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

The sun is out all over New York, it’s city election season (who else is watching Colbert on Monday?), and it generally seems like a great time to hit the road for a weekend. Welcome to the summer half of a whirlwind June in the music industry!

Today, we’re taking a closer look at an industry milestone I’ve been proud to be part of, and what it means not just for the independent music world but also for the exact sorts of creative businesses I love supporting most. Scroll on down.

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A New Kind of Star

There was an enormous announcement at the end of Indie Week, and it’s beneficial to a wide chunk of the independent music world.

A2IM has launched A2IM Star Certification, which is the first-ever sales certification award by US indies for US indies. It’s done in partnership with Luminate (the US industry standard for sales tracking, formerly known as Nielsen SoundScan) and awards labels and artists for sales of 50K (One Star), 100K (Two Star), and 300K (Three Star). 

This was an idea A2IM and Luminate had together a little while ago, and this is one of the special projects I was brought in to lead across the finish line. The vision A2IM CEO Richard James Burgess and general manager Lisa Hresko had in this cannot be overstated, and the whole A2IM team has lifted to make it a reality.

If you’re an independent label or artist, what does it mean?

Speaking from my own view of it, this clearly underlines a new frontier. This is a way to benchmark artists carving out a wide impact in an industry where the critical mass for sales is lower now in our decentralized era. Aside from the absolute biggest pop names like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, monoculture is long gone. And in the independent world, monetary success - the kind that means sustainable creative businesses, especially when reinforced with equitable deals between labels and artists - is attainable at more modest sales levels than you’d think. This is a new way to show it.

Take Sister Nancy, for example. The Kingston-born artist’s classic “Bam Bam” is one of the most recognizable dancehall hits there is, and you’ll hear it played randomly a lot of places; I heard it at dinner with a friend last night! It’s on her album One Two from 1982, and the 2002 reissue from VP Records was just certified Two Star. That’s an enduring hit, which even got a limited vinyl repress for Record Store Day this year. It’s a touchstone song, and album, of its genre - and it’s certified now, along with 35 other records in the initial announcement.

Deafheaven is another great one to point to here. Sunbather is one of the most iconic heavy records of the 2010s, presenting a landmark marriage of extremity and beauty achieved by very few other artists worldwide, let alone by a US act. 12 years later, the band is still routinely able to fill 1,000-cap rooms and release stellar music (Lonely People With Power, their newest, may even be their best). Sunbather was certified at One Star as part of this initial group. Within extreme metal, that’s a megahit post-2010, and they’ve been able to do a lot with it.

Because these numbers are coming from Luminate, there’s a path for artists emphasizing direct-to-fan, too. Bandcamp, Even, and many of the other direct-to-fan platforms report to Luminate; as long as the album was sold for $7.99 (or $15.99 for vinyl), it counts. Combine that with album equivalent streams from all the streaming platforms, and things can add up very quickly.

You’ve heard me talk about the perils behind over-focusing on numbers. Excitedly telling your fans that you had a song hit 500,000 Spotify streams is cool, but it risks devaluing the people who listen to you on other networks or physical media. Even more so: how does it feel to be a day one follower of a band and see a little celebration because they hit 50,000 on Instagram, if you’re not also thanked? That’s not even getting into the comparison trap, where you’re thinking artists somehow are intrinsically better than you for selling more records or tickets than you. It’s easy to focus on numbers and lose the importance of reaching your people in the first place.

But this is so great in part because it’s something totally worth celebrating. This isn’t platform-specific success, which can distort your own narrative as a creative business; there is always more than one road forward. This is a true aggregate of sales from all sources, and if you look at a record that hit any of these levels, you know just from blinking at the overall number that a very good chunk of these have to be represented by real fans. Imagine doing data analysis to then figure out how many engaged fans there are here, who you could potentially have spend just $10 on your work a year. That gives you a path to solidifying a place in the profitable side of the music business, possibly for a very long time.

And in a music economy where the middle class is now defined as “breaking even,” this kind of thing shows you don’t have to be a multi-platinum megastar to have a successful career.

It’s been a privilege to make this something that’s accessible to the industry at large, and I’m hopeful that many of my clients over the past year (and many artists reading this!) are in a position to get A2IM Star Certified now or in the future. To submit a record for certification and see the full list, go here.

One Thing You Can Use Today

I usually keep this section more straightforward, but something I’ve read felt so reflective of what I see artists deal with that it had to fit here.

There is a quote that opens Octavia Butler’s modern classic novel, The Parable of the Sower. In context, it’s a proverb from a religious text within the book, which I won’t give more away about. But the quote itself is Butler-authored, which I’ve found myself thinking on lately in the context of what it means to be functional as a creative:

“Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.”

Think about this for a moment. Does this feel familiar? Have you seen artists fight with deficiencies in any of the three? I have seen them in others and I have fought all three, many times. But I’ve rarely seen it all laid out as succinctly, or as beautifully, even separate from its must-read source fiction.

Track of the Week

Kathryn Joseph - “WOLF.”

From the moment I first heard Kathryn Joseph play in a church in Brighton three years ago, I knew her music was not getting out of my bloodstream despite being primarily her voice and a piano. Today, on deeper listening to the first song from her new album WE WERE MADE PREY., her final request to “cover me in your blood” feels as if it knows, as if she’s a close friend who’s already shared the worst of her secrets. The new noisy textures on this record pay off hugely for an artist I’ve always found easy to admire, and it shows across one of the finer albums you’re likely to hear this year.

Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

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, June 20 - Jaws 50th Anniversary @ seemingly everywhere
There are few things the artisanal types of North Brooklyn can all agree upon, but let’s be real: “Jaws was awesome” is one of them. If you’ve got a corner bar here, they’re likely doing a tribute screening with specials tonight. I’m probably most interested in what Flying Fox in Ridgewood is doing out of what I’ve seen, but it’s hard to make a wrong choice short of letting the shark eat you.

Saturday, June 21 - Vanishing Kids @ TV Eye
If you’re talking about gothic rock, doom, and psych-pop in the same conversation, I’m likely here for it. How about a band that does all three at once? That’s Vanishing Kids, headlining an unusually promising Saint Vitus-promoted bill at a great place for shows like it.

Sunday, June 22 - Balaclava, Brushfire, Edging, Shred Flinstone, Tetchy @ Berlin
Tetchy’s first NYC show in 2025, plus at least two bands I’d happily go see by themselves. It’s a great Sunday to go to Manhattan and head down the long stairs.

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.