Welcome back to The Club List, a newsletter about making a business out of what you love.

I’m debuting a new feature this week called Track of the Week, and I’m stoked about it! In short, I’ll find a new artist I like and share them here, every issue. They can’t be an artist I personally work with already, but otherwise, anyone is fair game. I may roll something similar out for non-music creators I like, but all in good time - for now, it’s a good chance to cut you in on music I find and really enjoy.

Client-related note: Bri Carter’s new album, I Can’t Look Away, is out today! I’ll be at her show at Pianos in NYC on August 16, and if you’re into Charli XCX and likeminded acts, you should be there too. Find me in the club.

The Club List is powered by beehiiv, the best newsletter platform I’ve ever used. Want to try it out? This link will give you a 30-day trial and discounts past that. I may make a small commission from this.

I’ve written a decent bit about Spotify lately. Today, we’ll talk about what you have to keep in mind if you decide you are over how a platform works and don’t want to support it with what you make.

Minor spoiler: this is not the part where I tell you to unplug from anything.

But I will show you how to think about it, if you ever do.

When Going Rogue, Have A Plan

An article live in The Guardian this week serves as a stark reminder:

The biggest stories are often the ones where you can’t get a source on record.

And the current picture being publicly painted of Spotify has at least two giant stories in it.

I’ve written at some length about the first story, which is a seeming trend of over-flagging songs for fraud takedowns that is most flagrant among self-released artists using the giant pay-as-you-go distributors (especially DistroKid). The second story, which you can regularly see non-musician fans posting about online, is a little more crushingly obvious.

Huge new pop hits, notably from Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish but also others, keep forcibly including themselves in the autoplay algorithm. Even for people who claim to not listen to pop very often. Which is not how it’s historically worked, and why it’s suddenly a hot topic.

And while there’s no clear evidence of payola-style gaming of the system - nor clear data on how much Spotify’s Discovery Mode stacks the deck, once turned on for an artist - the more glaring issue won’t surprise anyone in the industry reading this. No one will talk about any of this in public. 

Off the record, maybe. On the record? Forget it. Big omerta energy. 

There are two ways Spotify itself could be playing this: as close to transparently as possible, or by saying absolutely nothing because the industry has to work with them anyway. The choice is clearly the latter.

So - if you’re an artist or a label, what do you do about this?

Do you go rogue? Do you decide you’re bailing from the platform?

Well, for most people, I explicitly do not advise pulling music from Spotify. Maybe you can get away with this if you have a really devoted following or a good counter-strategy, but it’s not ideal for a growing band. We’ll get into why in a moment. 

To cite a common example, I also don’t recommend only using Bandcamp. I see this advice too often from artists to other artists, and you shouldn’t trust it - and I say that as a huge Bandcamp fan. Did you know that when you put music on Bandcamp, you give them the right to stream your music royalty-free? That’s not a rumor, it’s in the service agreement. So if you stream an artist you love on Bandcamp but don’t buy from them, they don’t get paid. Purchase, or GTFO: those are the most equitable options. (Bandcamp knows this, and to its credit, users can only stream a non-owned release a limited number of times.)

There is no one perfect platform. A better reframing, as you keep using what you rent to push people to what you own (mailing lists, merch, your actual recordings hopefully, etc), is to focus on where these platforms do help you and then use that to feed your strengths.

Let’s go back to why being off Spotify isn’t useful for most acts. Even if you are not making significant money from streaming, Spotify lists concerts near you when you view the profile of an artist. This can, and does, sell tickets - and that’s one major positive you won’t see on, say, Apple Music. I’ve bought tickets to shows because I saw this on Spotify and didn’t otherwise know someone was touring near me. You can also post merch on Spotify using their Shopify integration, though paying for Shopify isn’t something I’d advise until you’ve either got an extremely online fanbase or can dependably sell merch at your shows. 

And the most underrated aspect of all: when people share music between each other, they tend to share Spotify links now. Especially over text.

So hypothetically, if you’re not going to be on Spotify, you need to consider what is lost beyond the discovery mechanics it has. You need to dial in your strategy for how you get concert tickets sold (mailing lists help, a lot). You need to have a clear plan for deploying merch (and it’s never been easier to have your own clothing line in print-on-demand form, if you wish!). And you need to think about how to encourage easy word-in-mouth shares of your music. These are not three things you might think about losing out on when opting away from Spotify, or from any streaming platform, really. But in an environment where all bases need to be covered, lost promo in any one place tends to have a cascading effect, and you have to replace that with something else.

Similarly, if you weren’t going to use, say, Instagram because of how ham-fisted Meta has been with implementing AI: understand what you’ll be losing, and find another way to do it. You wouldn’t be able to show footage of your live shows as easily. You might have difficulty getting booked, because show promo relies heavily on Instagram right now. You’re also losing the way most social media users communicate with bands, at the moment. But if you have a plan for how to shore up that method of communication (and in Instagram’s case, it has to be a really good plan!), then sure, you could do that.

In short: when it comes to marketing your work in any space, there’s nothing wrong with deciding you don’t want to play ball in the ways other people do. But you need to have a strategy in mind and stick to it, when consciously swimming upstream.

And if you are (understandably) uncomfortable with how any one platform conducts business, you need to both understand what it helps you do, while also being prepared to replace that function through another strategy.

The long game is replacing all of this as much as possible, through building a mailing list and getting the barriers between you and your followers down as far as manageable. But that takes time. And getting from fully-rented to fully-owned takes a plan.

One Thing You Can Use Today

There is a meta-point about marketing conversion in here that’s relevant to everyone, but this point is otherwise most relevant to bands.

If you don’t already have Apple Music for Artists, even if you don’t use Apple Music very much: download it right now.

Here’s one way to use it to know where your band can play a show. Especially if you’ve hired radio promotion before.

There has been a major update this week that lets you see radio play data and compare that to where your songs have been detected by the Shazam app (which Apple owns). As someone who worked in radio promo for a good while, the radio data is not complete, but what you get is still notable. If you see a spin come up that’s assigned to a station, that station has absolutely played you.

So how do you use that against where you are getting Shazamed?

Think of it this way.

Any time someone stops and Shazams you, that is likely a converted fan. The general rule in marketing is that, all things being equal, conversion will be about 1% at all times. Some strategies do a little better, some do a little worse. Stir to taste. It’s almost bizarre how consistently this holds up.

So if 1 person Shazams you, it’s likely that 100 nearby have heard you.

If you have a handful of Shazams in San Antonio (for example), and then you also are seeing a lot of radio play in San Antonio, then a lot of people have heard you and you are converting them.

If you see radio play in an area but you don’t see Shazams, then you have someone playing you, but you aren’t necessarily converting them to fans yet.

Go after shows hardest in places where you are converting people. You can probably even sell merch there.

Then, go after them in places where you know you’re being heard but aren’t necessarily converting yet. On these, try a little harder to get local support with you.

Add in some of the location data from your other platforms, and you’ve suddenly got a map for places to go that are less likely to have you playing for 3 people and the sound engineer.

Track of the Week

Daire Heffernan - “spine”

If you ever find yourself wishing that Adrianne Lenker’s music took some extra cues from Radiohead, get in here. Daire Heffernan’s debut EP The Wolf Called Desire is quality across the board, but “spine” escalates from a simple beginning of keys and sparse vocals to a tense, immensely satisfying conclusion. Ireland has a handful of new artists with this sort of compositional vision (Rachael Lavelle is also spectacular), but Heffernan approaches her music with a rare combination of urgency and daring.

Artist Link | Spotify | Apple Music

List of Clubs

These are the kinds of clubs I’d like to be in around NYC! Wherever you might find music, art, or a compelling experience under one roof, that’s a club to me. I only list clubs I’d enjoy going to. If I list a client, you’ll know.

Friday, August 2 - Karaoke Mood Killer @ Alphaville
The name of the band, so I’m told, comes from an unavoidable lyrical focus on political injustice. Yeah, I’ll come out and get down to that.

Saturday, August 3 - Kane West @ Rash
A super-affordable, very PC Music reason to hit up a trans-owned dance club that we’re all better off for having open again. If you don’t know what PC Music is but you are currently having a “brat summer,” it’s kind of responsible for the whole thing and you need to clear your schedule.

Sunday, August 4 - BDA Residency: Toribio @ H0L0
Pre-sale tickets are just $11, and if there’s one thing that’s well-established about any Bring Dat Ass engagement by now, it’s that you’re in for a good time dancing.

Thanks for reading! And now, an image of me in the club…

The Club List is a newsletter from MeInTheClub.com. All issues are available at TheClubList.net. To inquire about marketing services for your work, contact [email protected] and include "Services” in the subject line.