the AMP Issue 37

Basically, I wake up at nine in the morning, go to different record stores, go to the studio, think of different ideas for songs. Just working.
— Notorious B.I.G

In This Issue... 13 pages [less than 20 minutes to read] You'll Get...

• RECOMMENDS—  American Songwriter

• the BIZ—  The Power of D2C Fan Communities from MIDiA Research written by Keith Jopling

• BACKSTAGE PASS— Behind the Album: Jackson Browne Delivers the Singer Songwriter Masterpiece Late for the Sky, from American Songwriter

• the 100 GREATEST SINGER SONGWRITERS of All Time— the Notorious B.I.G.

• MONDEGREEN— Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles

• COACHING— Make Music for Yourself for a Change by Ian Temple for Flypaper from Songfly

• PS from PS— the Artist’s Business Is the Business of Art

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Here’s the playlist

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• RECOMMENDS—  American Songwriter

American Songwriter has long been a beacon for the songwriting community, offering a rich mix of timely inspiration, education, and industry insights. As a digital platform and membership service, it has successfully extended its reach beyond the pages of a magazine to become an essential resource for Singer Songwriters at any stage of their career.

The website itself is a treasure trove of information, packed with songwriting tips, artist interviews, and the latest news from the music industry. What sets American Songwriter apart is its deep understanding of the creative and business aspects of songwriting. The articles are not only informative, but also deeply inspiring, often providing the nudge that aspiring songwriters need to take their next step.

The membership offering is where American Songwriter truly shines. Tailored to meet the needs of Singer Songwriters, the membership unlocks exclusive content that can't be found elsewhere. From in-depth tutorials on songwriting techniques and lyric writing to advice on navigating the stormy seas of today's complex music industry, the membership resources are invaluable. Webinars and workshops with industry professionals offer rare insights into the business, while opportunities for song critiques provide direct feedback to help refine and improve your work.

Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the American Songwriter membership is the sense of community it fosters. Being part of a network of like-minded individuals, all passionate about songwriting, offers both support and motivation. It's a community that celebrates successes, shares knowledge and provides encouragement through the ups and downs of a music career.

American Songwriter is not just a website. Not just a membership— it's a partner in your songwriting journey. Whether you're drafting your first song or ready to record your next album, American Songwriter offers the tools, knowledge, and community support to help you succeed. It’s a platform where creativity meets career, making it an invaluable asset for any Singer Songwriter looking to make their mark in the world of music.

Visit the American Songwriter website for the latest news, features, videos, and more. Memberships range from $5 to $25 a month. And you can receive their Daily Co-Write newsletter to stay informed on the latest music industry news and trends, hear from artists about their songs, discover new releases, and more— every day in your inbox. Free. Just tap the link. 

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• the BIZ—  The Power of D2C Fan Communities from MIDiA Research written by Keith Jopling

The rise of fan communities heralds a new era for the music industry, one where artists maintain control over their creative output and financial destiny. 

This article is a condensed and summarized extract of Artist’s need to place themselves at the center of fan community-led commerce. Tap the link to read the original.
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Revolutionizing Artist Revenue

The music industry is on the cusp of a significant transformation, driven by the untapped potential of fan communities. 

According to MIDiA Research, the solution to artist remuneration lies in harnessing these communities for direct-to-consumer (D2C) monetization, presenting a new paradigm for the industry’s growth.

Warner Music’s development of a superfan [TrueFan] app underscores the shifting focus towards artist and fan-controlled platforms. This initiative aims to centralize content distribution and fan data collection, enabling artists to monetize through various channels beyond streaming, such as merchandise, exclusive offers, and digital products. The model, exemplified by South Korea’s HYBE, emphasizes the lucrative potential of non-recorded music sources, suggesting a pivotal shift towards D2C strategies.

In the wake of the pandemic, the viability of touring as a primary revenue source has diminished, spotlighting the limitations of streaming revenue and underscoring the need for alternative income streams. 

The music industry must confront the challenge of music’s undervaluation, a dilemma that streaming and traditional models have inadequately addressed.

Innovative artists like Erykah Badu and bands such as The National have pioneered the development of dedicated fan communities, leveraging platforms beyond conventional social media to foster deeper connections and drive monetization. My Morning Jacket’s ‘One Big Family’ community exemplifies a burgeoning trend towards customized D2C platforms, offering a more intimate and engaging fan experience.

The emergence of fan communities is not exclusive to established artists but is a viable strategy for artists at any career stage. This approach democratizes fan engagement, enabling both emerging and established artists to build direct relationships with their audiences, free from the constraints of traditional label models.

For emerging artists, even a small community can be impactful. Strategies such as utilizing Substack for personal storytelling, engaging fans through live streams, and leveraging platforms like Laylo for fan data collection can kick-start their journey. Established artists, on the other hand, can cultivate bespoke experiences through regular content distribution, fan clubs, and exclusive merchandise, enhancing fan loyalty and revenue potential.

Beyond mere merchandise and vinyl sales, fan communities represent a new frontier for artist-fan interaction. 

From live streams and meet-and-greet experiences to digital products and exclusive content, these communities offer a multitude of monetization avenues. This direct-to-fan model not only empowers artists financially but also fosters a collaborative ecosystem where artists can promote and support one another, challenging the competitive narrative of the current industry structure.

The rise of fan communities heralds a new era for the music industry, one where artists maintain control over their creative output and financial destiny. 

This paradigm shift encourages artists to explore and innovate within the fan space, establishing direct lines of communication, distribution, and commerce with their supporters. As the industry evolves, the cultivation of fan communities stands as a testament to the changing landscape of artist revenue generation, promising a more equitable and sustainable future for artists and their music.

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• BACKSTAGE PASS—  Behind the Album: Jackson Browne Delivers the Singer Songwriter Masterpiece Late for the Sky from American Songwriter

Very few albums manage to define both a genre and the setting of their creation. Jackson Browne‘s Late for the Sky qualifies for that shortlist. It gave all Singer Songwriters a standard of excellence to try and match. And its sound and lyrics managed to capture both the decadence and sadness of the Southern California scene in 1974, the year it was released.

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Behind the Album:
Jackson Browne Delivers the Singer Songwriter Masterpiece Late for the Sky by Jim Bevigkia for American Songwriter.

What inspired Browne when he conceived and wrote this record? And what makes it so special? Let’s take a deep dive into Late for the Sky.

Running Late
Browne was writing songs for top rock and pop artists in his teens. Perhaps that’s why his 1972 self-titled debut album, released when he was 23, sounded like the work of an accomplished veteran. He scored a Top Ten single off that record in Doctor My Eyes,  but his 1973 follow-up For Everyman didn’t scale the same commercial heights, even as it included songs like Take It Easy and These Days, which had been hits for others.

As a result, Asylum Records chief David Geffen put a stricter limit on the budget for his third album. Browne used what budget he was given to pay for his band to come out and rehearse the new album. Browne, keyboardist Jai Winding, and multi-instrumentalist David Lindley experimented with who would be playing what instrument on each particular song until the arrangements perfectly captured the emotional tenor off the lyrics.

Browne wrote the album while living in his childhood home with his wife and baby boy, which, as he explained in an interview with the Library of Congress about Late for the Sky, made a profound impact on the material:

“And there was that idea in my mind that I was in repeating, you know, repeating a cycle. That my father had been a child in that house— my father was a child when the house was built. So I had that idea of the recurring, the generational, repeating generations.”

The Finished Product
There are only eight songs on Late for the Sky, but five run longer than five minutes. Browne wasn’t worried about song structure as much as evoking certain feelings. You can hear it in songs like Fountain of Sorrow, where he repeats the same musical line with different lyrics over and over toward the song’s end, building the moment until the emotional release of the line But you go on smiling so clearly and so bright.

Browne fearlessly tackled concerns on the album that many members of his generation were facing down as well. For a Dancer stands as one of the finest songs about dealing with death because of how Browne admits his powerlessness— he doesn’t really have any answers about dying. But that, in turn, gives him a clue about how to live.

Closing track Before the Deluge tells a cautionary tale about what could happen to the world if humanity continues to neglect environmental issues and the dangers of war. Browne envisions foolish mortals thinking that they can avoid the coming flood, eventually huddling under shelter as they seek to survive. Lindley sends these poor souls off in a flurry of ironically joyful fiddle playing.

The title track finds Browne writing about an expiring relationship with stunning eloquence: "Awake again, I can’t pretend / And I know I’m alone / And close to the end of the feeling we’ve known." Many inherently understood the song’s phrase empty surprise, a common reaction to the broken promises of lovers, parents, and politicians. They knew well the ache in Browne’s voice as he moaned the song’s elongated syllables.

Life Imitates Art
While in the midst of writing and recording his next album (The Pretender in 1976), Browne’s wife took her own life. When reflecting on Late for the Sky, he talked about the way the songs connected to his life:

“I mean, it’s interesting to me. That I could be in that house writing a song, Late for the Sky, and it’s about somebody that I broke up, that I had a breakup with, that I had a deep relationship with, that I was no longer with and still healing from and still getting over. So, you’re with somebody new, but you’re writing about somebody in the past and that has happened to me over and over again. And it happened with her. I was with her, my wife when I was writing For a Dancer. But that song wasn’t about her, but it became about her because she died.”

Maybe it boils down to the way the songs on Late for the Sky touch on our eternal,  insatiable longing, rendering them understandable and relatable across generations. That’s likely why people keep coming back to this Jackson Browne masterpiece after all these years.

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• the 100 GREATEST SINGER SONGWRITERS of All Time—  the Notorious B.I.G.

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Considered by many to be one of— if not the greatest rapper and lyricist of all time—  the Brooklyn-born rapper known as The Notorious B.I.G. died tragically at just 24 years old.

Biggie Smalls aka The Notorious B.I.G. prophesied his short but impactful career with albums Ready to Die and Life After Death— two of hip-hop's most influential albums. 

— Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2020)

Christopher George Latore Wallace, better known by his stage names the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or simply Biggie, was an American rapper and songwriter. Rooted in the New York rap scene and gangsta rap traditions, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time. Wallace became known for his distinctive laid-back lyrical delivery, offsetting the lyrics' often grim content. His music was often semi-autobiographical, telling of hardship and criminality, but also of debauchery and celebration.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, Wallace signed to Sean "Puffy" Combs's label Bad Boy Records as it launched in 1993, and gained exposure through features on several other artists' singles that year. His debut album Ready to Die (1994) was met with widespread critical acclaim and included his signature songs Juicy and Big Poppa. The album made him the central figure in East Coast hip-hop and restored New York's visibility at a time when the West Coast hip-hop scene was dominating hip-hop music. Wallace was awarded the 1995 Billboard Music Awards' Rapper of the Year. The following year, he led his protégé group Junior M.A.F.I.A., a team of himself and longtime friends, including Lil' Kim, to chart success.

During 1996, while recording his second album, Wallace became ensnarled in the escalating East Coast–West Coast hip-hop feud. Following Tupac Shakur's death in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996, speculations of involvement in Shakur's murder by criminal elements orbiting the Bad Boy circle circulated as a result of Wallace's public feud with Shakur. On March 9, 1997, six months after Shakur's death, Wallace was murdered in a drive-by shooting while visiting Los Angeles. The assailant remains unidentified. Wallace's second album Life After Death, a double album, was released two weeks later. It reached number one on the Billboard 200, and eventually achieved a diamond certification in the US.

With two more posthumous albums released, Wallace has certified sales of over 28 million copies in the United States, including 21 million albums. Rolling Stone has called him the "greatest rapper that ever lived", and Billboard named him the greatest rapper of all time. The Source magazine named him the greatest rapper of all time in its 150th issue. In 2006, MTV ranked him at No. 3 on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time, calling him possibly "the most skillful ever on the mic". In 2020, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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To visit the MusicThisDay.com website, tap the link: The 100 Greatest Songwriters Of All Time.

in partnership with Your Morning Coffee and Jay Gilbert

• MONDEGREEN— Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles

Original

"The girl with kaleidoscope eyes"

Mondegreen

"The girl with colitis goes by"

After the Beatles released this track in 1967, the BBC banned Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds for its excessive amount of drug references. While the band originally denied that the song had anything to do with drugs, Paul McCartney finally confessed, in a 2004 interview with Daily Mail, that it was "pretty obvious" what the song was actually about.

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• COACHING— Make Music for Yourself for a Change by Ian Temple for Flypaper from Songfly

Feeling lost in the hustle? Remember to make music just for yourself once in a while.

If a tree falls in an Instagram video and it gets 0 views, does it make a sound? 

As a musician, it’s easy sometimes to get lost in your output and productivity. What are you producing and releasing right now? Are your streaming numbers going up? How many followers do you have today? Are you on your way to chart-topping success? I respect all those questions. Many of us are trying to build a career and a fanbase, and tracking your progress is an important part of doing that. 

But this week, I want to reflect on the other side of making music— the way it feeds your personal growth and makes you feel alive. The way it nourishes the soul. The way that making music alone in the woods has deep personal value and meaning, regardless of whether anyone’s around to hear it. 

I’ve recently embarked on a personal research project on the city of Florence and the Renaissance. This slightly random city in the middle of Italy had such an astounding density of world-changing artists, ideas, and thinkers: Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo… and not just the Ninja Turtles—  Dante, Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Machiavelli, etc. It turns out America was even named after a Florentine (Amerigo Vespucci). 

Many historians consider the Renaissance the moment in time when our modern conception of “art” was born, at least in the Western world. Before then, artists thought of themselves more like contractors and craftsmen, no different than a blacksmith or a builder.

But during this period, artists like Donatello and Michelangelo conceived of themselves and their work very differently. They considered their work ineffable in some way. What they were trying to do was to capture some essential truth about humanity and human nature in their work. Making art was a way to understand and experience the world better— and as such, they believed it required deep, serious introspective effort and struggle. It wasn’t just about producing a pretty picture or sculpture to adorn a church or make a buck, but rather trying to capture something otherwise indescribable and true. There’s a story about Donatello destroying a sculpture he’d spent years on because the rich guy who commissioned it didn’t adequately appreciate the artistry behind it. 

For better or worse, these figures helped launch the now-common trope of the “tortured artist” who journeys through their own internal hell to pull forth the genius within. 

Honestly, that all seems a bit much to me. I like Renaissance art, but I also think art can serve lots of purposes, and I don’t recommend being “tortured” ever. Sometimes it’s OK to just make a pretty picture. I often make music just to have fun, rather than plumbing the depths of my soul. I’m a firm believer that there are lots of ways to think about art and artistry, and all of them are valid. 

But there is one key aspect of these artists’ work that’s inspired me this week, and that’s the idea that…

... the act of making art is inherently valuable in its own right. 

It can help make you a better person and experience life more deeply. It’s a way to learn, to stretch yourself, to discover new beautiful reservoirs of interest, to explore nature and the world we find ourselves in.

You can see this in the way the Renaissance artists often took old forms and reinvented them. Donatello created a new way to cast bronze for his sculpture of David, and Leonardo famously painted The Last Supper using experimental techniques (to the endless frustration of art lovers, given its fragility). They did this because it was more interesting to them to do it this way, because they wanted to see if it would work. They were driven by curiosity and exploration, a desire to try things, and an interest in what it would teach them. 

And that’s the spirit with which I’m making music this week. It’s so easy to forget that playing piano or writing a string arrangement or producing an epic drop on a track can be a meaningful thing to do simply because it’s interesting to you, because learning is fun and curiosity is something to be indulged sometimes. What others think or hear is beside the point.

When you make music this way, you can end up down the most unexpected and interesting rabbit holes— and that’s a beautiful thing. Creating a dubstep track that you’ll never release on a Tuesday morning for the hell of it might be really fun and teach you all sorts of unexpected things. 

So I challenge you to do the same thing. Whenever the grind feels like a lot, allow yourself to make music just for yourself for a change. Play something because you love it or because it stretches you in some way, and forget about the outcome. See what it teaches you and where it takes you.

The ability to make music is a gift. Hold it close and don’t let the hustle cloud the beauty of what you get to do. 

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Ian Temple is a pianist, entrepreneur, and professional musician. He started Soundfly to help people really find what gets them most excited musically and pursue it. He’s toured all over the world with his experimental trio Sontag Shogun. Follow him on Twitter at @iantemple

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• PS from PS— the Artist’s Business Is the Business of Art

Look. I know some of you will not like or agree with me on this, and, hold my nose and jump...

Your journey to success as a Singer Songwriter is much more than a passion project. It's a venture that demands a business mindset. Unless you don't give a damn about money.

Embracing a business perspective is essential. The core of achieving sustainable success in music hinges on treating your musical career not merely as an avocation but as a 'sincerious' business— my partner John made that word up by combining sincere and serious. At the heart of this business model lies the innovative concept of cultivating 1,000 True Fans, a strategy that can transform your music career into a lucrative endeavor.

Understanding the 1,000 True Fans theory is crucial. This concept, originated by Kevin Kelly, posits that an artist needs only 1,000 genuinely dedicated fans to make a comfortable living. These aren't just casual listeners; they are TRUE FANS who will engage with you and your work, attending your concerts, buying your albums, and purchasing your merchandise. If each of these fans contributes $100 a year— less than $10 a month— to your music, you can generate $100,000 annually—a substantial sum that underscores the viability of your music as a sincerious business.

And look, if all you want is a paid hobby... Fine. Just be clear that's NOT a career. Part-time. Full-time. Just some-time.

A Singer Songwriter business/career requires more than just talent. It demands a shift in perspective. Many artists hesitate at the threshold of professional success, intimidated by the business aspects of their career. Yet, understanding and embracing these aspects is non-negotiable. 

Success in the music industry isn't solely about creating art; it's about effectively marketing your art, engaging with your audience, and ensuring your music reaches as many ears— hearts and minds— as possible. 

This involves attracting and retaining fans, converting their admiration into financial support, and maintaining a consistent and mutually rewarding relationship with them.

I’ve found one common obstacle: FEAR. Many musicians are daunted by the prospect of treating their art, their craft, and their love, as a business, fearing it might dilute their artistic integrity. However, this fear often masks the reality that with the right approach, business can coexist with creative authenticity. The reluctance to invest in yourself isn't rooted in the cost but in the fear of stepping into the business realm of music.

Transitioning from viewing music as a hobby to treating it as a business involves understanding that music, at its core, is a product. To succeed, you must see yourself as the CEO of your music company, focusing on product development (your music), marketing (engaging with fans), sales (concert tickets, albums, merchandise), and customer service (interacting with fans). The concept of 1,000 TrueFans underscores that success simply requires a focused, dedicated fanbase willing to support your journey.

Embracing the business side of music isn't a departure from artistic integrity but a pathway to achieving your dreams. By adopting a business-minded approach and focusing on building a community of 1,000 TrueFans, Singer Songwriters can unlock a sustainable, rewarding career. This strategy doesn't just aim for financial success; it fosters a deep connection between artists and their fans, ensuring the music resonates and sustains. 

Shift your mindset. Embrace the challenge.

Then you'll see your Singer Songwriter career flourish— not just as an artistic pursuit but as a thriving business.

Until we speak again...

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