The Role of Community and Authenticity in Music Success

Jakob Wredstrøm

Downloads it locally and uploads at the same time, which means I get full quality at the end, which works really well. We also use like noise suppression tools, which also means I get good quality at the end. The only compromise there is that it might get bit grainy or delayed, you might be experiencing now, which can be a bit disturbing in the conversation, but it doesn't affect the end product. So as much as you can, just ignore that. Yeah, that's good.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Perfect. I'll imagine it's a beauty filter because it's just good at my skin perfectly in that amount of time. So that's great.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Great. Yes. And really like the key thing to think about during the podcast is the more dialogue based it can be the better. So if I ask questions that might, you know, naturally lead to a long-winded answer, your only job during the podcast is see if you can break that down. If, you can, you know, allow some room for me to do follow up questions, the audience gets such a

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Better experience because then it seems more like a conversation than an interview. And that's just more interesting. Even though it is an interview, that's the form that works best. Does that make sense? Yeah. A few things that could be really nice. If you do have your devices on Do Not Disturb, that tends to be better, especially with phone calls and emails.

Rachel Young

Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. All good.

Rachel Young

I will double check. I'm almost certain I did. Yes, all good. I am on a new laptop as well and I keep getting really random notifications about like, set up your wallet payment. I think it's off. I'm almost 100 % certain it's off.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

The episodes normally runs 35 to 55 minutes. Normally with these like very expert episodes, they usually run on the short end. So I think we'll most likely see that this will be around 40 minutes of conversation. And then this will be a partnership with Wallifornia. I think as far as I understand, this will come after the conference. Like a sort of like a post Wallifornia episode.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But we'll start an intro. The last piece of information, I know there's a lot, but ultimately there's only two things you need to remember. So I'll just recap on those. Is that we start the episode the same way every single time. And that is, I do a very brief intro and I say, hey, Rachel, who are you and what do you do? And then I allow you to introduce yourself. And I'll obviously supplement and talk about sort of your previous roles. And now you've transitioned into something new, which is also very exciting. And...

Rachel Young

Perfect.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Half the press as well. Yeah, literally this morning. So good timing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. So the last piece was two hours ago and LinkedIn, something like that. That's weird. And then we'll basically go into the talk about the whole thing, about the concepts, monetization, distribution. And obviously a lot of that will be focusing on your work with TikTok, of course, you know, in the amount that you can speak about stuff. But feel free to do broader commentaries. Like, you know, you're the expert, I'm the curious guy. So if there's something you can expand on certain things that you believe would be really interesting to cover, more than welcome.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Great. Okay, great.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay. So just to reiterate, the two things you need to remember is who you and what do you do. So just a brief explanation. And the second thing is dialogue based conversation works the best.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Perfect okay and if you're not getting what you need from me keep digging do it I am a talker so get what you need good okay good to hear

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I will, I'm persistent, I'm persistent, that will come. Great, okay, great. Do you have everything you need? Water? Yeah. Great, then I will start in five seconds.

Rachel Young

I think so, yeah. Perfect. Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections podcast. I'm already having a lovely conversation with Rachel, welcome.

Rachel Young

Bye.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Rachel, we're gonna talk about something really interesting today and that is distribution, monetization of social media and in particular TikTok where you've had a key role throughout the years. And I'm so interested to dissect this also in partnership with Ballyfornia which is the amazing conference we'll both be at in a week's time. When this episode is out, this will probably as happened. But Rachel, thank you for being here. For the people who don't know you, who are you and what do you do?

Rachel Young

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I'm Rachel. And in a nutshell, I help music tech founders, record labels, investors make smarter product and commercial decisions. My background's in digital supply chain, in music technology and innovation, and moving away from TikTok. Very recently, hoping to do that with some incredible founders and exciting new businesses.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That is fresh off the press. Think the last LinkedIn post was two hours ago, but again, this will be...

Rachel Young

Oh, very much so. Yeah. I know. I know it feels very new and I had to the determined notifications off before we started talking. Yeah, it's very exciting. It's been it's been a long time coming. I feel like it's the right time for me to make that move. And I'm just I'm just really excited and yeah, very, very fresh off the press. So first people to hear about it. It's an exclusive. There we go.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and amazing. So you briefly touched upon it. Your career moving forward, what will we be focusing on? How can people use your services?

Rachel Young

It's kind of multiple aspects. Think my background, which is mainly in product development, the main focus in the past three years has been on artist tools and services on TikTok and with SoundOn as well, TikTok's digital distribution platform. Really on product development and making sure that not only do those... businesses get what they need out of that product and out of that service. They're actually building something that's truly useful. I think a lot of the time, the music industry in general has some incredible ideas and it needs more of those ideas, but they need to not fail commercially just because, you know, we're quite one-track minded in the music industry. There's a lot of sort of variations of opinion, I would say. So not just because of the sort of product work, but because I think it's meant to be really used for, I suppose the users that use it, sorry I'm trailing off. I'm not doing that very well.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Good, we just do that again. What was the question I had? So you can just sort of return to that. It was how people can use their services, your services. I'll just ask that again. And then I will edit my first question and then your current answer now. So if my question is not phrased the totally same way, that's fine also. So Rachel, how can people go about using your services moving forward?

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Absolutely, I mean, I think the music industry is full of incredible ideas that unfortunately often fail commercially because they're built for the wrong audience or they're maybe fixing a problem that doesn't quite exist. For me, it's about stilling down incredible products, ideas and product vision, making sure that they actually come to market in a way that the users want to see them and that they actually become purposeful. Whether that's products for artists or for fans, or actually it's investors just not really sure how to navigate music tech in general. That's what I'm hoping to help with. So by working with those founders and operators, innovation teams more directly, turning those really good product ideas into commercially valuable businesses.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And it is complicated. You know, I speak with a lot of founders. Like I think the last time I talked with two founders was right before this call and right before that call. So, and they both have each their story that I had disagreements on. And like, this is incorrect presumptions of how to run a music tech company. And I also might be wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm not. But again, there is truths that are... I wouldn't call them somewhat hidden, but needs to be learned in a particular way right now, which is not very helpful to be honest, that there's so many things that are so hard to navigate. And luckily that you want to do this, but you've also done some pretty amazing work like the last few years with one of the most influential, well, probably the most influential platform in the world within music and that is TikTok. And we'll cover a lot of those works, least, you the concepts of those works in today's talk because... It is basically super, super key to the future economy of it. Autists, how they make money, how they distribute, how to get exposed. And this is what it covers today. Going into the talk, I said, I know probably enough to ask good questions, but I'm also here to learn today. I hope that's okay.

Rachel Young

Absolutely, yeah. Hopefully I can provide some valuable information. Maybe a bit of gossip as well, why not?

Jakob Wredstrøm

So maybe just to start the conversation by setting the scene, if you could explain or dissect what did you do at TikTok? And we'll just use that as a starting point to sort of talk about some of the concepts around your work there.

Rachel Young

Yeah, absolutely. I joined ByteDance three years ago. I was on the initial founding team for Sound On, which is TikTok's digital distribution platform. There was an interest and a want to build a label on artist services company. It's not something that the business had done before, but various different music products already existed within ByteDance. Of course, pretty much number one music promotion platform in the world right now as well. So definitely Foundational had the best suited teams to be able to build those products, but maybe not. The people who had actually already done it before. So I joined the team because I'd previously worked at an incredible music tech startup called Instrumental and built a label there called 45. So I joined the business to kind of help guide not only the product development, but how do we launch in new markets that, you know, we may have not launched a new product in before. During my time there, it's adapted and it's changed towards the market and the way that geopolitical state of the world has also changed in that time. So my first year was spent on really building and launching Sound On and making sure that product was the best it could be for the incredible artists that partnered with Sound On. Whether that's operational efficiency or customer service and support, moderation, all of those sorts of things fell under what we built and what we did. And then after some time, obviously the needs of the platform change and the needs of what we need to do to be able to support rights holders change. And that's when I sort of made that move into platform side development as well and more on the fun tools.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Because TikTok has been a quite surprising player in the music industry. I don't think anyone really saw it coming that a TikTok platform that's about video, first and foremost, would reshape how pretty much all commercial music is thought about. And I don't know how many ways TikTok has changed music, but it's a lot. Everything from...

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hooks how you think about those think about segments think about exposure think about virality and a lot of these a lot of these things that were Used to be very particular for video for example hooks like how do you create a good video hook? Became equally important for music and so it's not just that tick-tock was a great platform to expose music It also being key to how people made and consumed music. So it's very understandably that understanding distribution, monetization, altruistic relationships, it's also key to have some element in there. And that has also been, I guess, also conflicting part of the music industry. There's an outside tech player that ultimately is not one of us that basically controls and defines consumer behavior. Is that correctly read? That's at least from an outside perspective. Can you recognize some of those arguments?

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Absolutely can recognize them for sure. Mean, TikTok's changed the way I consume music as a music fan. You know, I started in the music industry writing a music blog. I started my music blog when I was 13, 14, because I couldn't afford a gig ticket and a bus ticket to get into town. So I thought, okay, if I start a music blog, I'll at least get the gig ticket for free.

Jakob Wredstrøm

This thing.

Rachel Young

And then all I have to do is get there and that's it. And that's how I started to find music. I was very much of that era. I was the indie Twitter kid. Absolutely. I was reading blogs and interest pieces about different bands and artists and interviews. For me now, it's the way that fandom has adapted to a new type of media. My way of expressing my fandom when I was 14 was to write a blog. And was to do it that way. Now I feel like music fans are expressing themselves by creating videos on TikTok about what they love and not just saying, I love this band because of this. They're creating lifestyle content or day in the life or something like that. And that's the way that they're expressing their fandom. So I think for me, that's the biggest change and that's definitely changed the way I consume. It's opened my eyes to... international music that I would never have been able to discover before. And with that, obviously that comes with sort of new untapped areas for a lot of the music industry that, you know, their market entries are becoming maybe slightly smoother because of that as well. They're able to see what's happening in various different regions around the world and really understanding what micro trends are kicking off, not just with creators, but also with artists. So they're able to make

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Rachel Young

better investment decisions in the artists that they back or they market or the people they go into business with. So not only has it changed the consumer habit and how I would personally consume that, but the music's changed. Absolutely. And whether that's, you see that as a good thing or a bad thing, attention spans have gotten shorter. That's, you know, that's, that's no news to anyone for sure. But everyone's been releasing singles on a Friday for the past 15 years. That

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Rachel Young

pattern hasn't changed. It's just more so how it's presented to the audience and how the audience is expressing their gratitude for that piece of art history, I think.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. I'm going to ask you about monetization. And this is from one of the angles where I have too little knowledge actually to ask a good question, but I'll ask a biased question based on my ability, know, very basic knowledge. And that is one of the conflicting elements that I've been able to sort of pick up from the music industry, rightfully so and not rightfully so, I'm not sure, is that people are dependent on exposure through TikTok in many different strategies.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Okay.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But monetization still primarily lies of converting those to other places. And as much as you built a following exposure views plays on TikTok, in particular, it doesn't necessarily convert to the predictable income. Same amount of, you know, comparable traction would happen on, for example, streaming platforms. And that conversion of monetization has obviously, at least in my circles, been a talking point.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Could you dissect for me what is monetization on TikTok? How does it work? And you don't need to go into TikTok in general. It can also be general. Like how does this things work with video platforms, if you can even call that, social media platforms, and monetization of music? And what's been the efforts put into sort of addressing that?

Rachel Young

Yeah.

Rachel Young

Yeah, I mean, firstly, there's been a lot of effort and there continues to be a lot of effort. You know, I left ByteDance a month ago. I know that my former colleagues are still working on this. This is still a big focus for them. And it has, again, it has changed a lot in the past three years. I started using TikTok in 2019 maybe as a user, a stalker of TikTok rather than a poster of TikTok instead. The platform was incredibly different and it was a lot less saturated with the number of people posting. Obviously that's increased. Therefore the diversification of where attention is coming from needs to go with that. So for music and musicians in general, we always would say that consistency in posting is key. But once you build that audience, like you said, how do you convert that? There's a few tools and features embedded into TikTok that means that you don't need to try and move that audience to another platform. Whether that's TikTok shop, which is starting to launch and roll out more commonly now across Europe. But it's been live in the UK and US for some time now where you would be able to effectively vendor your own merch in the same way. It's a very easy. Integration that already exists. Imagine it is just a new storefront but this time your storefront actually has footfall. Going live as well is massive on TikTok. And that's something that continues to grow. And seemingly it's also incredibly exciting. I think there's a lot of artists that have redefined what they consider success as, rather than I want a headline Glastonbury or I would like to have a million monthly listeners on Spotify. For them, it's actually, I really need to pay rent. That's what I need to do. That's success for me. Success for me is being able to pay for my big shop at Tesco.

Rachel Young

And paying my rent this month. Live has become a vehicle for those artists that maybe don't have the necessarily like the glossy... vision, the glossy dream of the headline slot, but actually they have the more practical, I would like to make a living from this. They schedule to go live. It's effectively busking online and they're making and generating really good revenue from that. So I think it's quite, it's quite a misconception for, for artists and for smaller creators who are just starting out to think my money's going to come from views and brand deals. Money does come from views and brand deals. If the brands want to connect with you and they're the right ones for you and if you have an engaged audience that's great but you can utilize a lot of tools and features that already pre-exist without then having to try and uphaul that audience that exists in one place and move them to another because we know that is time intensive and expensive. I don't use Facebook for example there is nothing an artist can do really to get me back on Facebook. I use Instagram and TikTok. I'd be hard pressed to download

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rachel Young

another app without a compelling reason to do so. So why not just incubate the fan base that you have there and making sure that you're driving human connection as much as you can and going live and being open to doing that and open to actually connecting with those and interacting with your fans face to face is a really good way to generate revenue but also continue to grow and incubate the fan base you've already got.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. It makes a whole lot of sense. And I think, you know, my initial question also streams from the misconception of comparing TikTok to streaming service, which is, and I think that's, you know, I think a lot of the misconceptions in the music industry is also platform definitions. Like what is the key nature of what it does? And even though there's, you know, licensing deals with TikTok, it is not in the same nature of those of Spotify, for example. But

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think, know, where I see something that has been very interesting for me as like an outsider, but still somewhat involved in sort of the music, TikTok community, whatever you call it, is basically how you also successfully build a community around TikTok and how you can convert that. I'll start with an example and I want to...

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

mention any specific names, but I used to co-run a publishing company and we were very active in LA and we work with a lot of, let's call them TikTok influencers that were also music artists, know, everything from 1 million to 5 million followers. You know, a lot of things were happening with their activities, but ultimately they were selling comedy and then music as a by-product. And we even did, you know, help write songs for campaigns where, know,

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

10 billion views and like on marketing and page like, you know, huge number success, whatever you want to call it and nothing converted and nothing converted to fan base whenever they released a song on Spotify. Nothing happened whenever they made videos on TikTok to this is my new song and did something similar funny. Nothing happened and when they went back to their you know original comedy video things happened and what I took from that, and I might be wrong, but I think it's interesting at least is the key to TikTok and exposure is also being consistent across your platforms in order to convert and carry things over. It's not like it's a mechanism to get exposure and then you can carry it out to something else. It needs to be a part of the full, true ecosystem you're building. And only then does TikTok really make sense when it comes to monetization. Am I onto something here?

Rachel Young

I think so. I think that's a really, that's a really solid take to be honest. think the thing that partnerships teams at TikTok and creative teams at TikTok will tell their partners is authenticity is absolutely key. If you found a formula of content that firstly you feel comfortable with creating, that's the first step and TikTok isn't for everyone. I think that's really, really key. I don't post on TikTok because it makes me feel uncomfortable to film myself. But that's fine. I still like to integrate, you know, connect with others and find new things. And I enjoy using the platform, but I don't feel the need to post. And for artists, sometimes they don't want to. And that's absolutely fine. It isn't for everyone at all. With the consistency piece, once you've found the formula of content that makes sense to you, that you feel comfortable with creating, that... isn't taking over your life. The number of times that we've had misconceptions someone said, I didn't realize you had to post three times a day. You don't have to post three times a day. What else are you doing in a day if that's all you can do is post three times a day? You need to, you know, go and be an artist and go and be creative and write and produce your music. You need to not become a content creator. And I know that's really difficult to hear right now because it's very in conflict to what, you know, some people are saying, marketing gurus are saying, for example, but you really don't start with once a week for the first month. Once you've got the hang of it, you understand how the platform works, move that to two posts a week for the second month and then three posts in the third month. You don't need to be posting more than three times a week on TikTok. Define what your content pillars are beforehand. Decide in that first...

Rachel Young

Couple of months, okay, this is a period for me to test and to try on new things and to see whether I'm happy with it, what connects, what doesn't connect. If it doesn't connect, it doesn't matter, move on. Videos are surfaced on TikTok in a very different way to other platforms, just because something hasn't worked the first time you post it or in the first 24 hours doesn't mean in a couple of months it might not pop back up again. So I think having that consistency.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Rachel Young

is really, really crucial. And in terms of messaging, really talk about what you're confident talking about. And that's the whole thing around the authenticity piece. Consumers are quite savvy now to see when something isn't completely honest and it isn't completely truthful. It maybe is a bit of a show or a bit of a play pretend and it isn't really that person's honest truth or who they are in real life. And I think the closer you can get to that and the more comfortable you can get with that, the better that content performs. There's a reason why, you know, comedy content does perform incredibly well. And some of them are artists. At Sound On, one of the first artists that joined was Arthur Hill, who has a massive following on TikTok for comedy videos. But he's also an incredible songwriter and has an amazing voice. He's now used his platform as a comedy creator, as a vehicle to promote his music. He's got an engaged audience. It's that kind of

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Rachel Young

shock and awe and surprise that guy that was telling jokes and doing prank videos is also this very astute songwriter and fantastic creative artist. People really got on board very quickly. His output was fantastic, his music was really great and he has a highly engaged audience primed and ready to go. So when we talk to artists and say, okay, maybe let's think about the content pillars that could work for you. Yes, you're a singer songwriter, but what else do you like? Do you play football at the weekends? Are you interested in Formula One? Do you crochet? Do you snow? There's so many other things that can build a very rounded... sort of personality on TikTok in the same way that you would post your holiday photos on Instagram if you're an artist. Do the same thing on TikTok. It works in the same way.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. I think that's really... I agree, it's really important to comment. Like one of the things that I see from, let's say my mid-level access friends is sometimes a complaint about like, why do I need to do more than music? Like, why do I need to do more than express my full say through my medium of music? And it's interesting to think about it. Like I just, I think the episode released yesterday, I guess, here on the Sound Connections podcast, it'll be a few weeks. By now is with Eric Hairstrom, which is a brand designer who's worked for Spotify. And we talked about Lady Gaga, we talked about Elton John, and he was working on rebranding Elvis Presley in like a new documentary. And what we talked about is all of these people have elements of shock or interest or storytelling that's a bit extravagant. And that's always been the case because people need something to latch onto. And...

Rachel Young

Mm.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

that is still the case and it might have changed a medium but that is the nature of binding to a story. It needs to compel. A few cases that I've seen him, you know, I use TikTok a lot and really I try to cater my algorithms to be a very educational comedy music once in a while but like it's really the only platform I use besides LinkedIn. I don't even use Instagram or any of the others and I followed sort of the journeys of the typicals like Louis Capaldi, how he's put an audience or Charlie Puth, obviously a few years ago that really sort of blew up with his things, but also recently, you know, global successes that, you know,

Rachel Young

No.

Jakob Wredstrøm

of just really interesting and edgy. I forgot the name now, but Spin the Globe was a concept of American rapper, I'm forgetting his name now, but it was basically inviting artists from all around the world to jump on songs and had these very entertaining videos that were comedy-like and he's the dad of a small kid and there's all these fun personal elements, but just in one brand concept. And for me, I got to love that guy and his music only through that. And actually now when I listen to the music, I'm like... it's not really my style but I've bought into the story. Like I can put on the music not because that's the music I want to hear but like I have a relationship with it now. And even the locals you know I live in Norway I'm from Denmark there's this Danish band I'm not the best with these types of names but I think they're called Roya and they basically made these electronic music. And the concept was they're in the studio basically freestyling these amazing tracks. And I know music and I can see, okay, this is plant. This is not freestyling, but they've done it so well and authentically. So when they released their first track, I think it just blew up and they did like sold out shows locally. It's just like, it's so amazing. So the concept of storytelling, maybe extravagant sometimes, or comedy of whatever you want to do. Is still here, it took a different form in the past. The criteria really haven't changed, but the medium has. And I think people forget this once in a while. You might complain about TikTok requiring a behavior change of you, but it's always required a behavior change. If you're like everyone else, it might not be as interesting engaging with you. Does that make sense?

Rachel Young

100 % and artists are storytellers. They're storytellers through their form of art, which is music. That's it. In the same way that if you're a physical artist, you tell your story through your sculpture or your painting. And I think there is a snobbery around content creation at times. And it can be used as a tool and a vehicle to get what you need out of the audience you want to build.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Rachel Young

for what you're doing at that time. But content creators work incredibly hard to achieve some of the things that they post and some of the things that they do. And I think even creatively coming up with some of these concepts and ideas is really, really difficult. And I think maybe sometimes the general public or people who aren't really the fave with, you know. Watch short form video content think, it's just so silly. And there are a lot of silly videos. I get a lot of silly sort of comedy videos or whatever, but actually some of the more longer form, thought out pieces of content that have deep meaning take a lot for that person to firstly, creatively connect with that piece and then make it and build it and create it themselves. In the same way that... you know, it's a lot, it's an emo+tional toll to write a song. It takes a long time, it's a process. It often comes from a place of sort of deep rooted personal experience and it takes a lot for someone to share that, highlight that. It, you know, if you're going to put in 110 % into your songwriting, make sure you're giving yourself the best platform possible and the best opportunity you can to really show the world what you've just done. Sometimes that might be building an audience on a platform that you might not love initially, but I think once people find their tribe on that platform, they find their community, they use it and interact with it as a fan, as well as a creator. I think that's when the sweet spot happens and that's when you see exponential growth and engagement, but also a real connection like you've mentioned there that you feel like you're supporting that artist and you're part of that journey.

Rachel Young

And that's what fandom is, fundamentally. That's what fandom is. You're bought into every single aspect of that person's success, not just of their artistic success. There's some artists that have just the most incredible...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rachel Young

connections to that to their fans and have made have made it easy for their fans to find each other online, connect online, but then bring those experiences back into real life. And I think that is where that's where this is going, in my opinion is you're building those engaged communities on platforms like TikTok, but you're providing real life experiences that

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Rachel Young

those people can then be a part of. Gone are the days of Facebook meetups. I don't know where that went, but I remember a really long time where if you were a fan of a band, you'd go to a Facebook meetup to meet other fans before the show. And I'd walk out of the train station in Birmingham and I'm off to see Peace or Swim Deep, one of the shoegaze bands that I loved. And I would notice people at that train station wearing Doc Martens and flannel t-shirts. And I knew that they were part of my tribe. That's invisible now because it's all online. So if we compare that with in real life experiences, and there's some artists that are doing this incredibly well. Youngblood is the perfect example of this. He has converted that audience in such a way that they feel supported by the fandom. They feel really honestly part of something and they are, they absolutely are part of something. But then he's created that very safe space and environment that is completely authentically his own with Bloodfest. That gives other performers and other musicians that are similar to him or within his peer circle a platform to connect but also a place for all of those fans to really live out their fandom dream and it's for me it's like it's the return of like in-store tours that he did and pop-up shops and meet and greets and all of that and I feel like we've missed that a little bit but that's what that is what a digital audience could become. And I think if you have that as your goal and that's your purpose for doing that, I think that's a really good North Star to have is I'm going to build this thing online and then I'm going to put on a show and everyone's going to come and everyone's going to know each other and recognise each other from social. And that's great. I think we need to bring that back.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. I've had the blessing and curse a lot of my career to parallel to my ventures working with independent nontists. And this community that you're talking about, growing this community, finding these peers, your space in the digital space has always been a big talking point of frustration. And I see now when I'm a bit distance.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

why this happened, but let me just paint it out for you. And that is in the pursuit of making great music. There was also, we also need to be on TikTok. We also need to be engaged and like all these efforts of, you know, jumping on a trend or, you know, trying to understand what's going on and like posting videos and nothing really happening. Like really, like most of the times. And the realization I've had since, you know, that's become less a part of my life is it really isn't any different than music. So the whole way that you break a narcissist is first of all, sometimes fairly random. Let's just get it out there. But a big part of it that's not random is you need to be a part of something and you need to read the environment of which you're putting things out there. And you need to stand out in a certain way that you're not an outsider. You're something new to bring.

Rachel Young

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But you're unique enough to bring something new to the table, but understand what's current enough in order to be relevant. And that is not different from TikTok. And I think for so long, and at least in lot of the independent communities that I've been involved in, there seems to be this sort of expectation of disconnect between how those two worlds work. They pretty much work the same way. The difficulty is that you need to nail both. And oftentimes they belong together, so it doesn't need to be like two separate things, but that's the confusing part. But I believe creators nowadays, know, a younger generation, maybe more inherently understand that, that it's not separate, it is not two different mediums, and maybe that's been the transition pains of a generation trying to adopt new technology. Does that make sense? Is that something you can reflect on?

Rachel Young

Yeah, it definitely made sense. This is new media. And I think we forget how recent this short form video content phenomenon actually is. Like it's only just happened really 2020 was the turning point for that. So not only has the creators have had to adapt to... what do the audiences want to see? What do I want to get out of this thing? But also the consumer habits have changed massively around what people are watching, where they're getting their news, where they're shopping, where they're doing everything. So I think for me, what it means moving forward is those creators are able to really kind of be owners of their own businesses and their own brands that they've built for themselves. Maybe outside of those platforms as well. I think for artists, it's very difficult to differentiate. It feels like the part-time job you have to have at the weekend in order to support your career. But really, it's a free marketing tool. If we really break down what it actually is, it's free. There aren't many free marketing tools that have the reach. And have the ability to really push you to a brand new audience quite like TikTok. You know, we're not asking you to spend money on Facebook ads. It's not, you know, desperately emailing editors for playlist pushes. You don't need to rely on others with this platform. What you put in is what you get out. And I think that should...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rachel Young

build confidence in that way. You're not waiting for someone to approve what you're posting. You're not waiting for someone to say, yeah, you're doing a great job. Keep going. You're able to own your own. Piece of digital real estate without begging someone to help you do it. And because that is so frustrating and that's really demoralizing as well. So you put so much time and effort into creating such an incredible song or an album or a project for then no one to answer your emails. That's so frustrating. So go and own the digital real estate that you're able to own for free and do it that way instead because for me, it's just another, it's another shopfront that you can sell your wares with. It's another place that people can find you. It's another place that people can see what you're doing. That happens to be one of the not only easiest to use, but also one that will gain you the most reach as well. And that's still the case now. Yes, it may have slowed a little bit because of the sheer number of people posting.

Jakob Wredstrøm

and then...

Rachel Young

but it still exists in those pockets and those communities are thriving as well. Know, those micro communities, whether that's, I've mentioned it already, but whether it's crochet or cooking or DJs or music, whatever it is, they are there and they are doing their thing regardless. You know, there's a reason why, you know, creators like... Francis who does train spotting. It's the reason why train spotting became popular again. It's like they already exist. They've just used the free platform to their best advantage.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I do have a question about the word community though, and this is sort of where I just need some clarity because I think community can be used in many different contexts and I'll sort of bring my angle to it and my presumptions. And that is if you use community purely as a representation of a collective of people with a common interest and common liking that somewhat interact. Maybe less personally so, but like as a part group that you can define that as community. When community comes to monetization, there oftentimes needs to be like an interactivity to some degree, like some sort of like cultural sharing or something where there's a movement of common opinions and interaction. This doesn't to my... degree of understanding happens as much for TikTok. So for communities really to expand itself is my presumption. There also needs to be some sort of outlet besides the digital environment of which TikTok is in order to really manifest itself in what I understand as a community. Can you comment on that? Like what's your perspective on that?

Rachel Young

I'm gonna use an example that I think is a bit strange for someone in professional music tech to use. A really good example of this for me is Disney content creators. So I'm planning a Disney world trip in September. I love it. It genuinely is my happiest place on earth. It's the only place I feel like I can actually escape and just be myself and be really happy and love it and enjoy it. There are... some fantastic content creators around Disney World and getting ready for the parks and where to book and how to do it and tips and tricks when you're there and the best food to eat and all of that. What they've done really successfully is I look at the comments on those posts because I'm someone that's like actively spending money to try and get the experience that they're presenting. So I want to make sure that I'm providing my family that experience that they're saying they're getting. So I'm looking through the comments, I'm interacting with others, I'm starting to see similar names pop up and I'm thinking, well, I've seen this name before, or there'll be a post saying I'm planning my trip, give me some creators that I should watch. And it's the same names over and over again.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rachel Young

What I then love seeing is a couple of days later, they'll post a video in the parks, for example, and people have come up to them and interacted with them, or they've gone for lunch, or they've got a drink together, or those sort of, you know, families have gone, I'm going at the same time. Are you going at the same time? And suddenly that becomes what was a... Fairly educational, albeit very full on online experience because it's Disney World. Actually something that then translates into real life. And those creators are being incredibly smart about that because not only are they really trying to build a in real life community, they're also now starting to monetize those in real life communities through fan meetups, again, through digital guidebooks on how to book your dining because you have to book it so far in advance. And where best to go. They're selling t-shirts. So you walk around a Disney World park and not only will you see a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front, you'll see it with a content creators logo or their catchphrase or whatever it is. They're even now doing things like Amazon storefront on how to keep cool in central Florida. I think they've not, they've built a very, it's micro community on TikTok at the moment. Although the brand of Disney and Walt Disney is massive and global around the world. If we just like focus in on central Florida content creators doing Disney, there aren't many of them. But they have some of the most engaged audiences I've seen. And these are people with 50 to 75K followers. It's not, we're not talking millions, but they are getting 40, 50 % engagement rates on some of these posts. Even the ones where they're proactively selling stuff to you, which means they're starting to get brand deals that I would never expect them to get.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Now, let's

Rachel Young

it starts off with a deodorant company or something like that or you know a dongle for your phone or whatever it is a way to that things that make sense for them and now they're doing you know whether that's drinks or I saw one that was promoting ice TV of the week there's no real correlation but their audiences are so engaged in that community specifically that they will watch and they will buy anything that they do and

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Rachel Young

it's again it could be seen as something to turn your nose up at like Disney adults they're making some money I tell you that and they're having a good time doing it so I think that's a great way to move like online into in real life there's ways of doing it

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Interesting.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's very interesting you say this and basically what you're saying in my own interpretation is these communities does exist and they, even though my sort of assumption was it needs to be moved over, which maybe in some cases that's also very effective depending on who your audience is, but these communities are sort of engaging and active. That also makes sense. I've never defined myself as an early, early adapter when it comes to the innovation curve, even though I work with adoption. I'm a slow second. The way that I, when it comes to being an entrepreneur, that's actually the sweet spot in my opinion. But the way that I consume TikTok, for example, is very much passive. I think I've probably left five comments the last three years. And... So I come from a very observer perspective, but it's really interesting to hear from like the inside what's actually happening. And I love that. And what I really hope to see is ways of artists really understanding that this is the way to engage, not necessarily the only TikTok, but that there's a... a large amount of ATSIS in this new generation of ATSIS that understands that things have changed and consumer behavior has changed and engagement and relevance and community is more important than ever because now probably for the first time in the West you have opportunity to actually monetize it. That was not possible five years ago. We've had 20 years of... really not interesting monetization of fandom. And now is the time to do so and people can make a living, young people can make a living if you have something interesting to say and interesting to contribute with. And Rachel, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm looking so much forward to talk more with you at Wally-O-Fornia next week. We only touched the surface, but for me, I've already sort of maybe changed a tiny bit of perspective on certain things about these platforms.

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

How do you look at the future of artistry when it comes to exposure. Like if you could distill it down to sort of where you predict things going or where you maybe even hope things are going, how would you describe that?

Rachel Young

Mm-hmm. Cool. That's a big one. I would say with a product hat on, creating firstly tools and services that people actually want and need should be the primary focus and finding demand-based products and services to develop rather than trend focused ones is going to be incredibly important. So not only about, okay, attribution or where something coming from, or how do we get quick views? How do we do this? It's actually building, I would say, strategic storytelling of where you want to take your brand as an artist, you know, and the platforms need to continue to support the entrepreneurship of those artists and realise that, we might not be the quickest to develop or to change the way that we, you know, change our deal structures or change the way that we see music or IP rights, but the artists are doing that already for themselves. So we need to make sure we keep up firstly with their demands and what they really, really need. But then those artists need to make sure that they are really owning their own space and really owning their own businesses really. I think there's a lot to be said for artists spending time creating content and that shouldn't be their primary focus. I'm very much of the mindset that... platforms like TikTok need to act as the vehicle to support their creativity and their artistic output in other ways. But there is a huge opportunity still and it's not too late to do it. It's because it might feel like it absolutely isn't too late. There's still a lot that...

Rachel Young

is being planned and there's still a lot that's in development that could be very, very exciting for artists moving forward. And yeah, I think it's still a really positive space for them to express themselves in.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you so much, Rachel. It's been so interesting talking about this. See you next week.

Rachel Young

Look us. See you next week. Looking forward to it. Bye.

Jakob Wredstrøm

You too. Bye.