biggest artist in the world that most people only know a couple songs of. And I actually think this is true of most artists, where part of the the enormous legacy of her current era's moment is that her fandom is so deep, her community is so deep, and they actually know everything, right? Like, we see, there's a strange thing that happens now where a big record drops and every song is on the Billboard, right? The whole album. And that's all driven by fans, right? And then, you know, artists like Taylor have, you know, a handful of number one hits and people can sing them, but her fans can sing every song. And so it's interesting. You're, you're

diving into a community, which is sort of more T-shaped, if you will, right? Both really broad and extremely deep. Yes. And there, I mean, I've been to a show. It is in, I mean, it feels very much like rave culture with the bracelets that they've been making all week and then exchanging and like, it is, I took my little niece and she's seven and her arm was up to here in bracelets at the end. I mean, it's absolutely incredible, you know, what she's built, but it's definitely, you know, the pop culture. It's also kind of wild that half the people on the stage on the niche panel have worked with her. We put out a record and you've remixed a record.

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This has been very powerful talking about, fandom communities. And I want to be very crass and talk about business. That's okay. Nabil, you have been a major advocate for indie retail and physical media. Now, I don't know if you're double dealing. You used to work in retail. What specific physical format strategies have you seen that work really well for building community? This is a fun one. We're mixing business and community here. I'm sorry, it's getting crap. No, this is great. I mean, my quick back. background is I went to college and played in bands and wanted to be in a band. And after college, this was in the 90s in Seattle when it was a relatively easy time to get a job. And I was really scared

to get a job because of its relative ease. All my friends were like, yeah, I'm getting this job and moving into a nice apartment. And I was like, if I do that, I'm never going to be in a band. So I got a job at a record store. I knew that was like the way to meet people, the way to be around music, and the way to get into a band. And so all that happened. But that really kind of got my record store thing going and had a great time there. And a few years later, my friend who worked there, he and I opened our own store called Sonic Boom in Seattle. And this is again, back in the 90s. And so I have a long history with record stores that turned into me, releasing records on my own, which I still do, and then my work at Beggers. But so much of what we do

at Beggers and even still on my own small label, the indie retail thing is super important, the obvious reason that people go to stores and buy records. But obviously, that's not the only way to get records now. You can stream. You can buy them online. You can have them shipped to you. There are lots of ways to hear music. But the cultural significance of the record store, I think, is kind of back in a really serious way right now. And it was never gone, but it definitely took a dip. And I think it's really back. Stores are opening. And so to us, at least at Beggars, and I think a lot of labels, you know, we'll do, it's called co-op where we're like buying ads or buying listening stations or doing things to support stores. And in often cases, it's not, like,

like, okay, we'll buy this $200 package, but man, we need to sell 100 records to make it worth it. It's not really what it's about. It's about the fact that that record store is a cultural hub in that community. And that community might be a small town where there's not a lot going on, where there's not a cool radio station, where there's not a ton of people that might be the spot where people go hang out and where the people who work in that store also write a blog or also have an online radio show. Those are the people who are pushing music forward in their community. So a lot of why they sort of lean so hard,

or why I believe so much in indie record stores, it's not just the sort of transactional part, but the cultural part. A lot of those people continue to be really just like the sort of shapers of what's going on in their communities. Both the physical space is like the cathedral. And the physical media that we bring home is like, we built our own little altars.

You know I got married in a record store, Charlie. For me, was the cathedral. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. No way. So yeah, I just got a, speaking of the dead, I just got a press email that was like, the dead are releasing a 60 CD super deluxe, everything, their whole whatever. And I'm like, hello publicist. Do you have an extra one for me? Because I would love to set up that little altar in my space. I mean, which is to say that like it's physical media. Again, like fandom is kind of not the right word. Physical media is not the right word. It really is like it's it you know as a kid you can put up band posters as an

adult. I don't put up band posters. It's still okay in the right spot but it wouldn't fit in my in my place, but I can have a record collection. That's my my little altar. Right. That's funny. And as someone who grew up as a kid buying records, I mean I always knew from a really young age, I knew what label the bands I liked wrong because it was a logo on the record. And now if you really want to find that out, you can scroll down on a streaming service and see it, but it's much harder. So that's still one of my favorite things about the record stores, knowing that. One of my favorite parts of making, I mean, as a dance artist, most people don't make full albums. And I actually really don't like the visual part of being an artist, like the visuals.

I'm not a visual person that I struggle with. But one of my favorite parts of making the albums was getting to design the vinyl. Like that's where I got to, you know, write thank you notes. And my mom took me to my first dead show in her womb when they played with Bob Dylan and Eugene. and she saved that concert ticket. She was eight months pregnant. And I put that, you know, on the fold-out. And it was such a special place to, like, really, for the people that are going to buy

the vinyl, like, they, you know, they're down. They're down to listen to my music. They're down to get to know me better. And I find that to be a really special place to give them little nuggets. So your whole artist's career is just destiny. Like, you were born to have this career. It's pretty amazing. I did work at Rasputin Records when I was in college in Berkeley.

And I, yeah, that was a huge. I learned so much about music working there. That's the best part. Yeah. Danny, you're coming from the world of dance music and also representing band lab where a lot of really young people are making stuff completely digitally. I'm curious if you have any insights on any compelling grassroots, low budget, powerful things you've seen where I don't have an LP. I'm not making physical media. Any interesting sort of campaigns or things you've seen from your life?

I think the advice for low budget marketing or getting your music out there, the ethos is the same as it was a generation ago. It's have the fans do the marketing for you, right? If you are connecting with people on a deeper level, they're going to evangelize on your behalf. And not only are they going to evangelize on your behalf, but they're going to want to band together with other people who are also faithfulize. fans of you. And when the critics come your way, well, they're going to defend you until the cows come home. It's pretty amazing. When you can authentically express yourself in a way that other people want to vouch for you and they want to ride or die for you, they're going to tell other people naturally about the music. They're going to say, hey, come to the show with me or I just discovered

this new song and, wow, the person who made it, I think you're going to really resonate with their story. So if you can present yourself in a way that is really true to who you are, you're going to naturally attract the people that are going to be like-minded and are going to resonate with who you are as a person. And because of that, they're also then just going to naturally share the music. So follow up, and I actually want to then open it to everyone, which is that do you have other particular communities that stand out to you that are really good at being the promotion for that artist? And is there some kind of thing that they do? It's like some sort of texture that there's a reason why they're motivated. I mean, this is maybe going to be triggering. But I think that one of the only artists in the day in the electronic space that has sort of done what are close to, you know, the closest to what the dead did was

a space doctor. He did create, you know, people followed him to every set. He put, no set was the same. He had people in the audience who were the, there to, they had a name, but they were there to like make sure everybody felt was okay on their drugs and was safe and they had spaces if people were freaking out. And I think he built community in a pretty mind-blowing way. And it was, I mean, he was big, but like it was also felt, and this is the thing about going to a dead concert even to this day. You see somebody, they signal

themselves out by wearing a tie-dye shirt, you know, so you know. And which is helpful for me in my audiences because I know, oh, there are deadheads here. Okay, I can play some deadheads. But you feel like you're part of this, like, niche tiny community, but, you know, they're going to play four nights in a row at Soldier Field. Like, it's crazy that they still, it still feels niche. I'm not quite sure how they did that, but. I'm sorry, I'm going to steal the mic to talk about Draffled Dead for more time. I didn't, I don't mean to out myself as a big deadhead. I primarily cover pop music, but my cousins used to follow the dead in the 80s, and they used to sell tie I shirts in the Shakedown Street area.

And one year they accidentally bought only triple XL shirts. And they were like, oh, shoot, we're not going to sell anything. Like, you know, just like, we're not going to have a shirt for everybody. And they decided, we'll just market them as Jerry shirts. And they sold more shirts than they've ever sold. And it just goes to show like the fandom just like leaning into a very specific thing about, you know, about that group. Yeah. are marketing the Grateful Dead without, you know, an endorsed t-shirt.

Above and Beyond might be a good one. Yeah. Above and Beyond, they're really good about, how would I describe them? Because they do trans-ish stuff, but also ambient and music that almost leans into wellness. And they did a partnership with a yoga mat company, I think, a few years ago. because they did an album that was more focused on, like, calm music, lo-fi. And so they really wanted to emphasize this crossover with the wellness space, like music for meditation. Yeah.

I mean, someone somewhere is making so much money off of binaural beats. Somebody's doing it. Like, there's a whole world for that. But that is a very smart, smart overlap. Yeah. And, Bill, you had something about that. I was going to bring up, this just popped into my head, the band The Flaming Lips. Everyone probably knows who it's kind of an incredible live band known for this like very spectacular legendary live show.

I worked with a band that was probably 10 years ago, did a tour with them. And it was the first night and I was backstage and Wayne Cohen, the singer was kind of there like taking them to rock school. It was kind of amazing. He was just like giving them all this advice and doing this stuff. And they asked because they had seen the lips before. They're like, why do you do this crazy show? It must cost so much money. Your crew is huge.

You know, you don't have to do this. It was sort of what they said. And I remember his answer so well. It's really brilliant. He said, like, what are there? 3,000 people here tonight, right? And they're like, yeah. And he's like, so how many Flaming Wips fans do you think there are?

And they're like, 3,000. He's like, no, there's 1, they're 1, they're 1,000 plus ones. And that, those people were at a basketball game last night, and they don't know who the flaming lips are. And they were seeing fire and all this other, different kinds of entertainment. And he's like, of course, I'm doing it for our fans because they love us and they come back. But I always have my eye on these new people who are coming every night. And it was just a really kind of great way of saying, you know, they're going above and

beyond and it's obviously working for them. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Let's let's, I want to, I want to ask the LP about your work with Femm House. Already you were pointing out that one of the things that's most moving about your audience and your community is that it's full of women. Are you from the, do you live in the Bay Area? I went to UC Berkeley, but I'm from Oregon. Okay, you're in Oregon. Okay. I've been to some parties in the Bay Area and oftentimes a lot of

rave parties in the Bay Area are like very heavily male spaces. So you're like making, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're creating a really different kind of space. And one of the ways you're doing that is through Femhouse, nonprofit that advocates technical skills and music connections for women and gender expansive folks in the music business. Beyond just like the obviously good and ethical reasons of doing this work. I'm curious what are some of the specific ways that fans and music have been enriched by some of this work?

I mean, honestly, is completely selfish. I wanted to build, I wanted to be in the world that I wanted to be in. And so I had, you know, so build it. When I first started, I had, I was with a different management team. And they were like, you know, you need to first build your own platform. Like you're just, your baby artist, you're just starting, do that. And then you'll have a platform to do to do Femm House. And I knew in my gut, like, Femhouse is my why.

It's going to be the reason I can get out of bed every day and do the work I need to do, which doesn't come naturally to me to get to to get to. It's going to be the community that fuels me and that keeps me going to the same. day. That's true. I do in-person workshops before my shows. And so I can go and meet these artists and, you know, give any advice I can give and, and have them meet each other and, you know, exchange info and maybe book each other on each other's parties and essentially build our own golf course. You know, a lot of business gets done there. And so we are trying to build our own golf courses. And it's just been so cool to see. I mean, there's been folks now who have gone

through our educational programs and whose music I have discovered separately. And I've invited them to come on Femhouse Radio, my show on Sirius XM. And the first question I always ask is, how did you get into producing? And now twice I've gotten, I started at Femm House. And are you kidding me. So it's just really cool to see it happening. There's there's like a theme on this panel of like reporting in music I can sometimes think of it full of like a lot of sharks who are very selfish and yet like a lot of success has been represented by like giving and building because I mean as you put it like if there's not community behind the music it's never it's never going to be self-sustaining unless somehow you just get like a hit that plays a CVS indefinitely and nobody's a real fan of. There's a couple

I'm not going to name names, but there are some songs that play at CVS that I don't think have fans. Nabil, I want to ask you about looking ahead. Do you think that niche artists will have more opportunities to sustain their careers on their own terms, given continued industry consolidation and growth? Is there any particular trends that give you hope? Yeah, it's a yes and a no, sort of. I mean, what gives me hope is that I came up at a time when to find whatever niche interesting, cool music. If you lived any place that wasn't New York or L.A. or big city, you had to have cool friends, of course, that's still a thing. Word of mouth. Always the thing. Always the most important thing, I would argue. A good record store. Some kind of college or community radio station. Maybe you had access to, like, underground press if there's like a fanzine.

But, you know, it was pretty hard to find out about things. You had to try or you had to sort of luckily or naturally be surrounded by people who knew things. And now that's not the case anymore. There's the internet. There's social media. There's streaming services. there's so many ways to find out about things and you can really sort of curate your feed. So as an artist, it's certainly easier and faster to make music, to get it out. I was joking in our sort of pre-hang that the four of us could get together after this, record a song really quick. It could be online tonight and it could be heard by thousands of people by the end of the day. It's actually true.

Anyone in this room could do that. And that's really crazy and liberating and great. But the downside is that anyone can do it. And a lot of people are doing it. It's never been more competitive. It's never been more crowded. And obviously, there's not room for everybody. But for the most part, I think it's really exciting that the sort of barrier to entry is extremely low.

And people who want to make music can make music. And that's great. Another part of my job is teaching music to students at NYU. And oftentimes my students will come up to me in class and be like, how do I find, like, a manager and fans? And I'm like, yo, Def Jam was started in your dorm. Like, you do it right here, where you are, where you are. people are. Like the biggest party that started rave culture happened two blocks over.

Love saves the day started two blocks away. Your community is where it absolutely. That hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. For real. Danny, BanLab is predicting over one billion music creators by 2030. How do you

see music discovery platforms evolving to help nurture these truly unique voices and help them stand out? Well, I think firstly, I know that phrase sounds really scary. A billion in music creators because that's one eighth of the world's population. But the way that we think about music creation will change in the way we thought about photography. Everyone is a photographer now because we all have a phone in our pocket and we take pictures. But that doesn't mean that everyone

is artisanal or that everyone can have the pictures that they take on their phone shown in a gallery. So I do think that we'll have a billion people that have access to. making music by 2030 in ways that we can't even imagine right now. But does that mean that those billion people are going to be contributing to the ever-increasing pipeline? Maybe, maybe not. I just, I think that quote speaks more to the fact that it will be even easier for everyone to be able to access the tools and the means to create music. I think we've talked about the accessibility of music for such a long time, and I actually really dislike that phrase and the democratization of music creation, because even 10 years ago when we were talking about it, I mean, sure, you could get

a DAW, but the DAW is still very expensive, and you had to learn a whole new vocabulary in order to even start to enter this very intimidating interface. And, I mean, you know, the learning curve can be quite intense in the beginning. But with a billion people empowered to make music, sure, what does that mean? I think we will have to have new framework. works that exist in the music industry that are separate from anything that we know right now. I don't presume to have the answers or even know or be able to imagine what the future constructs of the music industry might look like in a generation. But I know that we're even having to contend with issues right now thinking about with the glut of AI music that's being put onto platforms,

how do we make sure that human made music is prioritized? Should it be in a separate bucket? for then AI made music. I don't have the answer to that. I'm sorry. I'm glad that you invoked the term democratization. It's a term that is almost frequently used by leaders of the biggest tech platforms that have the most power. And rarely does it actually mean giving people equal voices. So thank you for calling that out.

El Pki, I wanted to follow up thinking more, going from the billion creators, maybe to the one creator. If you were giving any advice to an artist starting today, especially one who doesn't fit into the mainstream mold. What would be your single most important tip for finding and growing their niche? You know, when I first started learning how to produce in Ableton, which was I had to get a better computer. It was, you know, I spent my last dollar doing that. It's very scary.

I first just needed to learn how, like, how do I load a track? How do I put a kick in here that doesn't suck? How do, you know, I was imitating other people to learn. I was also imitating other people because I was scared because I wanted to be liked. And once I made music that I liked, that was for me, this beautiful thing happened. I found other people who are like me. Duh. And I found people who authentically connected with me.

And so I could actually just be myself. And maybe it's not a huge crowd, but it is enough to sustain me. And I just, I feel so grateful to have let go of trying to get everybody. and just find my people. That's really sage advice. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I want to thank all our panelists today,

Nabil Ayers, LPGiobe, and Danny Deal. Thank you so much for putting this together. It's been a real joy. Switched on Pop is produced by Raina Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Zach Tenario

and Jossi Adams of Arc-Iriss. Remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. It's part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at NYMag.com. You can get deeper into Switched-on-Pop in our newsletter. You can find a link to subscribe in our show notes or on our or on our website switchdownpop.com where you can find all kinds of really cool merch.

We don't have like a 60-box set of awesome CDs yet. We do happen to have mugs, t-shirts, totes, and a book that will get you deeper into the world of pop music. We'll be back again next Tuesday and until then. Thanks for listening.