the TrueFans AMP— Issue 120

“This is one of those classic conundrums of being a musician. You want to be heard.  You don’t want to be a dick. And you don’t always know where to draw the line.”
— Ian Temple 

“... live music will never die. Nothing else can replace it.” 
— Ted Gioia

Welcome to the looonnnnggggst AMP ever! 

In This Issue... about 22 pages (about 33ish minutes to read) You'll Get... 

• Recommends— The Road: A reality-competition series worth watching— if you’re  a Music Artist who knows what to look for. 

• Feature Article— The Glorious Future of Live Music by Ted Gioia 

• the Greatest Singer Songwriters of All Time— Freddie Mercury Architect of the  Impossible 

in partnership with Ted Gioia and Ian Temple 

• Feature Article— Do it the right way by Ian Temple 

• PS from PS— Beyond the Noise

Here’s the playlist

• Recommends— The Road: A reality-competition series worth watching— if you’re  an Artist who knows what to look for. 

There’s a new music-competition series on Paramount+ called The Road. And normally, anything filed under “reality TV” triggers an eye-roll from most serious Music Artists— including us. 

But here’s the surprise: 

This one actually has real value for working Singer Songwriters, performers, and  touring musicians. 

Not because of the drama, or the competition, or the TV gloss— but because the show  follows something most reality series avoid: 

Life on an actual road tour. 

Real venues. Real crowds. Real stakes. 

Twelve working Singer Songwriters travel by bus, compete for an opening slot with  Keith Urban, and perform for real audiences who vote. The judges (Blake Shelton,  Gretchen Wilson, etc.) add industry perspective, but the show is built around the grind— not the glam. 

So yes: It’s reality TV…but useful reality TV. 

Why It’s Worth Watching (For Music Artists) 

1. It showcases real performance pressure— not studio-set fantasy. Artists perform in front of live crowds, in unfamiliar rooms, with limited prep time.  That’s the actual touring life. 

Watching how different performers adapt, warm up, recover from mistakes, and keep a  crowd is instructive. 

2. You get a front-row seat to “the opening act mindset.” 
A lot of artists fantasize about headlining— but the smart ones know: Opening slots build careers. 

The Road shows what it takes to win over a crowd that didn’t come for you… a critical  TrueFans skill. 

3. There’s gold in the judges’ feedback. 
Shelton, Wilson, and Urban drop practical, working-artist advice: 

• How to choose the right song for a cold audience 
• What separates a “good singer” from a compelling performer 
• How personality connects— or doesn’t— from the stage 
• Why some arrangements die on the road 

Even if you’re not a country artist, the principles are universal. 

4. It shows the unglamorous, essential realities of touring. 

The travel fatigue. 
The bus dynamics. 
The mental toughness. 
The micro-decisions that add up (hydration, pacing sets, handling the night-after-night  grind). 

If you’ve ever dreamed about being on the road, this is the closest reality TV has come  to telling the truth about it. 

5. The contestants are actual working musicians, not pre-fabricated TV  personalities. 
Reviewers have noted that these artists have chops— meaning you learn from pros, not  caricatures. 

What You Can Learn— Fast 

• How to build connection onstage when people don’t know you
• What song choices work live (vs. only on streaming) 
• How to read a room— and pivot mid-performance 
• How different artists package personality onstage 
• How to carry yourself on a multi-city run without burning out
• Why touring is a business, not just an adventure 
• What separates “talented” from “ready” 

For many artists, this show will teach more about touring than a semester of music business classes. 

Caveats (Because You Deserve the Truth) 

It’s still reality TV. 

There’s editing, story shaping, and “this is your last chance” drama. 

If that irritates you, skip the fluff and go straight to the performances and coaching  moments. 

It’s country-centric. 
If you’re a metal singer or hip-hop producer, you’ll have to translate the lessons— but  the principles still hold. 

It’s early in its run. 
We don’t yet know how meaningfully it will change anyone’s career long-term. So don’t take it as a blueprint— take it as a case study. 

the Bottom of the Bottom Line 

If you’re a working artist— or want to be— The Road is absolutely worth your time. 

Not as entertainment, but as professional development: a behind-the-scenes look at life on tour, the realities of opening slots, and the universal fundamentals of performance and artist identity. 

Watch with your Artist mind, not your Viewer mind, and you’ll walk away with insights  you can use immediately. 

• Feature Article— The Glorious Future of Live Music by Ted Gioia reprinted in full from Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker on Substack. 

The image shows saxophonist Big Jay McNeely performing at the Olympic Auditorium. He is hot and sweaty and breaking all the rules. The spirit of the music is so intense that he’s playing his horn while lying on his back. 

It’s very campy and theatrical. But that’s not the reason why I love this photo. 

It’s the audience that grabs my attention. They are in a state of intense ecstasy— you can read it on their faces. 

Two young men have left their seats and are leaning on to the bandstand with their  mouths agape and eyes transfixed. A third one looks like he has actually achieved some transcendent out-of-body experience, and might just float away into his personal  nirvana. 

I know what it’s like. I still recall a sax performance I attended decades ago that was lika revival meeting— everyone of us in the room felt it. Some magical force had descended on us. We were all crazed and possessed. 

We rose to our feet and swayed and screamed. Some even started chanting and singing along with the band. (I was one of them.) 

You could have sent us into battle at that moment— and we would have stormed the  Bastille, tearing it down with our bare hands. 

I know some of you have had similar experiences, and cherish them like I do my  initiation into group-induced musical trance. It’s hard to explain them to somebody who  hasn’t gone through this kind of concert mania. All you can say is the feeble excuse: You had to have been there. 

But there’s one more thing I can add about these life-changing moments. It’s a simple  reflection that those kinds of things don’t happen online. 

You can stream Spotify all year long, and never achieve what Big Jay McNeely imparted to those fans back in 1951. No music video on YouTube or TikTok will come  close. 

Only live music can do this. 

“Live music is even more popular than sex… 84% of users believe that events give  them ‘the most life.’ And 80% prefer to spend money on experiences instead of  consumer goods.” 

That’s not just my opinion. It’s a matter of science. 

When people hear music in a group setting their brainwaves start to synchronize. The  body also releases the hormone oxytocin, which makes them more trusting and willing  to bond together. 

That’s why so many couples, over the course of centuries, have discovered their  romantic attraction at a dance or nightclub. The music actually turns them into lovers,  without them even thinking about it. 

For the same reason, we sing national anthems or team songs at sporting events. This  creates a bond between fans that no other force can match. And it’s also why the labor  movement relied so heavily on songs in building solidarity. Religious leaders, of course, have always known this, so they all have their hymns and chants. 

“Recent studies conducted in real-time, in concert halls, demonstrate that people  enjoy music more when the performance is live and experienced as part of a group,”
— Lindsay A. Fleming.  

She continues: Live music triggers stronger emotional responses than recorded  music due to the dynamic relationship between the audience and the performers. The  visual cues, collective energy, and real-time responsiveness of live music engage more sensory and emotional systems than listening alone, deepening our visceral  connection to the experience. 

This is why live music will never die. Nothing else can replace it. 

The only people who haven’t figured this out are the executives running the music  industry. 

• Almost all the investment money in the music biz is flowing into streaming and  publishing rights. 

• Very little is spent on developing new artists. Most of them have to launch careers on  their own, with no support or guidance. 

• They are typically encouraged to find an audience on TikTok— instead of through live performance. 

• Most newspapers don’t review live music anymore. So touring artists generate little or  no publicity for their work. 

• Ticket prices are too expensive, and loaded with hidden fees. 

It’s worse than you think. The Department of Justice laid out the ugly details in a 124- page lawsuit against Ticketmaster: 

Any fan who has logged onto Ticketmaster’s website to buy a concert ticket knows the  feeling of shock and frustration as the base cost of the ticket increases dramatically with the addition of fees to include: 

(a) “service” or “convenience” fees, 
(b) “Platinum” fees, 
(c) “VIP” fees, 
(d) “per order” or “handling” fees, 
(e) “payment processing” fees, 
(f) “facility” fees, and/or 
(g) any other fee or tax Ticketmaster collects from the fan, often with a cut of that fee going back to Ticketmaster. 

Whatever the name of the fee and however the fees are packaged and collected, they are essentially a “Ticketmaster Tax.” 

Despite these obstacles, the concert business is still alive— and growing faster than  recorded music. 

Back during COVID, experts doubted whether nightclubs and other music venues would ever recover. It wasn’t just the virus, but also the stranglehold of digital platforms—  which keep a whole generation at home and staring into screens. 

But then Taylor Swift turned her Eras tour into the biggest musical moneymaker of the  decade. People took notice when it became the first concert tour to surpass a billion  dollars in revenue. And then, a few months later, it surpassed $2 billion too. 

But those numbers don’t come close to measuring the demand for tickets. When  Ticketmaster made seats available for the second leg of Swift’s tour, 14 million users  tried to buy just 625,000 tickets. 

It’s not just Swift and her ardent Swifties. We see many other measures of a resurgence  in live music. In the UK, for example, concert revenues are growing twice as fast as  recorded music revenues. A concert now starts in Britain, on average, every 137  seconds. 

Live music is even more popular than sex, according to a survey of 40,000 people conducted by Live Nation.  

Streaming is no substitute. The same survey found that 84% of users believe that events give them “the most life.” And 80% prefer to spend money on experiences instead of consumer goods. 

Tech platforms hate this. Live music is hard to scale and defies mass production. Every  experience is unique. So the most powerful businesses in music ignore the audience’s  hunger for live performance— and dish out formulaic TikTok-ish videos instead. 

But that isn’t the way to energize music fans. 

Maybe that’s why Disney’s stock dropped like a rock after it announced more short form AI content for its Disney+ platform. For most people, this is about as exciting as day-old oatmeal. But the media companies have lost their ability to read the room. 

There is another way. A better way. 

Consider the case of live music discovery platform Bandsintown. This company was  launched with modest funding, but it now has 100 million users in 196 countries— and  it’s adding almost a million more fans every month. 

The company is a huge success by any measure— and it’s not just helping superstars.  Most of the demand on Bandisintown is for emerging artists, with fewer than 250,000  followers. 

But the big web platforms don’t dare try to imitate it. That because Bandisintown wants  people to stop scrolling and go to a live concert. Their stated goal is to get people off  their phones as quickly as possible. So Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk will never  embrace this opportunity. 

But it is an opportunity. Live music isn’t a relic from the past. It is the obvious pathway  for musicians and fans now and in the future. Digital media can’t even begin to match its energy and excitement. And no chatbot will ever replicate it. 

For those of us who toil away in the music ecosystem, this is our joyous destiny. Fans  want to experience music live. Some will sing along with the band. Or get up and dance. And maybe even a few will experience an ecstatic trance like the one I had back in the  day. 

That’s worth celebrating. And facilitating. And— best of all— participating ourselves. If you have any doubts, go back and take another look at that photo of Big Jay McNeely at the top of the page. 

About Ted Gioia 
Ted Gioia is one of the most influential music historians and cultural critics working  today— author of Music: A Subversive History, The Jazz Standards, and The Honest  Broker newsletter, where he explores the shifting landscape of music, culture, creativity, and the creator economy. A longtime champion of artists over algorithms, Gioia’s work  blends deep scholarship with a clear-eyed, Artist-First perspective. 

Learn more about Ted Gioia in the gold in partnership with… box in this issue.

• the Greatest Singer Songwriters of All Time— Freddie Mercury Architect of the  Impossible 

“Freddie Mercury didn’t just write songs— he built cathedrals out of sound. No one else ever made the impossible feel that effortless.” 

A Songwriter Who Refused to Be Contained 
Some artists find a lane. Freddie Mercury found a universe. For a kid born Farrokh  Bulsara in Zanzibar, raised in India, and shaped by London’s energetic chaos, music  became both sanctuary and playground— a place where he could be all of himself  without shrinking to fit anyone else’s rules. And that mentality shaped everything that  followed: the songwriting, the performances, the production, the collaborations, and the sheer bravery with which he lived his artistic life. 

“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.” 

For today’s independent music artist, Freddie Mercury stands not just as a Songwriter to  admire, but as a blueprint of what it means to trust your imagination more than the  marketplace. 

“He was a true original. No one taught Freddie Mercury how to be Freddie  Mercury.”  
— Elton John 

The Master Builder of Songs 
Freddie Mercury didn’t simply write songs— he constructed musical worlds. He gave us the operatic thunderstorm of Bohemian Rhapsody, a six-minute odyssey with no chorus; the aching devotion of Love of My Life, sung by stadiums as if it were a prayer; the velvet wit of Killer Queen, where glam rock met French champagne; the gospel drenched yearning of Somebody to Love; the unstoppable energy of Don’t Stop Me Now; and the rockabilly swagger of Crazy Little Thing Called Love, composed in minutes while he soaked in a hotel bathtub. 

Freddie’s songwriting lived at the intersection of theater, emotion, and fearless experimentation. And yet, despite its eccentricity— or maybe because of it— his work  became global, multi-generational, stadium-shakingly universal. This was songwriting  with vision. 

“Freddie’s songwriting changed what rock music was allowed to be.” 
— Brian May 

A Production Mind Ahead of His Time 
Much of Queen’s legendary studio innovation began because Freddie demanded it. He  thought in shapes, colors, scenes, voices— and the studio became the arena where he  turned imagination into architecture. 

Queen’s early decision to work without synthesizers wasn’t stubborn minimalism; it was Freddie insisting they discover what the human voice and Brian May’s guitar could do  when pushed to the edge. The result was a sound that felt simultaneously orchestral and intimate, lush but razor-precise, massive yet human. 

Albums like A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, News of the World, and Innuendo show a maturing composer using production as an instrument— sometimes subtle, often extravagant, always intentional. 

Freddie Mercury wrote songs that could only come from Freddie Mercury — and he  produced them like a man who knew he had limited time and unlimited vision. 

“Freddie Mercury was the greatest frontman of all time.”  
— Dave Grohl 

The Live Performer Who Redefined the Art Form 
Artists often talk about “leaving it all onstage.” Freddie Mercury embodied that. He was  a master of presence— electric, regal, mischievous, athletic, and emotionally transparent. And then came Live Aid, 1985, considered by many to be the greatest live performance ever delivered by a human being. 

“Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. Freddie is unmatched.” 
— Lady Gaga 

At Wembley Stadium, Freddie turned 72,000 strangers into one voice and nearly 2  billion global viewers into willing disciples. It was performance as communion—  evidence that the best artists don’t entertain; they elevate. 

For TrueFans AMP™ readers who perform:  

You don’t need Freddie’s voice. You need his certainty. The audience mirrors the  artist’s belief. 

A Collaborator Who Saw No Boundaries
Freddie’s creative partnerships were just as fearless. Beyond Queen— one of the few  bands where every member was a top-tier Songwriter— Freddie ventured into  collaborations that stretched his artistry. 

His work with Montserrat Caballé on the Barcelona album remains one of the most  daring fusions of rock and opera ever attempted. His unreleased sessions with Michael  Jackson showed two perfectionists circling the same sun. Even his solo material merged synth-pop, funk, and cabaret with an elegance only he could carry. 

Freddie didn’t collaborate to diversify. He collaborated to grow. 

Inspiration and the Inner Fire 
Freddie’s influences were a kaleidoscope: opera, Hendrix, Bollywood, Motown, gospel,  Liza Minnelli, classical composition, hard rock, and the melodrama of musical theatre.  But what powered his songwriting more than anything was emotional truth. Freddie once said:  

“My songs are like children. I dress them up and send them out into the world.” 

And he meant it. Every lyric, melody, and modulation was crafted with the intensity of  someone who felt deeply and refused to apologize for it. 

His songwriting was a form of identity— bold, vulnerable, witty, majestic, thunderous,  fragile, and defiant. 

The Personal Story That Made the Legend Human 
Behind the iconic mustache, the strut, the costumes, and the astonishing voice was a shy, thoughtful man whose truest confidante was Mary Austin, the person he famously called “the love of my life.” Their bond outlived romance and became the emotional  foundation of Freddie’s life until his final day. 

“His voice was godlike. Pure and effortless.”  
— Michael Jackson 

His diagnosis with AIDS in the late 1980s was a private battle carried with extraordinary courage. Instead of retreating, Freddie recorded some of the most poignant vocals of his career— including the haunting Mother Love, the last lead vocal he ever sang. 

His illness and his bravery helped force the world to confront the AIDS crisis with more  humanity and less fear. Freddie Mercury didn’t just change music. He changed culture. 

The Enduring Legacy 
Freddie’s influence is so vast it’s nearly invisible— woven into rock, pop, live  performance standards, vocal arrangement, stylistic theatricality, melodic risk-taking,  and the modern artist’s permission to be fully, outrageously themselves. 

“Freddie could do anything. Every genre, every emotion— he mastered it all.”  — Stevie Wonder 

Artists as varied as Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Adele, Dave Grohl, Beyoncé, Panic! At  The Disco, Metallica, The Killers, and countless others trace a direct line back to him. Freddie Mercury reminds us that creativity thrives when the artist refuses to shrink. He  proved that boldness is strategy. That theater is power. That emotion is universal. And  that imagination— when followed without apology— can ripple across generations. 

Freddie’s life is proof that your truest, most daring idea might also be your most  successful. He didn’t ask the world for permission. He handed the world a  masterpiece and said, ‘Here. Try to imagine life without this.’ 

in partnership with Two of the Best: Ted Gioia and Ian Temple 

• Feature Article— Do it the right way by Ian Temple reprinted in full from Ian Temple, Soundfly on Substack. 

Our world is filled with people trying to scam, cheat, trick, or swindle you into  noticing them. Don't be one of them. 

Have you listened to my new EP yet? It’s called “in cloudy states” and documents the changing meaning of a moment across four acts, with stems, a poem, and a coloring  book to boot. I’d love to hear what you think! 

Somewhere in the world right now, there is a well-intentioned artist posting their music  on a message board that doesn’t want it. 

There are probably community guidelines telling them not to do it. Common courtesy  says not to do it, at least not before engaging first. They might even know deep down  that it’s a bad idea. But they’re desperate to get their stuff heard, and they’ve read lots of self-help blog posts about not accepting No for an answer or about how the world  belongs to high-agency people or how obstacles are there to test how badly we want it. (Sh*t, maybe I even wrote one or two of them ?￢ ﾀﾍK). 

At the other end of the spectrum, there is also an artist right now that has released music 

that people want to hear but they’re too nervous about bugging people to share it. Or  they think promoting their own stuff is a little cringey (which is fair, it can be, even if  we have to do it anyway). And so no one knows about it, and it languishes in  melancholic, artistically-sacred obscurity. 

This is one of those classic conundrums of being a musician. You want to be heard. You don’t want to be a dick. And you don’t always know where to draw the line. 

My advice is: Do it the right way. 

Easy to say, hard to do. Especially given the circumstances we find ourselves in where  anyone can make music, including very polite algorithms, and we’re all getting zapped  by a gajillion pieces of content a day. We thought the Internet was for agglomerating  and dispersing human knowledge, but that was wrong. It’s for entertaining people via  undifferentiated 4 second clips of content. It’s a golden age for convenience, but it turns  out as a species, we don’t really do that well with endless convenience. We’re like a  bunch of store-bought fish who will keep eating all the fish food we’re given even if we  gorge ourselves into listlessness. 

It’s hard to get heard online. It’s also hard to get heard in real life. Concert attendance is down. Festival attendance is down. Prices for many things are up. New music is  struggling to clear a path through the swollen protuberances of now-corporate-owned  legacy archives, as Ted Gioia has documented. You spend years building a following of  people who asked to hear from you, only for the platform to throttle your posts so you  have to pay for people to see it, the same ones who asked to see it. 

There are also so many people, tools, bots promising to help you cut the line. Someone  who helps people get into the United States illegally is sometimes called a coyote, and  music is full of coyotes, promising some fool-proof method of success. Here’s a  smattering of outreach from coyotes in my email inbox today alone: 

• “Does ChatGPT mention you in its answers? I can make that happen for you.”
• “I’ve got a playbook specifically for Montreal-based founders. You’re going to want to see this.” (huh?) 
• Three versions of: “We’ve been following your progress for some time. We know  exactly what you need…” 

And then there are like 12 people who have just sent me links to their music, with no  context, story, or reason to click on it. Of course. 

Music is such a weird industry because so many people want to do it, and yet there’s so little money in it, so everyone ends up clawing at each other in a big scrum as they  scramble to grab pennies off the floor. We’d be better off ignoring the pennies and  turning it into a mosh pit. At least then we’d be having fun. 

That’s not to say you shouldn’t post about your music, share what you’re doing, and  put yourself out there. I certainly do. It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cold call  someone sometimes or do your best to stand out or ping an artist you love from time to  time. We’re all dancing under the same waterfall, trying to get a drink. If you’ve  got something interesting to share, I’d rather hear about what you’re doing than some  slop. I genuinely want to hear it. 

But there’s gotta be a way to do it right, while feeding your soul rather than tearing at it,  and in a bid to keep myself on track, here’s what that means to me: 

First, be a human, and remember that you are interacting (mostly) with other humans, even if it’s mediated by blinking lights and frog avatars. So do human things. You  wouldn’t walk into a room full of people and immediately scream at everyone to listen to you, unless maybe you were an action-movie star and there was a bomb in the room somewhere and you needed everyone’s attention to help you find it. But you’re not (I don’t think), so don’t do that. 

Instead, find the cozy corners where you can chat with people as individuals, where you can tell them what it would mean to you if they listened to your stuff. Be genuine.  Connect with people. Don’t let the pixels fry your brain. 

Second, stay a little punk. It’s my genuine belief that all musicians need a little punk in them. Not musically, per-say, but rather the ethos that drove so many of the punk labels  of the ‘80s and ‘90s (and today). Record labels like Factory Records, Dischord, and Sub Pop were built on personal connections and community, and a DIY mentality. Sub Pop started as a fanzine in a niche community, promoting local acts. Punk artists make their  own merch, throw their own shows, and don’t let others tell them what to do when it’s  not in line with their values. 

In the course we made together on making a living with uncompromising art, Ben  Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan talks about how important personal connections  were to their success. They would stay on fans’ couches when they toured. They’d  collaborate with other bands in the scene. They treated everyone they encountered like a real person. Ben talks about how fans they made from treating people well ended up  leading to important opportunities, like sync deals, radio play, and shows. Someone they snuck into one of their shows in Australia ended up becoming a major metal DJ who  would play them on regular rotation. 

“Just be good to everyone”
— Ben Weinman 

Third, do things because they’re fun and exciting to you, not for numbers. I’m not a  social media expert by any means, but I can’t help but find that the artists and people I like most on social media don’t feel like they’re doing it for the views. They had a fun  idea, and they tried it. They use the constraints of the platform as a creative challenge. 

Similarly for promoting stuff. I mean, this new music video Rosalía made for her tune “Berghain” is amazing and hilarious and so memorable. What’s not to love? 

I would never guarantee that doing stuff you find exciting will necessarily lead to  success. There are no guarantees, and the graveyard of amazing projects that died on  impact is packed and wide. But it’s a hell of a lot better to do stuff you enjoy than do  stuff you don’t and it still doesn’t work out. 

Fourth, be part of a community, support others, and help where you can. If you’re  going to share your own stuff, share other people’s stuff too. Go to friends’ shows and  buy their merch. Invite them to join your show, and sit in with them on theirs. 

I moderate a few Discord communities, and it’s amazing how often people show up and  ask for something before they’ve given anything. I find a good rule of thumb is to give  two or three things with no expectation of anything in return before you ask for anything from someone else. Generosity seeds generosity, and more importantly, genuine  connection and interest. Turn uplift into a habit. 

Fifth, let your effort and care be a competitive advantage.
My wife always says I like to do things via the path of most resistance. She means it as a tongue-in-cheek critique and it’s sometimes a terrible idea, like when I try to fix my bike upside down because I’m standing over it, rather than put the bike upside down. But there is an advantage of doing things the hard way: It’s generally less crowded. 

When you put a lot of effort and care into something, even beyond what you could  possibly recoup from it, it’s soul-nourishing, and has all sorts of positive cascading  effects on the world. When OK Go was practicing their choreography for a music video  of them dancing on treadmills, they couldn’t have known how iconic it would become,  that they’d be performing it live at the MTV Music Video Awards. They just thought it  was a cool thing to do, worth putting months of effort into in its own right. And they were right. 

Finally, stay the course.
Everything you do is a chance to learn something new. Keep  going. 

So that’s my checklist for what it means to do something the right way. What’s yours?  In those difficult situations when you’re tempted to cheat or be a little bit of a jerk, what  does it mean to you to do it the right way instead? 

Ultimately, the world works better when you create something I find cool that you  enjoyed making, and I hear about it because other people who you shared it with also  find it cool. And so I know about you and can follow you and hear about the next cool  thing you do as well. Everything else is out of our hands. 

Good luck out there, 

Ian 

About Ian Temple 
Ian Temple is the founder and CEO of Soundfly, the groundbreaking online music learning platform offering courses from some of the world’s most innovative musicians,  producers, and thinkers. As both a composer and entrepreneur, Temple has become a  leading voice on modern music education, creative development, and helping artists  build sustainable careers. 

Learn more about Ian Temple in the gold in partnership with… box in this issue. ____________________ 

• PS from PS— Beyond the Noise 

I sat with this newsletter longer than usual before writing this. 

There's a thread running through everything here— Ted's piece on live music, Ian's  meditation on doing things right, even The Road's glimpse into touring reality— and it  took me a moment to name it. 

It's about presence. 

Not the Instagram kind. The kind that costs you something. 

Big Jay McNeely lying on his back, drenched in sweat, while three strangers experience something they'll remember for the rest of their lives. That's not content. That's communion. 

Freddie Mercury handing the world Bohemian Rhapsody— six minutes, no chorus,  every rule broken— and saying here, try to imagine life without this. That's not strategy. That's sovereignty. 

Ian Temple reminding us that the path of most resistance is sometimes the least  crowded, that effort and care become competitive advantages precisely because so few people bother. 

I've spent 40 years in this industry watching the distance grow between artists and  audiences. First it was labels. Then managers. Then algorithms. Now it's platforms  designed to keep people scrolling instead of showing up. 

But here's what I keep coming back to: the hunger hasn't changed. 

Fourteen million people tried to buy 625,000 Taylor Swift tickets. Not because of the  algorithm. Because they wanted to be in the room. They wanted to feel something that  can't be compressed into a stream. 

That photo of the Olympic Auditorium in 1951— those faces aren't watching a  performance. They're inside one. They're participants in something the digital world has never figured out how to replicate, and never will. 

This is the reason TrueFans CONNECT™ exists. Not to add another layer between you  and the people who love your music, but to remove them. To put you and your audience in the same room— literally, financially, emotionally— with nothing in between except  the song. 

Every time someone makes a donation during your set, they're saying: I'm here. This  matters. You matter. 

That's not a transaction. That's the beginning of a relationship that can sustain a career. 

So yes— study The Road for the craft. Read Ted for the vision. Follow Ian's advice  about staying punk and doing things because they light you up. 

But don't forget the simplest truth underneath all of it: 

People are starving to feel something real. 

And you— the Music Artist reading this at 2am, wondering if any of it matters— you're  the one who can feed them. 

Show up. Play the song. Let them in.  Everything else is just noise. 

Until we speak again

Thanks for reading. Give us your feedback.

And PLEASE, if you've got any Singer Songwriter friends, pass the AMP on, because... It’s Time... for a Change. Big Time. Past Time...