Hey!
Are you listening?
Good.
Now that we have your attention, welcome to...
Drumroll, please.
The Snap!
A podcast by me, your host, Katie.
And me, your host, Ainsley.
Just two girls in their 20s here to bring you a female-centric girl math tone to the
Bitcoin, Noster, and value-for-value music space.
As artists living in Nashville, we got tired of screaming into the void and tiptoeing around
a broken music industry.
Looking for a new way forward, we came across this space.
And thought, why not give it a try?
In this podcast, we'll deconstruct what traditional success in the music industry has looked like so far.
How that definition is changing.
And where the space comes in.
We'll break down all of the big happenings in both the music and Bitcoin worlds, how they mix.
We'll fangirl over our favorite music in the value-verse, as well as prop up amazing voices that have yet to be heard.
We're so glad you're here.
So let's get to it.
So sometimes the metronome...
Oh!
Sometimes the metronome will stay on.
I think I turned it off.
You turned it off.
Good job.
well there's gonna be a little clicks but hi everybody welcome back to the snap welcome back
it's me your host katie and your host ainsley season two episode two actually i need i've
realized that i need to stop saying oh this is whatever episode we're on because when i was
editing the first season we mix and match a lot of stuff so i would say oh this is episode three
but then it would be in episode seven yeah and it's like oh y'all didn't hear that y'all didn't
need to hear that but um we were talking just before we got on because i think we're real
podcasters now we have the problem of like we can't talk to each other we have to put it on the
podcast true i think it's so funny too because nc and i will have like normal conversations but
then our conversations on the podcasts are literally our normal conversations they are so
it's like what do you talk about while you're recording what do you talk about while you're
not recording yeah but we're still figuring it out we're still figuring we're like nope stop
save it for the bod I would say real podcasters is relative like we're both real musicians you
know I mean exactly so everything is subjective absolutely but we were talking before we got on
here about um this scotch that Katie got me when she was in Scotland now y'all have heard what my
reaction to scotch was when we were in Waco so it is beyond me why Miss Katie here thought that
I would like a scotch so okay my thinking is we so I went to Europe with my parents for
a few weeks they were going on this trip and I think I talked about it a little bit on the last
podcast um and we were in scotland and this whiskey was left in one of our hotel rooms
and they said this is a very scottish whiskey um no it's not whiskey sorry excuse me scotch
aren't they the same thing i want to say they're like subdivisions of the same thing you know
different fonts different fonts yeah um like there's different types of bread but they're all
bread um like that that's how i think about it um and i tasted it and i literally thought it was
oil gasoline fluid that could make a car go room like i just i was like not for me so i brought
some back and i'm thinking okay this is like scottish scotch so somebody who likes scotch
is probably going to take this and be like whoa this is really good this is really authentic
this is like crazy to me no to somebody else great so so i was gifting them because if i'm
not going to enjoy it and somebody else can i'm gonna do that yeah so that's what i did and i
also kind of wanted ainsley to try it just because i'm trying to expand expand ainsley's
fall it is and kind of figure that out uh-huh which i mean we know it's not scotch and we know
it's not which i'm so sorry those were like terrible but okay in my defense you like a
london fog i do you like herbal you like teas i do you like those things so in my mind gin
is very similar to that whiskey and scotch not so much but you know it's good to see what's up
it absolutely is and look we have to we have to get outside of our comfort zones every once in a
while but the thing that I was going to say before um we started recording so I y'all didn't hear it
from me but I'm doing a music video in the next couple of weeks but you didn't hear it from me
and so we've had to be um that's crazy I know I can't wait to say more about it but we've been
set dressing it um for the past couple weeks like I'm collecting things I'm going to Goodwill
because there's a very specific vibe and theme to this video that we're about to do and I'm not
going to say what song it is because I want you guys to be surprised um but long story short I
found these really cool whiskey glasses that look very um they almost look kind of Hunger Games
and also have you watched the Buccaneers yes yes so I was my mom and I just finished watching the
second season last night and we were like oh this is kind of the vibe that we're going for just like
the way that they really decadently dress some of these parties um so I found these really cool
um scotch whiskey glasses because they're gonna be a prop um and I was like you know what let me
try this scotch that Katie got me in these really nice scotch glasses that I just got and I was like
as cool as this makes me feel as as much as I feel like a 1700s oil rig millionaire smoking a cigar
I could not even swallow it still and I am really terribly sorry for it no don't be sorry do not be
sorry um but I did use the the the salt and pepper that you gave me um when I was seasoning a steak
one night so I got I got some use out of some of them okay it's salt and pepper these things are
like little things from Spain um they were like little cha-cha dolls they were so cute is that
what they're called no cha-cha dolls i that's what my mind went to because they have a big
like dress and a big hat and it like it was it's just cute and like that's what yeah that's what
my room goes through it's probably not the correct verbiage but um so cute yeah but um speaking on
uh things from across the sea we should try katie brought back a candy of some sort that we were
from Scotland also from Scotland that we said we were going to try on the first episode back
that didn't happen because we recorded the first episode at my house and now we're back at Katie's
and I was uncoordinated it was early I'm not a morning person neither am I do that's why we
we had a pretty significant Starbucks run this morning also let me tell you so I as Katie was
just saying a few minutes ago I am a tea fiend I love tea I have always drank tea over coffee like
Every once in a while, I'll have a coffee, like, if I just want to change it up.
But I love Earl Grey, Lundfogs.
My perfume.
She likes matcha.
I love matcha.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
I don't like matcha.
I thought you liked matcha.
I, okay.
I feel like I'd like matcha in the term of if I had it, like, the original way.
You know what I mean?
Mm-hmm.
like I think I would like it but that said every time I've tried matcha from Starbucks from a
different coffee place to me it just takes like leaves like you're drinking a salad which is fair
and that's that's just not my thing you know like I like sugary coffee and hey there's nothing wrong
with that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but um I got I picked up Starbucks this
morning that Katie ordered she called me in the car and she was like hey what do you want and I
was like you know what i love matcha i really want to try a matcha frapp i haven't had a frappuccino
since i was in middle school i forgot how sugary these things are yeah no frappuccinos are crazy
i have you had this before i haven't had the matcha frappuccino i've had so i grew up in a
very small town of vermont and the first time i had starbucks is when i was with but you can
pinpoint the first time you had starbucks yes well because i was like how old would i have been
it must have been like seventh grade because i was in show choir in burlington vermont which was
an hour drive away and me and my friend sarah we would drive up there shout out sarah our parents
would switch off taking us and we would go to New York sometimes to perform or to just go see a show
like it was kind of support your fellow musicians and artists and yada yada yada so for whatever
reason we were in New York and I remember we went to the M&M place and there's a Starbucks like the
M&M store. Okay. And there's a Starbucks either in it or like right beside it. Uh-huh. And I had
told my friend I was like oh I've never had a frappuccino before. And she was like you've never
had a frappuccino? Yeah. And I was like no. The way that middle school girls will ride for a
frappuccino. I was like what the like I don't even know what that word is. Yeah. Like meanwhile
I'm wearing jeans and a tractor sweatshirt.
Like, I don't know what a Frappuccino is.
So she was like, sure, let's go to the Starbucks.
And that first time I had that Frappuccino, I was like, oh my gosh, coffee can be good.
The black bean juice that my parents have been drinking every morning.
The leaf water.
That's gross.
Bean juice and leaf water.
This is coffee.
like i was so confused i mean there's no coffee in frappuccinos there's like the frapp roast but
i didn't know that you know so unimportant unimportant yeah and then when we moved to
arizona my grandma would sometimes drive me and my cousin to school okay and my cousin and i could
sometimes convince said grandma to stop for coffee uh-huh my grandma was such a push
what else i love her so much like i love her so much and she was just happy that we were all in
the same place for a few years so it worked out but yeah starbucks is kind of you know i've had
the same order since eighth grade when we moved there you're always like sticking to the caramely
flavor profiles sometimes i'll branch out like recently i'll get something different but i've
pretty much gotten the same thing for a long time there is no shame in that i'm the same way with tea
like i it's rare when i get a coffee but i'm always kind of switching up the teas that i like
and this is coming from somebody who like my morning drink of preference is earl grey with
cashew milk cashew milk is interesting i've had that before i feel like do you make it or do you
get it i get it okay the silk the silk cashew milk is my girl so we about to try this candy that katie brought back from europe so it looks really good is i found it in a hotel room so i not gonna are
there just like magical hotel room fairies in europe that are leaving chocolate and scotch
so sometimes like at the end of your stay there will be just like something in the room like a
chocolate or these are more like a tea biscuit so this was with like sometimes we stayed in a
shit ton of hotels yes so i got pretty good at like looking for things in hotels because i'm like
i want to see what y'all are leaving me go on the hunt yeah because i want to look for treasure like
also i'm bored i kind of want a snack and i don't want to pay five bucks for chips in the
mini-fridge. Exactly. So what else is there? And this was next to all of the tea and the coffee
and it's Tunnock's milk chocolate coated caramel wafer biscuit. I'm so excited. And it's made in
Scotland and it's best before November. So we're in the clear. We're good. We gotta go. We only
have two more months to try this. Right. So do we, should we break it in half like a wishbone?
yeah okay ready one two three okay rad that worked out pretty well okay okay it's okay
one cheers cheers ASMR
I'm into it it's a little bit old so give it some grace yep absolutely it is a little stale
but I see the vision. Right.
I get the vision.
But I'm into it.
The chocolate is definitely different
over there.
Have you ever had Belgian chocolate?
That is
the best chocolate I think that there is
in the entire world.
Absolutely.
No, but that's fun. Thanks for bringing that back
so we can try that together. Yeah, of course.
It's
interesting.
Like, imagine
those old wafer candies that you would get like from your grandma or find in your Halloween candy
and you're like what are these imagine those but also layered with caramel yeah and then
dunked in chocolate it's almost like a really crunchy um Ghirardelli caramel milk chocolate
square yeah sort of it's the same profile it's not really the same like gooeyness chocolate
chocolate review podcast food review hey coffee uh european snacks um but that was fun okay here's
another thing that i want to tell you and talk about oh so i think we broached it a little bit
last week. But so I went on a radio tour over the summer over both of our extensive travels.
I went to Memphis, Jonesboro, and Chattanooga. And like I got to go in and do acoustic versions of
X-Less and kind of just have my first taste into like what an actual little radio tour is.
And I'm not going to name any names. I just thought that this was so interesting.
this was a piece of information that I found out at the last of the three stations that we visited
so I was talking to the station programmer and he was telling me about this this festival that
they host every year that they are kind of a sponsor of where they try to get kind of up and
coming more like mid-size mid-level artists um to come in especially if it's artists and who have
singles that have been played on their station that they've like have been in the active rotation
um so he was telling me about um a couple years ago they were trying to put together this like
annual festival and they wanted to get one of the artists um out to play who'd been on the station
a bunch of times I think they'd done an interview with this artist um and based off of like
I because I know who this artist is and I will tell you this after we're done I just don't want
to name names and be like that girl we'll talk about it later okay um based off of what I know
about this artist the the single that um the station programmer told me that they were playing
at the time was like a really big song it was huge on TikTok huge um on the radio um and still like
I still see that song kind of coming through and like the zeitgeist right now even though it
kind of really had its moment in heyday a couple years ago so they had this um they wanted um to
have this artist come out and play the festival so they reached out to the label directly and I kid
you not the label said oh we'd love to have this artist come out and play your festival
but they are not ready to perform live yet
rewind
say that one more time the label said to this radio station when it came to having this artist
come out an artist that they signed that they are supposed to be developing and putting money behind
making sure artists can perform live as well as just having like the social aspect the label said
this artist that you want to come out even though we have signed them they are not ready to perform
live yet that's crazy what else are labels supposed to be for like we are we cannot just
be a music industry and that's also crazy for the same industry that made gail the girl who was
i want to say 16 17 when who really only had experience making music in her room and maybe
locally and then you put her on a taylor swift tour the same industry that did that which
props to her absolutely opportunity absolutely but holy fuck can you imagine how much anxiety
you have going from performing for you and your parents to a stadium waiting to take to see taylor
swift oh my god the same industry that did that is saying that somebody that they've signed is not
ready to play live that you've put a lot of energy times what money and tears into it
when something like that happens i'm like i wonder if there was just something similar to where they
were like not something somebody similar to where they were trying to pull because normally that's
what happens is that there was something i keep on saying something but there was somebody similar
to you or to whatever like I'm saying you as the general yeah I get it um and they wanted to take
one of you off the market and it was just a 50 50 shot and kick rock sorry which yeah ouch yeah
and if I'm not mistaken this artist again who I'm not gonna name names for because I do think that
this is a very talented artist who makes good music um but this artist was really got their
start on tiktok which as we know is how the labels are the labels are using tiktok as their
discovery mechanism nowadays and everybody is suffering for it because you get these 16 17 18
year old kids who think that playing a song acoustic by themselves in their bedroom to a camera
equals performance experience and again I'm not saying that to discredit talent and hard work
but they are two very different skill sets and I've this has been a trend with other artists who
have been discovered via TikTok over the past couple of years um who you know a label has said
oh you have some traction because of this viral song or you have 500,000 followers not necessarily
because the art these artists have put in the work but just because they're having a moment
behind them and these labels will put these artists on stage and then they're everybody
is surprised when these artists can't pull it off live and I completely agree you know I love
playing devil's advocate what I say to that is they're encouraging it because absolutely if you
keep on doing the same thing picking from tiktok cherry picking the same sort of story
with the same sort of virality you're forcing every musician that wants to have that same
opportunity to do the same thing yeah or to figure out a different avenue but right now
i mean there's artists that i used to play rounds with that have used tiktok that haven't seen
anything in five years and the same people doing the same thing yeah are now playing openers for
whatever artist you can think of so it's just such a shot in the dark yeah and it's
it's terrible for the person that has worked very hard for this their whole life
and the people then it's kind of like oh cool you posted a tiktok it blew up and you did it
because you thought it was funny and now you have commercials and you have a song deal and you have
all these different things which i don't know the exact stories of everybody so i can't assume
and this isn't to say that any of the artists who have it have made it this way are not talented
and hardworking that's not I think what I'm saying in the slightest it's just it's absolutely
it's heartbreaking when artists and I mean I relate to this a lot too like I'm not a content
creator I never wanted to be a content creator but I have spent you know 10 years of my life at
this point cutting my teeth learning how to write songs and learning how to perform live and play
with a band and then you you get into a situation like the one that I was in at the radio tour when
the radio station told me this and there's not a way that you can walk out of that meeting and not
feel defeated because somebody with more followers than you has a coveted spot that artists
everywhere would kill for and they can't pull it off and I don't know if um the artist this artist
who this station was talking about there was a pretty public performance of this artist where
they got a lot of um public flack and criticism after like a televised performance which like
that could be a lot of artists nowadays like it's kind of hard to like pinpoint who that is and i
don't know if that performance was before or after um this encounter that um the station
told me about um but it's it's so debilitating
Stuff your claws in the bag Leave an old saying what time you had
Go find the National Express
Buy a ticket and you're on to the next
It's a cold, cold night
You're breathing smoke
Oh girl, don't you choke
You're giving too much away
And that fucking nearly made you stay
So why'd you run, girl?
Why'd you run, girl?
Salt your wounds no more
Why'd you run, girl?
Salt your wounds no more
And I will run, and I will run
You gave your heart to a mad door
Drunk it dry, you left it on the floor
There's never no safety net
You gotta learn again, you gotta learn to forget
And you close your eyes as you head for the cause
I swear you like it most It's easy just to sink your vaults
And ain't never us just how you broke So why to run, girl?
Why to run, girl?
I saw your wounds no more
Then why to run, girl?
Why to run, girl?
I saw your wounds no more
Why'd you fall apart so hard?
I know you got tried to knock
But don't blame it on me now
And why'd you fall apart so hard?
I know you got tried to none
But don't blame it on me now
Club trying your way to the stars
You're finding out just what you are
From one day to the next
It's a string of lies, it's a string of sex
And you can cry all you want, still nobody come
No girl, this ain't no one
Just remember when you're lying alone
It's never for real, but the heart has no home
So why'd you run, girl?
Why'd you run, girl?
So your wounds come on
Why'd you run, girl?
Why'd you run girl, saw your wounds no more?
So why'd you run girl, why'd you run girl, saw your wounds no more?
So why do you run, girl?
Why do you run, girl?
So you're no more
And I will run
Cause it's the only thing I've ever done
but yeah so I just I remember walking out of that um that station that meeting even though
it was lovely and I had a really great interaction with it I was like wow that's just so defeating
so I wanted to tell you about that and get your thoughts on it yeah I mean
yowzas I think I know who you're talking about I'm gonna pull it up on my phone um
there's something to be said
interesting okay this is what they were talking about okay gotcha i was thinking of a different
person so it's interesting that this can be applied to a lot of different people a lot of
different people um i think my thoughts are i can't hate the player i have to hate the game
because at the end of the day we're both posting tiktoks trying to do the same thing yeah for sure
and there is some sense of you're kind of waiting for it to happen
and when i talk about people who have found fame on tiktok i have to catch myself whether i'm
I'm envious or if I'm skeptical.
Yeah.
Because those things are very different but can go hand in hand.
Yeah, they can absolutely live together.
So.
Because also nothing is as it seems today.
I kind of have to catch myself.
So I can understand where, yes, people on TikTok are going to be given these insane opportunities right off the bat.
because labels recognize that if you capitalize on that audience right away,
you make a shit ton of money.
Absolutely, yeah.
So it's just, it's all a money game.
And really, if you truly look at it, it's not even about them.
No, it's not.
Yeah.
And they're as much a pawn as you are.
And everybody is signed into their weird own deals.
And I agree with you.
It's so shitty that some people pop and some people don't.
And it's just kind of one of those things.
But if there's anything that I've learned about being in Nashville as well, like the music industry, as much as it is a scam, it is also one of those industries that you can make interesting amounts of money in the weirdest ways.
Yeah.
Like us.
Yeah, that are going to come from different facets that you never would have expected.
So it's all a give and a take and everybody has their own little avenue.
But I would agree.
It's shitty.
Like TikTok having to be a content creator and a musician.
And we didn't sign up to do both.
No.
But it's kind of how you have to market yourself in this world.
And it sucks.
And also like a thing to add to the TikTok conversation.
Yeah, it is what it is.
A thing to add to the TikTok conversation.
And I'm glad that we're seeing a lot of, I think, artists starting to speak out about this and say, hey, this is not OK.
And this is not what we signed up for.
And it's also good to see that a lot of artists are recognizing that no, quote, viral moment happens organically anymore.
TikTok doesn't function the way that it did five, six years ago when it first came out.
And you actually did have people who would upload a video and it would get to a million views overnight.
Right. You have to pay. That's why labels are are so, I think, bought into the tick tock game today, because you have to you have to spend upwards of one hundred to three, four, five hundred thousand dollars to have a quote viral moment nowadays.
And that's where the marketing budget is going. And I think that's indicative of even radio, too.
Like, I don't think labels are putting in the ad dollars to push a song to a billboard chart nowadays as they are really to try to go, quote, direct to consumer on TikTok.
But then again, that isn't even direct to consumer on TikTok because there are so many middlemen, so many gatekeepers on TikTok.
and yeah it's just I I just thought that was really interesting and I want to wanted to get
your thoughts on that whole thing because and that that wasn't even a new concept to me when
this station told me that story because I've I've heard similar stories from other people within
the music industry who I have relationships and they've said the same thing about different artists
right but i was like oh if like a media-based reporting radio station is saying this what is
going on yeah i think radio is also just a different world in and of itself before streaming
came along radio was king they could do whatever the fuck they wanted so i think a lot of that
sentiment can kind of get carried into this day and age while radio is not as consequential anymore
so you run into people that are in radio that still have the same sense of self and
the same sort of importance in the music industry when the statistic that 96 percent of Americans
and still listen to AF and FM radio,
AF, nice, AM and FM radio,
is not accurate.
No.
So it's interesting to me,
because I have some background in radio.
It was one of my first music industry jobs
when I was like 19, 18 years old.
So green.
And I've talked about it a little bit before.
and I think I learned a lot from that um a lot more people skills and like person to person kind
of what to expect really than like managerial things and social media because what I was really
doing I was comfortable doing um which was which was well at the end of the day I ended up running
15 different accounts across like five different platforms yeah which was crazy cuckoo bananas when
i was also going to college um yeah absolutely uh i don't know how i did that but you know it
kind of taught me how to use different scheduling suites and yada yada yada um which are now so
out of date because I'm like three years out of doing that so I need to really get back into it
but radio in and of itself
yowzas I mean they count spins so if you were to send your song to a radio station
like the odds of them even looking at that song slim yeah because that radio station is already
getting mailing lists from a gagillion different companies saying listen to this song listen to this song listen to this song listen to this song And then their five buddies that they known for 20 years across the country
are calling him and saying, yeah, you could listen to that song,
but you should listen to this song.
And so now you have so many different people in this one person's ear.
And now who do you think the power trip goes to?
so then you kind of run into well you can't pay to play because that's payola and that's illegal
so what can you give me
what what do you mean what can i give you well if you were to put up a billboard
in this city for our radio station for x amount of months i can guarantee that your song gets played
for x amount of months which is absolutely still payola just in a different way right yeah but
there's so many different loopholes yeah so you kind of you go what that's a thing
and that's how when we were younger you would see all those like 96.1 yeah on all those billboards
hot 1015 that's where all those came from yeah absolutely so radio
is just an older version of streaming in all of the bad ways that you know streaming is yeah so
as much as i say the doom and gloom of radio there are people that were broken on the radio
absolutely and you can't deny that line was broken on the radio yeah in some in some ways
like Taylor Swift was broken on the radio that was still very much her time like and like I mean
I remember hearing like the voice winners on radio and all of those type of things
so radio for some generations is not dead but for the majority of America
they're not listening to radio and to my knowledge and my experience in radio and all this is not to
say that I'm not grateful for the radio touring experience that I had I'm very grateful for it I
thought it was really a fun time it was very eye-opening um okay it's like move it along it's
like um what I think my opinion on radio is at least right now is that when it comes to
like nobody is getting discovered on radio anymore like that's just not how it works yeah
But I think radio is more of an internal barometer for the music industry about who is charting, who is who.
Because there is a totally a direct correlation between your DSP streams and radio because they do influence one another, even if or especially if you are a big artist.
Like, of course, you see big artists who are huge today, like Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Alex Warren, who are all dominating the charts right now.
And they're getting those coveted number one slots and awesome.
Good for them. But those are artists who have already broken, if that makes sense.
Yeah, you have to now. It reminds me of the Grammy stipulation of you have to pierce the public consciousness.
Now, it seems like the only way that you're going to get on radio is if you pierce the public consciousness.
And it's not going to be like, oh, this random station programmer from Nowhereville, Ohio is going to be like, I believe in this song and I'm going to put it on my station.
And then two weeks later, it's on Kiss FM in L.A.
It just it doesn't work like that.
It definitely feels to me.
And with my, you know, the experience that I had a couple of weeks ago on this radio tour is it's an internal barometer for how your Spotify streams are already doing.
doing because a lot of the um the station programmers who I talked to they said yeah
they absolutely influence one another like if you go up in radio then you will go up in Spotify
and if you go up in Spotify go up in radio and yeah it was just really interesting yeah I mean
one of the first things I learned working in radio is that the billboard chart is bought
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Which, if you didn't know, now you know.
Everything, I think, in today's music industry is bought.
A viral moment is bought. A top 40 number one spot is bought.
There is, so, Billboard, which is one of the most influential charts for radio
and for streaming, playlisting, and all of that jazz.
if that's a chart that's bought are you kidding like it's hard bro bro I um and there there also
is no I can't say that I can say that I can't say that real no here's another thing on uh when it
comes to billboard um I was I had a I can say it muted yeah
hello
in nashville i'm not surprised
oh of course yeah well if you heard it you heard it if you didn't you didn't um and i had i had a
trip to la a while ago and i met up with um a producer who found me and emailed me and was like
hey I work with this label um I don't remember what label it was um but I am basically which
here's another thing about the music industry everybody now today is saying that they're five
different things they are producer and A&R rolled into one they are manager and songwriter everybody's
using A&R and I'm like bro no and it's like where can we find the true A&R people I actually wanted
to be an A&R guys yeah right but so this producer reached out to me and it kind of seemed like he
was trying to play the a and r thing um he said um i'd love to um do some work with you um and get
you ready to pitch to labels um by january or so and i was like okay cool but um already even to um
just work up a demo he wanted the nashville standard for a finished song for a demo which
i was like okay interesting um and then i went out to la we had with his session musicians
uh he was like a a bedroom producer but he had like the pub deal um and he didn't really have
session musicians it was just like him in his home studio which I get it you can make great
songs like that and if we're talking about a finished product I don't think any artist in
Nashville would bat an eye at that but for a demo for just like pitch purposes the Nashville
standard of a thousand to fifteen hundred for songs that are just for pitching that aren't even
weird and not really whatever um but then we met up in LA and had our session and we um we chatted
a little bit and he said well yeah so like if we were to um you know do a project together and the
label picks you up um I'm basically best friends with the guy who just decides what is number one
on billboard and so that wouldn't even be out of the question if we were to continue working together
which goes back to everybody in the music industry wants money and we were brought up on this idea of
a booking agent isn't going to get paid until you do a manager isn't going to get paid until you do
and I have to hold out hope that I think there are still people like that but I think they are just
really hard to find and if we're on the subject of booking agents that's been something that I've
been trying to explore a little bit more for the past year or so because I'm signed with a college
booking agency and that's really kind of all they do it's just bigger college shows which can be
great but I've been looking for a more long-term booking partner um to like maybe help get placed
on a bigger tour where I'm like an opening supporting act that kind of thing um and I
emailed a booking agency a couple weeks ago that I'd been eyeing for a while that I thought would
be a really good fit and also I was like so excited even when they said hey we're not taking
on new artists right now but thank you I was just excited that they responded they responded which
like never happens no I get that um but I think the the reason why I believe that those kinds of
um managers and booking artists are still out there the ones who don't get paid until you do
too I think those kinds of booking agents and managers are struggling just as much as independent
artists are right now because for the rosters that they already have they're already strung thin
trying to place those artists on tours and get these artists these brand deals and whatnot
so
I saw the world got left on its shoulders
A picturesque hand to the scene
But nothing else goes in that direction
Something to be holding in my life
Cause when you go, when you go, when you go
You go and go
In a penny there's a falling field of
This way you go
Let the fearless talk
Under the desolate moonlight
We're gonna crash land
But in my mind that's alright
So many people's hearts will be left behind
The candle in the wind has no flame
Cause when you go, when you go, when you go, you go and go
In a penny there's a fountain for your love, it's waiting gold
It's when you go, when you go, when you go, when you go and go
In a penny there's a file that's for your love, just waiting gold
And yet you find a place in nowhere
There's nothing there that you'd call it home
And yet you build a place for no one
There's nothing there, but you call it home
Cause when you go, when you go, when you go, you go and go
In a penny there's a fire that fuel up, it's waiting gold
Cause when you go, when you go, when you go
You go and go
In a penny there's a mile in view of
Swade and gold
The music industry is the Wild West.
But I had this moment, and I don't remember if we talked about it last week,
and I'd be curious to know if you had a similar moment when you were traveling.
Over our break, because I did so much traveling and performing,
which is my favorite part of what I do,
I came back and I had some reflection time and reflection weeks,
and I'm at this point where I'm like this is fucking hard I chose the hardest thing in the
world really to do and I think we've talked about this before too like if you want to be a doctor
and I'm not saying it's easy to be a doctor but if you want to be a doctor you know the x amount
of steps that you take yeah so at the end of those eight years you can say confidently I'm a doctor
and I'm gonna make a living off of this same thing with a lawyer same thing with a tax attorney or
like if you want to be a barista you know what to do to say I am this and I'm successful at it
Right. You can't say that in music because you can take all the steps and you can say confidently and concretely that you're a musician. But if we're making money off of our art, that's really where the big question is. But I had this moment where I was like, this is fucking hard, but I want to keep going. This is the only thing that I want to do with my life.
every time I think about the possibility of well what would I do if I'm not doing music because I
mean yeah sometimes like I'm getting older like I think about that possibility but the thought of
going and doing that this is like okay now we're getting into therapy therapy speak therapy land
um the thought of doing that is so scary to me because this is my entire life and part of me
has this like who would I be if I'm not doing music type of thing because it's so ingrained
my personality it's so funny you say that yeah so I was a very stubborn child right um I say as
if I knew you when you were a child but I know but I was I was a very stubborn child and I
was also not the best with reading comprehension so my fifth grade teacher had to force me to read
and there was always this pushback between me and this teacher I respected him so much because
every time I would ask him a question he would give me a straight answer and every time he would
ask me a question I would always think about it and he was always hard on me but not mean like
I just so respected this guy and he knew that I could sing he knew that that was like my main
thing that's what I wanted to do in life and there was one day he sat me down and I was in fifth grade
he sat me down he was like at the end of the day what if you get in an accident
and you can't sing anymore what do you do that is a big question to ask a 10 year old wow yeah I'm
curious to see where I mean but but the thing is we had built a relationship over that year where I
was asking oddball questions I mean I was an only child spending the majority of my time at an office
with our adults I was having those conversations regardless if I was having that with a teacher or
with somebody that was an employee like there were so many different things and
I kind of sat there and I was like I don't know like I'm never gonna need to worry about that
and he was like i love your confidence keep your confidence but think about it and to this day
i mean i that question rings in the back of my head what do you do yeah like if you if something
happens and you don't have your voice anymore what then yeah and it made me as i was growing up
I think it forced me to look at, okay, well, who am I as a person?
Yeah.
What am I doing?
Yeah.
How am I affecting people?
Because I think I'm the shit with my voice.
Yeah.
I'm super confident, like, with my voice with, like, at the time, you know?
Yeah.
I'm super confident with my voice, blah, blah, blah.
So I concrete but that doesn give me the arrogance to treat other people like they aren the shit
and that just kind of put into perspective so many things but what you said reminded me of that like
what do you do if you don't yeah do music definitely and it's a big question it's and i
mean speaking to the age-old question like the doctor has a track the lawyer has a track
um the musicians don't necessarily have track because it is ever-changing yeah so you can say
that you're a successful musician if like the venues that you want to headline are house shows
and you want to headline someone's living room totally and it that i think begs the question of
what does success mean to different people because everybody has a different version of it
I think, okay, and I want you to think about this as well.
Okay.
I think 12-year-old me, even 11-year-old me would think I'm successful.
Yeah.
Because I've released music.
Yep.
I'm living in Nashville.
Yep.
Performed at multiple shows.
Mm-hmm.
My own music at multiple shows.
Mm-hmm.
In different states with multiple shows.
Mm-hmm.
and I'm able to do that while waitressing which I always wanted to be a waitress as a kid love but
if I think about it like you're living what you wanted but because you're so ambitious you don't
even realize it yeah I saw I was going back to my camera roll the other day and I saw a picture
that I screenshotted like a year ago and it said 12 year old me would think that current me is cool
and sexy and that's all that matters like 12 year old me definitely because I set my standards so
high about like what my barometer of success was so early that I've really had to unlearn a lot of
what success is especially living in Nashville but if you step back at a really kind of like pure
level oh my gosh my 15 year old self who was begging my parents to move to Nashville for
probably two years before we actually did would be thrilled that I've released three
plus albums material worth of music that I've done over however many shows I've done in all
the different states um and that I graduated and definitely like I really have to take a step back
sometimes and say like your path is not the people who you looked up to and that's okay and that's
honestly probably better because you can't compare yourself to a standard of an outdated
music industry yeah it's not fair to compare yourself to artists who made it in the 90s
because the discovery mechanisms were different and there was more of an opportunity to get your
your music heard in some ways because here's another like big question about the music industry
do we have more or less access today both both yeah um and so yeah I mean I had a moment when I
came back from all the travel and it was funny I was in the car with my dad we had just come back
from breakfast like my dad and I have like our our like once a quarter like dad and Ainsley debrief
breakfast and we were listening to a Peter Gabriel song um a live Peter Gabriel song from one of the
live records and I was like listening to music like this makes me want to keep going because I
want to prove to myself that I have the capabilities that I am striving for right now and another thing
that like I always kind of tell myself I had a singing teacher um a couple years ago who told me
like whatever I'm feeling down about my voice which is a lot by the way um I've talked about
this a lot to a lot of different people like I'm really self-conscious of my voice and my vocal
capabilities um I think if I had to pick like I feel really confident in my songwriting abilities
but even that falters from day to day um but I had a singing teacher who said Ainsley by the time
you're 25 you're going to be such a monster singer and you won't even know it and that's the term she
used and I was like by the time I'm 25 which is like still very young in the grand scheme of things
things um like I'm I will have improved so much and so I want to give myself the opportunity to
prove that I can be the singer that I want to be the performer that I want to be the songwriter
that I want to be and also I'm petty I want to prove wrong to the extended family members who
have made odd comments over the years or to the people who I've already had music experiences
with that didn't end well.
And I want to prove that to myself and I want to prove that to them at the end of the day If anything is keeping me going it revenge no i get that i been there um yeah i been there there that moment that you kind of like well i show you
if you don't think i can do it let me show you yeah um i will say that feeling only lasts so long
yeah for sure um and i say sipping on my frappuccino right oh my gosh that is so much yeah
um i think it's interesting how everything in the music industry goes i mean it's terrifying
cool awesome and there's a lot of different ways that you can gain access and a lot of
different ways that you're never gonna gain access yeah so it's a gotcha moment but if you're willing
to do it you should but at the same time it's not the ideals that like i think we grew up wanting to
get into yeah um i mean it is hollywood so like there's going to be certain images that are going
to be branded towards us and blah blah blah so one of the things that makes me and we've talked
about this before the um how when we were in school we were being taught about the outdated
music industry and then when we got to the actual music industry we're like these are the music
industry doesn't function like this something that kind of irks me not kind of really irks me
is that the music industry that nobody knows how it functions today five years from now textbooks
on the music industry are going to be written in how to make it on TikTok how to do this and those
are going to be taught to college students in 10 years when in 10 years inevitably the music
industry is going to be functioning differently yeah maybe we were always just meant to be in this
feedback loop of like being behind what the books are teaching and maybe that's feeding into
how hard the music industry is yeah it's it's just plain old hard like I I think that's just
how the cookie crumbles yeah I mean but nothing in life that's worth doing is easy right is that
the phrase so that's something that I tell myself a lot too because I mean every almost every person
who I've talked to what if I've had a deep conversation about what I'm doing in music and
what my goals are they've all said you could not have chosen a harder thing to do but it's gonna
it'll be worth it at the end of the day and you have to be just delusional enough to keep on going
and so that's what I'm gonna be I'm gonna be in my delulu girl era
real yeah um yeah I think the only reason that I'm able to do what I'm doing is because
my parents have been able to provide me with an education and have been able to support me
while I've been in Nashville so that I can try to do this crazy music thing so
I am in a very odd position that not a lot of people are gifted so that's also always in the
back of my mind that when you're given a once in a million shot you have to just keep on pushing
yeah and it's i'm grateful to be where i am and i'm grateful that my parents worked hard so that i
could um but that said like i know that there are 10 other people 100 other people that are as
talented or more that would kill to be in the same position so and that's the entire music industry
yeah so it kind of forces you to always be on your game and always work hard and yeah i'm
there's just a lot of things to be said for the music industry and a lot of variables and if you
aren't given the right set of circumstances even if you love music and want it to work out it can't
and like that's it's such an incredibly harsh reality that so many people face yeah and being
able to recognize when you have the privilege of being supported and being
able to do those things like you can't take that for granted yeah absolutely so in some ways like
you owe it to more than just yourself you owe it to the music educators who believed in you to
whoever is supporting you whether that your parents whether that a best friend whether that you know anyone else it it it this really weird dichotomy between it such an internal choice to keep moving but it also like there there a lot invested in this not just by
me right yeah which is big it's it's a hard topic to swallow and that's something that I am ever
aware of at least in my own situation like I mean of course I have parents who have supported me
since literally day one of like singing karaoke songs at Classico Bar in Sarasota, Florida with
the School of Rock being like, I'm going to be a singer. But yeah, I mean, there's just lots of big
existential questions we came back with after traveling and big existential realizations.
I think the Eat, Pray, Love, like have you seen that movie?
I haven't, but one of the books that I read this summer was Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert,
who read that book um my friend Emily got me that book for my birthday and it's about the genius of
creativity and wow that book is so good but continue what were you going to say about Eat,
Pray, Love? No that's awesome I mean Eat, Pray, Love is essentially I I believe it's a book yeah
and then it was it was made a movie I was about to say converted lol um but then it was made into
a movie and it's essentially where she goes to three different places and in italy she eats
um in india she prays and in like maldives she falls in love like somewhere yeah that she's
traveling and she's able to like find herself so i think it's interesting like we both did kind of
like a mini eat pray love yeah definitely no no i need it i need to eat eat pray love because
she talked about that in big magic the um the writing of that book in big magic is the only
book of hers that i've read so far um and she talked about like the i just i loved the whole
premise of the book because um she has this awesome ted talk on um what is genius and i there's a
really modern connotation with it when we say someone is a genius and she argues that that's
way too much pressure to put on someone and so in big magic she looks at the genius personified
your genius is almost this little magical entity that comes and visits you and you just have to be
open and willing enough to accept what your genius is giving you so that if you're writing a song and
it doesn't turn out good it's not entirely your fault but then also if you write a hit song or a
hit movie or a hit book you can't take all the credit because that was your genius too and I
just thought it was such a good take on creativity and how to harness it because it really is a
magical thing when we think about creativity at the end of the day and that's something that I've
fallen prey to because I've I've treated music as my job and not in a negative connotation but I
take it seriously as someone would take a nine to five job um even since before I moved to Nashville
I've taken it like it's my job because it is but because I treat it like that I can I've definitely
fallen guilty to this idea of like I forgot that I that I like this that I like this that the that
I started writing when I was 12 because I was having big emotions and I was like okay let's
try to get it out like this right right like you forget that you got into this because you chose to
you know like you forget that moment sometimes you chose to do this this wasn't just like a
a forsaken prophecy right that was destined to be upon you by the gods and whatnot yeah yeah
Like, you chose this.
Come on.
Yeah, it's like getting an iced coffee and being like, why is it cold?
Yeah.
I ordered it like that.
You ordered it.
You actually pre-ordered it like that.
You did pre-order it like that.
You saw the whole thing.
I did order the iced coffee, but I didn't order cinnamon in it,
which I think could be a metaphor for I ordered my iced coffee.
I did sign up for this, but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be sometimes.
and that's okay but I'm gonna keep um messing with my iced coffee until it tastes the way that
I want it to right right and see can you tell that these are two songwriters having this conversation
honestly I think that's where we wrap it up I think y'all should enjoy your iced coffee
enjoy that iced coffee um read big magic by Elizabeth Gilbert um you know yes appreciate
artists that you hear on the radio
appreciate artists that you don't hear on the radio
and we'll
catch you next time for another
installment of the snap whenever that'll be
yeah
see ya
okay maybe
one of these days bye