Susan: What gave you the impetus? What made you do this?
Scott: When I was growing up, I was really into ragtime. That was actually the first type of music that really caught my attention. Which is kind of strange because most kids aren’t into ragtime. It’s not something you listen to when you’re in fourth grade or fifth grade. But I realized early on that since not too many people knew about ragtime or enjoyed the same kind of music that I did, the best way to reach them was to introduce them to this genre by taking songs that they all knew and turning them into ragtime.
So I would perform things like, “Stairway to Heaven,” as ragtime, or I’d play gangster rap songs as ragtime, piano, or jazz and eventually this went on the backburner when I was in college and I went to school for jazz and supported myself as a jazz pianist for a while.
But then once I discovered YouTube, I found out there was this really awesome community of people, musicians in particular, that were doing really creative things music. I realized that that was kind of the place that was a good home for this type of project.
Since then, let’s see, we put up our first, most recent Postmodern Jukebox incarnation in February and since then we’ve gotten about 25 million views on YouTube. We have managed to get on the billboard charts for jazz. We’ve been on Good Morning America, it’s just really exciting for us and we realized that there’s a big demand for covers that are done in creative ways.
Susan: How have you marketed? Is it simply a great idea and beautifully executed with authenticity? I have to say, I know you want to get out of your apartment but there’s something about it that works for now, but have you done anything special on the marketing?
Scott: Well, we have kind of a different business model than I think most people in the music industry execute. The traditional model is built on record sales. Basically, the record industry started when they started mass producing records and found a way to market them. Artists would go into the studio, they’d release an album, and then they’d go tour promote sales of that album. That model doesn’t really work anymore in the digital age because now there’s streaming music sites. You can duplicate mp3s very easily.
So there’s kind of a new model that we’ve been fortunate enough to come up through, which is based on crowdfunding. The idea is instead of selling music, you’re selling an experience. You’re selling access and it allows you to connect directly with your fans. Your fans really want to support you. They want to help you do more of what they love, so this kind of cuts out the middle man. It’s almost like you’re bringing them along for the ride essentially.
Susan: I’ve watched people struggle with how to determine gift levels in their crowdsourcing campaigns. How did you decide what levels would probably work best for you and how have they worked?
Scott: Well it’s all trial and error. The good thing, the beautiful thing about crowdfunding is people will tell you what they want. So I’d say my best advice is to, if you’re running a crowdfunding campaign, I would come up with some cursory ideas but then expect to refine them later on. You might find that certain gifts just really aren’t that enticing to donors and other ones are.
If you keep an open ear, I think that they’ll tell you what they want to get. I can totally empathize with that though, because it is very difficult. The first time I did a crowdfunding campaign, I used Kickstarter to fund a pretty wacky project. It was a Motown tribute to Nickleback. So we took all Nickelback’s music and made it into Motown. If you can imagine, that’s kind of a goofy thing to come up with
Susan: Very niche market.
Scott: Very niche market. Exactly. Exactly. The other side of it is that people are usually so happy to be part of those campaigns that it’s not necessarily about the gifts that incentivize it. There are people that are just actually very generous and they really want to help artists succeed.
Susan: You’ve obviously figured out key pieces of engagement. Tell me how it is that you have managed to connect with your audience so meaningfully that they do want to support you.
Scott: Well I think part of it is the fact that we do film in our living room. There’s nothing slick about us. It’s pretty much what you see is what you get. We’ve all known each other, our band is very close. The singer is my girlfriend. The bassist and drummer, I’ve known them for years. So it’s just us sharing what we do with the world and we determined that the best way to do putting out these videos, these YouTube videos because there’s something that comes through in video, video of a live performance especially, that doesn’t come through with a slick music video or a very slickly produced studio album.
So we keep things rough, we keep things very real and I think that initially that was something that made people kind of gravitate towards us. The idea that these are just musicians doing what they do and essentially inviting the viewer into our living room to watch what we do.
From there we’ve expanded upon that. I’ve been introducing a lot of educational material on my website, postmodernjukebox.com. I decided the best way to help the next generation of musicians was not just giving them advice on how to play certain things or giving them sheet music, but also telling them how I’m going about building a career.
Susan: That’s really helpful because you get a lot of people who speak about it theoretically, but you’re actually sending down bread crumbs as you’re going, saying you know what this is working. Come along.
Scott: Yeah, it’s a laboratory. That’s kind of the fun part about it, too. There’s no rules. You try what works and you try something out and if it works you keep it. If not, you find another way to make it work. That’s what we’ve been really doing.
Susan: Your business model, obviously it’s just begun, your crowdsourcing. Well actually, I don’t know. How far along are you? Are you posting your updates and where you’re getting to, or are you not posting?
Scott: We just launched a Patreon campaign. Patreon is this really great website developed by Jack Conte, who is a very successful internet musician as well. The idea is it’s kind of like a Kickstarter, but instead of trying to raise a lump sum for one big project, it’s for reoccurring projects. It’s for our YouTube videos or people that release weekly content. We just started it and it’s been incredibly successful with us right out the gate. We’ve been able to raise over $1,000 per video. The number keeps going up.
Susan: So I see you’re 13.98 and that’s, I see, per music video. I was wondering about that. So you’ve decided how many videos are in your series and you’re allocating each amount of money that comes in gets split up among videos. Is that right?
Scott: It basically means that we get that money every time that we come out with a new video, essentially.
Susan: Wow, that’s great. So…
Scott: Instead of…Right, right. What that does is that provides us a little bit of stability. Before that, we really just sold mp3s and that was what would raise money to do these videos. But now, this kind of new model…mp3 sales, I don’t know where they’re going to be in five years.
Susan: Yeah, for sure.
Scott: Nowadays you can stream music anytime of the day. So it’s good that there’s this new model that’s coming up. Patreon is a great website for that. I recommend it for anybody that’s creating regular content on YouTube. For other musicians, I also recommend another site called Stageit, which is kind of an online performance space. Basically it’s a concert venue but it all takes place online. You play directly for your fanbase and they’ll tip you. It’s another brilliant, just brilliant model. It’s like busking but it’s on the internet for potentially tens of thousands of people.
Susan: That’s extraordinary. I’ve never heard of that. It’s called Stages, S-T-A-G-E-S?
Scott: Stageit. It’s S-T-A-G-E-I-T.
Susan: I-T. Stageit.
Scott: Yeah.
Susan: That’s great. That’s wonderful. So then, the business model really is you’re moving away from mp3s and into this crowdfunding, crowdsourcing model. Does everything that you’ve been doing, have you been selling sheet music as well? I was trying to figure out you’re business model beforehand, thinking, well I guess he’s driving them to website and selling sheet music, so…
Scott: Well I’ll give you kind of the simple description of the business model. Really the crowdfunding stuff like Patreon, that’s the budget to create the work, essentially. T hen from there we will publicize the work by sending it to blogs or active media sites and also posting to social media, obviously. Then selling the music on a site like iTunes or Bandcamp, which is probably my favorite place to sell. In addition to that, I’ll write blog post about it, about the video that has a little bit of extras. Maybe I’ll include a chord chart for people that want to play it at home, I’ll give behind-the-scenes kind of stuff too.
On my site, I sell instructional piano chords of how to turn songs, I call it ragtime-ify. Again, it’s another niche, you know, turning pop songs into ragtime, but it’s been great. I’ve been getting lots of e-mails of that have been using and it and just enjoying. It’s kind of the way that I learned to play the piano and it’s a little bit different from the traditional approach and I think there’s a lot of people that the traditional approach doesn’t really work for them. They want to play the music that’s interesting to them, so it’s a way to make it more fun.
Basically, that’s the cycle. Then we’ll play a live show on Stageit and basically do our live performances that we do. We do a lot of events, obviously, in real life, not just on the internet. Then we just start the cycle again. We’ll have a crowdfunding campaign to do a new work. Then just repeat everything. That’s the model going forward. That’s the most efficient way to create new work and market it and distribute it.
Susan: I totally agree and I love the fact, too, that you even, in your about you section, talk about your reluctant love affair with modern music, how it…
Scott: Yeah.
Susan: And that’s good that you’re [inaudible 00:13:38]. I think it’s your authenticity and your honesty that really works for you.
Scott: Totally. I think that that’s really crucial and in the music business, you see that there’s a shift away from the old rockstar paradigm that dominated music where artists were supposed to be seen as on a pedestal or unapproachable or something like that. The new move that this new crowdfunding model dictates is being completely open and transparent with your fans. Basically giving them access to the behind the scenes, your though process, to your ideas. I think that they really appreciate that. I think that for a while, the music industry wasn’t very genuine and I think that now there’s a return to those kinds of roots.
Susan: It was very, lots of handlers involved in imposing things and making things look like other things and I think you’re right. It’s a very hard time but at least the power is being returned to the musicians because for so long it’s been in the hands of, I mean, everybody made money but the musicians, except for a very few.
Scott: Right.
Susan: So it’s harder and it requires the musicians to be more things and to think more strategically, but if they can do that, they have much greater control over their careers.
Scott: Sure. I think that musicians that want to be able to branch out as much as they want artistically, I think the best way to do that is to have a really solid footing on business, essentially. Right now, this internet kind of stuff, YouTube, Stageit, Patreon, everything, that’s the crux of it now. So I’m a little bit disappointed that, I guess there are some college programs that are starting to focus on those things, but I’m always surprised when I meet musicians in the real world that aren’t really familiar with how these things work. A lot of them are just amazing, incredible musicians and I just want to show them what to do so they can have all this success because they definitely could. It’s all how you present yourself.
Susan: It’s not taught in schools and it’s certainly something we’ve seen across the board, even in our own industry. We are shocked at how the branding strategies that are being put forward in colleges and universities are from 40 years ago and they don’t…
Scott: Yeah.
Susan: …really take into account how the world has shifted and how we think now and the expectations of the relationship that customers expect to have with the brand. I mean, you get that.
Scott: Sure.
Susan: You completely understand that you are in a relationship with the brand and anybody who plans to do any crowdsourcing at all has to understand that this is a participatory; we are in the age of participation.
Scott: Yes. Definitely. The artist-fan relationship, and I believe you can extend that to the brand-customer relationship, that’s crucial. You have to have that. Without that, you have no business model. You have to have a good relationship with your customer base or your fan base.
Susan: And it has to be on, you know, I look at older models and they just want to keep doing what they’ve always done because the customers would always just show up. If you have a store, for example, they would simply wander in because they need something. Well, now, in that set of circumstances, your customer has made up their mind. 70 percent of their mind is already made up before they ever pick up the phone or walk into your store.
Scott: Right, yeah.
Susan: So if you’re not helping them, and in your case you’re being very helpful on your blog. You give people real insight. You give other artists real insight into the process you’re going through and how to make a living. I mean that builds up a lot of trust with the people who can buy from you.
Scott: Yeah. I hope so, definitely. I think it’s great. I think I love being on the forefront of these things, too. I like being involved in the creation of the rule book for this new model. There’s not really any rules to it yet. YouTube is still kind of in its infancy. Nobody knows what will happen but right now, there’s so many promising things on crowdsourcing front and crowdfunding front. I’m really happy to be able to share that knowledge with other musicians who might not have access to that. I know so many people that have gone to college for music or gone to college for business and they’re not really familiar with these new, game-changing technologies that are coming out.
Susan: Yeah. You also do just, I think, a beautiful job of storytelling. Even when I’m not a fan necessarily of the song, I find your videos deeply compelling.
Scott: Thank you.
Susan: I really do. The musicianship is so, so good. You have such an amazing collective. You can call me a puddlehead. I just think Puddles is amazing.
Scott: Puddles is amazing. Yeah, yeah.
Susan: For those who don’t know, there’s a great video on postmodernjukebox.com that you have to watch it’s Puddles, the seven foot sad clown singing “Royals”, the Lorde song and it’s just wonderful. All of the music is wonderful. Your whole team is so talented. There’s some real thought into the story that you’re trying, I know that’s the basis of any musicianship, but even as a collective, the dynamic is very minimalist and understated. But you’ve got real story going on, even with the little bit of props that you bring and the….
Scott: Yeah.
Susan: …little bit of staging. It’s very thoughtful, not overdone. But it’s very real
Scott: Right. Well, we base it on, we think of entertainment in the past. You know, you would see variety shows where there’d be a musical performance. It’s not all these laser lights. It’s not pyrotechnics or anything like that. They’re usually pretty simple things, but everything means something and we realized that just by subtle things we can get all kinds of people talking about it.
It’s funny, we have one video where our bassist is wearing a cut-off t-shirt and he’s wearing a newsboy cap and he looks a little bit like Sylvester Stallone in that, just from a certain angle. He’s playing an upright bass, but everybody things it’s a cello on the internet, so every comment, like, “Look at Sylvester Stallone playing the cello.” Something like the tiniest detail and you’ll have thousands of people commenting on something like that. We realized that just those little things that does create a story, brings something of interest to people. Because it’s not all fast camera shots and just one big wide shot. It gives people time to use their imagination and come up with stories.
Susan: That’s really true. It’s funny how we have all of this technology at our disposal and the thing that it has proven to us is that we still want to use it to get back to basics
Scott: Yeah. I know. It’s very ironic, but I definitely believe that to be true.
Susan: Is there anything else you wanted to add, Scott?
Scott: I’m trying to think. I don’t think I have anything. These are all great questions and I think you definitely get it. You understand how this works. I guess, let me think. I guess I would just reiterate that all these strategies that I use that are tailor-made for musicians and artists that want to connect with their fans, they can be used for any brand really. Your customer base will appreciate you for it.
Susan: You’re so on the money.
Scott: Yeah. There are just so many ways that you can engage your customer base and it doesn’t have to be giveaways or things like that. It can just be more personal things, having great customer service, checking in with people and things, it only takes a couple seconds to make sure that people are happy. You’ll have a customer for life that way.
Susan: And asking people what they want.
Scott: Yeah. Definitely, yeah. And they will tell you, which is great.
Susan: They will tell you. And giving them opportunity to participate however they can, certainly, you know people value what they help create and the more opportunities you give them to participate, the stronger they will become your advocates. You won’t have to control things to get the word out. They’ll unleash themselves and do wonders for you.
Scott: Definitely, definitely. I always think about it with the fans that contribute to what I’m doing. I think crowdfunding, it’s a little bit like artistic equity. They’re not getting a share in your profits or anything like that, but they’re getting the share in what you’re creating. They’re contributing ideas; they’re contributing more than just the dollars. It’s more about the kind of involvement that they’re having in the finished product that you create.
Susan: They know they’re making it possible. That gives them a total buy-in.
Scott: Definitely.
Susan: That’s amazing. Well you do amazing work, Scott. I really appreciate you taking the time. It’s just, I can’t wait to see your next video. I will watch everything you do. I think you’re really smart and really, really just ahead of the curve and destined for great things.
Scott: Well thank you so much, Susan. I really appreciate that. And I guess I’ll see you on YouTube then.
Susan: You sure will. It’s been fun, thanks so much.