the TrueFans AMP— Issue 123

“An artist has got to be careful never to really arrive anywhere. He must always be in  a state of becoming.” 
—Bob Dylan

In This Issue... about 15 pages (about 22ish minutes to read) You'll Get... 

• Recommends— Bob Dylan: On a Couch & Fifty Cents a Day the book

• Your BIZ— Music RightsHolders and WrongHolders by John Fogg 

• the Greatest Music Artists of All Time— Nick Drake: The Quiet Genius Who  Became a Giant 

in partnership with Shondra Jepperson Voice Coach 

• Not a Feature— (Are You) Bold Enough To Fail? from Seth Godin 

• PS from PS— Build Something the Machinery Can't Touch

Here’s the playlist

• Recommends— Bob Dylan: On a Couch & Fifty Cents a Day 

A remarkable look into the making of the most fascinating Songwriter of our time.

There are books about Bob Dylan… and then there are books that let you sit in the room— quietly, invisibly— while the young Zimmerman becomes Dylan. Bob Dylan: On a Couch & Fifty Cents a Day falls firmly into the second category. 

As a Music Artist who cares about craft, myth-making, reinvention, voice, and the  strange, sacred work of finding your artistic identity… this book is pure gold. 

This is not gossip. Not hagiography. Not another encyclopedic chronicle. It’s an origin  study— the raw, close-up portrait of a young, hungry, evolving musician who was  shaping himself into something the world had never seen before. 

And for modern Music Artists, that alone makes this worth devouring. 

Why Read This 
Because what’s truly compelling here is how clearly the book shows Zimmerman  becoming Dylan— not through lightning strikes of genius but through constant self creation, fearless experimentation, obsessive learning, and an almost mystical devotion to the work. 

You'll learn: 

• The early moves that built his artistic identity. 

• The ways he absorbed, imitated, refined— and ultimately transcended— his influences. 

• How he cultivated mystery, authenticity, distance, closeness, and power— often simultaneously. 

• The inner workings of a mind that refused to stay still and refused to stay predictable.

For any artist trying to navigate today’s creator economy, there’s a massive lesson here: 

Dylan didn’t wait to “be discovered.” He constructed himself— deliberately and  relentlessly. 

Dylan’s lifelong reinvention isn’t just inspiring— it’s instructive. Practically.  

What You Can Use... Today 
The book offers a surprising amount of actionable creative insight. A few takeaways you can immediately put to work: 

• Identity is a crafted thing. Dylan shaped his artistic persona as intentionally as he  shaped his songs. 

• Your influences matter. Your mix matters more. Dylan’s unique voice came from  blending Woody Guthrie, old blues, folk ballads, Beat poetry, personal vision, and a  restless imagination. 

• Mystique is a strategy. Not every artist needs to bare all. Sometimes being a little  unknowable strengthens the art. 

• You can start anywhere. A couch. Fifty cents a day. No excuses. 

• Reinvention is a superpower. He never allowed success to freeze him in place— and  neither should you. 

If you’re building a real career, Dylan’s evolution is not merely interesting— it's a  roadmap. 

About the Author 
On a Couch & Fifty Cents a Day was written by Raymond Foye— a writer, editor, art critic, and longtime insider of New York’s creative underground. Foye wasn’t just observing Dylan from afar; he was part of the extended circle of artists, poets, and musicians who shaped and influenced the scene Dylan moved through. His decades-long relationship with Dylan, anchored in shared artistic communities, private conversations, and mutual respect, gives this book something most Dylan biographies lack: intimacy without intrusion, insight without exploitation. 

Foye writes as someone who knew Dylan— not just the icon, but the human being behind the myth— giving readers rare access to the temperament, influences,  contradictions, and creative fire that transformed a young Zimmerman into one of the greatest artistic forces of the last century. 

The Bottom of the Bottom Line 
This book is for Music Artists who want more than stories. It’s for those who want insight— into the artistic mind, the creative life, and the mysterious forces that forge  greatness. 

Reading On a Couch & Fifty Cents a Day is like getting rare, behind-the-scenes access to the early formation of one of the greatest songwriting forces ever to live. It is a study in courage, curiosity, and the relentless pursuit of originality. 

If you’re serious about your art— and sincere about becoming the fullest version of the artist you’re capable of being— this belongs on your shelf. Or better yet, on your  nightstand. 

Your TrueFans AMP™ highly recommends it this book. Highly. 

• Your BIZ— Music RightsHolders and WrongHolders by John Fogg
The Unintended Consequences of Music Rightsholder Strategies 

There’s a widening gap in the music business— between what the big rightsholders  intend and what actually happens to the artists they claim to protect. 

On paper, every new licensing model, anti-fraud initiative, algorithmic tweak, and AI  policy is designed to make the ecosystem “fairer.” In reality? Many of these moves  create ripple effects that hit independent Music Artists first, hardest, and longest. 

This isn’t about accusing labels or publishers of wrongdoing. It’s about seeing clearly.  Because once you understand the hidden currents, you can navigate them better than  anyone. 

Welcome to the other side of the story: 

When the RightsHolders become the WrongHolders… without even meaning to. The Money Problem: When Good Policies Drain Artist Pockets 

To start: Diluted Royalty Pools 
Fraudulent streams, bot farms, and AI-generated noise now soak up a share of the same  royalty pot you’re paid from. There’s no separate pool. No safety valve. Every fake play is one less dollar for real artists. 

Independents feel it most because they don’t have scale or catalog power to buffer the  losses. 

The Vanishing Middle Class 
“Artist-centric” payout models— however well-intended— often reward artists already  dominating the charts while reducing the revenue available to emerging and mid-tier  creators. Ironically, the models designed to fix inequality often widen it. 

Shorter Songs, Smaller Art 
When revenue is attached to completions or optimized streams, artists feel forced to  write shorter, simpler music to fit the system— shrinking creative ambition in the  process. Long-form tracks and ambitious compositions get financially penalized. 

Less Investment in New Music 
When indie labels, producers, and self-releasing artists earn less, they also invest less—  fewer studio sessions, fewer collaborations, fewer risks. That ripples out into less  innovation and fewer breakthrough voices. 

The Market Problem: Fewer Platforms, Fewer Options 

Licensing Walls and Platform Dominance 
The cost of securing global licenses has skyrocketed. New platforms can’t enter.  Existing challengers can’t grow. And major tech companies tighten their grip year after  year. 

When competition shrinks, artists lose leverage. 

Supremium Tiers and Subscriber Churn 
High-end “premium plus” tiers make the basic subscription feel… basic. The  psychological shift pushes some users to downgrade or cancel. Every cancelled  subscription reduces the total revenue pool artists share. 

Algorithms Choosing Your Fate 
Human curation has become a nostalgic luxury. Algorithms decide who gets seen, heard, playlisted, or ignored. They reward predictability and punish risk, leading to narrower  musical diversity. 

It’s not personal— it’s the math. 
But the math has consequences. 

The Legal Problem: Fear, Freezes, and Fewer Risks 

The Creativity Chill 
Aggressive lawsuits around interpolation, melody similarity, sampling, AI use, and even “vibe” imitation have made artists and labels fearful of releasing anything bold.  Creativity shrinks. Timidity rises. 

AI: The Ownership Vacuum 
AI muddies the waters around authorship, originality, and training data. No one knows  the rules yet— not lawmakers, not platforms, not labels. And in that void, rightsholders  tighten the reins to avoid losing control. 

That slows innovation for everyone. 

Over-Blocking and Collateral Damage 
To avoid copyright liability, platforms often over-block content. Perfectly legal material  gets flagged, muted, or removed. Fan videos disappear. Artist discovery evaporates. The system meant to protect artists ends up suffocating them. 

The Artist Reality: You Can’t Control the Industry— But You Can Outsmart It Here’s the TrueFans truth: 

The industry will always evolve faster than artists can react. 
But artists can evolve smarter than the industry expects. 

Three strategic shifts change everything: 

• Build direct-to-fan relationships. 
• Diversify income streams. 
• Lean into identity and authenticity. 

Because when you own your audience, your message, your brand, your story—no  algorithm can erase you. 

__________  

• Three Things Artists Could Do This Week 

1. Strengthen Your Direct Connection 
Send one email this week to your list— however big or small— using a story rather than an announcement. Something real. Something human. Something only you could write. Direct connection beats every rightsholder strategy ever invented. 

2. Audit Where Your Money Really Comes From 
List your revenue sources from the past 90 days— streams, sync, tips, shows, merch,  Patreon, whatever. 

Circle the one that grew the fastest. 
That’s where you double down this quarter. 

3. Create One Piece of Identity-Driven Content 
Not optimized. Not algorithmic. 
One piece— song clip, demo, story, rehearsal moment, commentary, or message— that  expresses who you are, not what the platforms push. 

This kind of content builds real TrueFans, not fly-by followers. 

__________  

About John Fogg 
John Fogg is the founding editor of the TrueFans AMP™, co-creator of New Music  Lives™, and a lifelong writer, listener, and fan of great songs and the people who make  them. A million-selling author (The Greatest Networker in the World), Fogg has written and coached artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries for more than four decades. Through the TrueFans AMP™, he champions a new generation of Music Artists building sustainable careers— Making Right Now Money and having Fans Forever.

• The Greatest Music Artists of All Time— Nick Drake: The Quiet Genius Who  Became a Giant 

“I don’t like loud music.” 
—Nick Drake 

A whisper shouldn’t be able to outlast a roar. And yet here we are— 50 years after Nick  Drake’s death— still listening, still learning, still haunted by a voice and a guitar that  never once demanded attention but somehow earned eternal devotion. 

Drake released only three albums, sold very few copies in his lifetime, rarely performed, and never toured in any traditional sense. By every commercial metric of his era, he  should have vanished. Instead, he became one of the most influential Singer Songwriters in modern music— an artist whose quiet changed the culture.

For today’s Music Artists, Nick Drake is more than a legend. He’s a blueprint for how  depth, honesty, and craft can outlast trends, algorithms, and entire generations. 

“Nick Drake is the North Star. When you get lost, you go back to him.” 
— Justin Vernon 

The Sound: A Guitar That Spoke Its Own Language 
Nick Drake’s guitar style is one of the most distinctive in modern music. His alternate  tunings— often strange even to seasoned players— allowed him to create harmonies and textures no one else could replicate. His guitar lines move like rivers: fluid,  unpredictable, endlessly expressive. 

John Martyn once said: 

“Nick had a sweetness and a sadness in his guitar that no one else could get.” 

His voice, soft as breath on glass, carries a sense of melancholy that feels both deeply  personal and universally relatable. Drake didn’t overwhelm you. He invited you. 

Three Albums, One Legacy 

Five Leaves Left (1969) 
Drake’s astonishing debut, recorded when he was only 20, blends orchestral  arrangements with poetic lyricism. River Man, in a 5/4 time signature, remains a marvel  of mood and mystery. 

Bryter Layter (1971) 
Lighter, warmer, and more accessible, this album features members of Fairport  Convention and stunning contributions from John Cale. Northern Sky is often cited as  one of the most beautiful love songs ever written. 

Pink Moon (1972) 
Bare, intimate, essential. Just voice and guitar, recorded almost in secret. Drake’s  darkest and most iconic record. Its title track became a global sensation decades later,  prompting his unlikely rise into mainstream consciousness. 

Producer Joe Boyd said it best: 

“Nick made music for the ages, even if the age he lived in didn’t know it.” 

The Artist Who Wouldn’t Play the Game 
Drake was allergic to promotion. He rarely performed live. When he did, he barely  spoke. He didn’t do interviews, didn’t enjoy attention, and struggled with the social  demands of a music career. 

The industry couldn’t package him. Couldn’t market him. Couldn’t make him conform. But that refusal preserved his purity. His songs remain untouched by commercial  compromise. They sound as fresh today as the moment he recorded them. 

The Struggle: A Life Too Sensitive for the Machine 
Nick Drake lived with depression during a time when mental health was neither understood nor supported. Withdrawn and introspective, he retreated from music and from the world in his final years. He died at 26, leaving behind just 31 recorded songs. But his legacy is not tragedy. It is truth. 

Drake’s music is a reminder that sensitivity is not weakness— it's art’s most powerful  instrument. 

Brad Mehldau once said: 

“There’s a stillness in Nick Drake’s music that feels like someone showing you their  soul with no defenses.” 

The Rebirth: How a Quiet Voice Conquered the World 
Drake’s fame grew slowly, like roots spreading underground: 

• 1980s: The Cure’s Robert Smith cites Drake as a major influence.
• 1990s: Kate Bush, Beck, Elliott Smith, and others bring his name into interviews.
• 1999: A Volkswagen ad featuring Pink Moon ignites a global rediscovery.  

“The first time I heard ‘Pink Moon,’ I stopped breathing.”  
—Beck

• 2000s–Present: His impact becomes foundational in indie-folk and alternative music. 

Today, his songs are studied, covered, streamed, analyzed, and revered. He has become  a quiet giant whose shadow stretches across generations. 

Nick Drake showed... 

1. Craft Outlives Culture 
Drake’s meticulous guitar work and lyrical grace prove that what is done well lasts  forever. 

2. Intimacy Is a Competitive Advantage 
In a world of noise, artists who can create quiet impact stand out. 

3. Authenticity Is a Career Strategy 
He wasn’t optimized for an algorithm. He was optimized for truth. 

4. Vulnerability Builds Devotion 
Nick Drake wrote from the deepest parts of himself—and listeners feel it. Page 10

__________  

Five Songs Every Artist Should Study 

1. Pink Moon 
A masterclass in emotional minimalism. One guitar, one voice, one unforgettable mood.

2. River Man 
Shows how unusual structure (5/4) can feel natural and hypnotic when the songwriting  is poetic and assured. 

3. Northern Sky 
Warm, romantic, atmospheric—an example of how simplicity and sincerity create  timeless beauty. 

4. Place to Be 
A deeply introspective song that uses sparse language to convey enormous emotional  weight. 

5. From the Morning 
Bright, hopeful, deceptively simple. Drake’s note to the world: look for light, even when it’s hard. 

__________  

“Nick Drake’s music is proof that beauty doesn’t need to shout.” 
— Peter Buck (R.E.M.) 

Nick Drake didn’t play the industry’s game. 
He didn’t chase charts. 
He didn’t chase fame. 
He chased truth. 
And he caught it. 

His career is a reminder that the quietest artists often leave the loudest echoes. 

That the most intimate songs become the most enduring. 
And that soul-level authenticity never goes out of style. 

Nick Drake was a quiet genius. 
And the quiet ones— history proves— are often the ones who last forever. 

“He wrote with the delicacy of a falling leaf.”  
—Kate Bush 

in partnership with Shondra Jepperson Voice Coach

• Not a Feature— (Are You) Bold Enough To Fail? from Seth Godin
The only theories worth testing are those that are falsifiable— that it’s possible for the And the difference between art and illustration is the same. Illustration can’t fail. It can  be improved, surely, but it’s not wrong. 

Art, on the other hand, is a bold assertion, something that might not work. 

So, dear Music Artist... Are You Bold Enough To Fail? 

• PS from PS— Build Something the Machinery Can't Touch. 

Three o'clock this morning, I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about this issue— about  becoming rather than arriving, about systems that say they protect but quietly suffocate,  about voices so quiet they become eternal— and I kept coming back to one  uncomfortable truth: 

For most of my career, I stood on the wrong side of that line. 

Not out of bad intent. Out of belief in the machinery. I thought preparing artists for "the  real world" meant teaching them to compromise before the world demanded it. I watched extraordinary, uncommercial talent get sanded down to fit formats that promised exposure but delivered erasure. 

I sat in rooms with very smart people explaining why an artist needed to be "more accessible." Shorter songs. Simpler melodies. Clearer messaging. Less weird. More predictable. Better optimized for whatever gatekeepers were in fashion that year. 

We called it "artist development." What we were really developing was a dangerous  misunderstanding: that the machinery was neutral, that the system just needed better  operators, that if we got the licensing right or the payouts fair or the algorithms tweaked, everything would work. 

But the machinery isn't neutral. It never was. 

The “artist-centric” deals that punish emerging creators, the fraud systems that drain real royalty pools, the algorithms that reward predictability and punish risk— none of that is accidental. It’s a system built around extraction, not creation. Around control, not connection. 

And here's what kept me awake: I believed in that system. I participated in it. I told  artists it was "just how things work" while their weird, wonderful brilliance got filed  away as "not quite ready" or "maybe next time." 

The artists who survived weren't the ones who listened to people like me. They were the ones who refused. The ones bold enough to fail on their own terms. The ones who  understood that craft outlives culture, that intimacy is a competitive advantage, that  authenticity isn't a marketing strategy— it's survival. 

You can't undo the past. But you can stop pretending the system just needs better  operators when what it actually needs is replacement. 

TrueFans isn't penance— though there’s some of that folded in. It’s recognition. Artists  don’t need more sophisticated extraction models. They need oxygen. Infrastructure that exists to amplify their work, not arbitrage it. Tools that strengthen direct connection instead of platforms that monetize the distance between creator and community. 

The artists who win long-term are the ones who refuse to optimize themselves out of  existence. They protect the weird. They preserve the uncommercial. They build direct  relationships with people who actually care. They create identity-driven work no  algorithm can replicate or replace. 

So here's what I'm asking you to do— not eventually, not when you're "ready": 

This week, take one deliberate step away from the machinery and toward your people— the ones who would notice if you stopped making music, who feel something when they hear your voice. Send them something real. A story. A demo. A moment that couldn’t  come from anyone else. 

The question isn't whether you can navigate the machinery better. The question is  whether you're brave enough to build something the machinery can't touch. 

That's the work. 
That's what we're doing here. 
For you... 

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...