Monetize Music Podcasts with Mitchell Ray Host of Real Music Nashville

Monetize Music Podcasts by more than just selling ads or merch. Mitchell Ray, host of Real Music Nashville talks about his strategy to Monetize Music Podcasts and escape the 9 to 5. We even dig into how much time it takes to create an episode and how to book guests. Have anxiety? Mitchell discusses how he got through social anxiety and improved his interviewing skills over time. I think you will love this episode.

Recorded using Welder. If you like the way this video looks and sounds you can sign up to Welder here - https://bit.ly/2YEAGYj

(00:00) - Podcast Creators Introduction
(02:57) - Mitchell Ray Real Music Nashville Introduction
(04:00) - Podcast enabled other opportunities
(04:30) - How to Book Podcast Guests
(04:50) - Real Music Nashville Microphone and recording equipment
(08:00) - Microphone Advice for beginner podcaster
(09:20) - Podcast Hosting
(10:15) - Overcoming Social Anxiety
(11:30) - Interviewing multiple guests
(12:03) - Podcast Editing
(14:28) - Podcast Music Licensing
(16:36) - Music Podcasts on Spotify
(17:27) - Monetizing podcasts through alternate means
(19:29) - How many hours per week does it take to create a podcast episode
(21:49) - How to avoid burnout
(23:15) - Real Music Nashville Monetization Strategy
(24:13) - Social Media Strategy
(31:36) - Tips for New Podcasters
(32:48) - Question for the community
(34:00) - Real Music Nashville Links and Contact info
(35:44) - Podcast Creator Outro and links

Find Real Music Nashville on all Podcast Apps - https://bit.ly/3tD3WKl
Youtube - https://bit.ly/3EdnSZt
Instagram - https://instagram.com/realmusicnashville

Hosting
Real Music Nashville is hosted on Podbean. Check out Podbean here - https://bit.ly/3A6MbFU
Podcast Creators is hosted on Spreaker. Check out Spreaker here - https://bit.ly/3yYgQ6X

Real Music Nashville Studio
Interface - Focusrite Clarett+ 8Pre https://amzn.to/2YGRHRE
Microphone - Shure SM58 https://amzn.to/3A6y1oh
Cloudlifter https://amzn.to/38Z0ZdB
Recording and Editing - Izotope https://www.izotope.com

Podcast Creator Studio
Rode Rodecaster pro - https://amzn.to/38Ve3Ri
Rode Podmic - https://amzn.to/2YHLftQ
Rode PSA1 Mic Stand - https://amzn.to/3hf5KnR
Sony A7C - https://amzn.to/2XfaHpY
Sony 24mm F1.4 Lens - https://amzn.to/3ngwQPl
Benro Aero 4 Tripod - https://amzn.to/3niiUV7
2x Elgato key light - https://amzn.to/3trC3VL
Elgato Game Cature 4k60 mk.2 - https://amzn.to/3tuFmLQ

Edited by:
Matt Johnston at
HalfMileDigital.com
Edited using Adobe Premiere - https://adobe.ly/3hnjddI

Original Music Composed By David Rosen - https://bit.ly/3E3dIdS

*Many of the links provided are affiliate links by which Indie Drop-In LLC will make a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Independent Podcast Creators.
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
How do you find and book musicalguests? How do you leverage your podcasts
influence in order to monetize in otherareas? Hello, and welcome to podcast
creators Podcasting advice from real podcasters.Today on the show, we have Mitchell
Ray, host of Real Music Nashville, and Mitchell goes into these topics and

(00:21):
so much more. This interview wasrecorded using Welder, So if you like
the way this looks and sounds,we'll put an affiliate link down in the
description box below. We'll also putall relevant links to everything we talk about
and everybody's show in the description boxbelow, so if you want to check
any of those out, it's reallyeasy to do. All right, let's
get onto it. It is mypleasure to welcome to the show Mitchell Ray,

(01:07):
host of Real Music Nashville. What'sgoing on, man? Not much,
man, just getting over that audiodebacle we just had. Oh my
gosh. You know now, I'mgonna have to cut this out because I
was trying to hide our deficiencies fromthe audience. No, no, man,
that's what podcastings about. It's aboutthe deficiencies. People want to hear
the mistakes. Hopefully, through thisinterview we talk about some of those mistakes

(01:30):
and really how to get through them, because I can imagine most podcasters are
not to the level or haven't gonethrough the things that you've gone through,
and that's what we're trying to kindof learn today. I'm gonna easy in
with softballs for a couple couple minutesand then we're gonna and then we're gonna

(01:52):
get into it. But maybe first, just tell us about Real Music Nashville,
Like, what is it? What'sit about? Yeah? Absolutely,
man um So Yeah, Real MusicNashville started out as a podcast specific to
Nashville about the artists that live andwork in Nashville. So the working artists
that are actually filling out the venuesand hum even if you're a small artist,

(02:17):
you know, big, small,everyone in between. That's who I
like to find and talk to.And yeah, it's started out that way,
and then through meeting these these differentpeople, I've just had different opportunities
arise and the platform has grown fromjust a podcast to U We do live

(02:38):
streams, We produce live podcasts umand we also book events as well.
Our first event that we've booked isat the Basement September one, around a
great very talented group of female guitarists, and um, it's going to be
a great time. That's amazing.So the podcast came first and Open These

(03:00):
Doors? Is that what happened?Yeah? Yeah, I did so.
Yeah, I just I was soI'm a lifelong musician, but I've been
doing construction for like the last tenyears, and that's sort of soul sucking,
you know, especially if for acreative type. And so I was
just trying to jump back into someIf I can't be a musician, how

(03:20):
can I be a part of themusic scene here in Nashville. I mean,
I've grown up here, I've grownup with it, So I just
wanted to be a part of itin some way. So I started the
podcast and honestly just started reaching outthrough dms and like sort of cold calling
people. You'd be really surprised whoactually responds, you know. Yeah,
well, I mean we're talking basedon something very similar. Yeah yeah.

(03:44):
Reddit. Yeah. So before wekind of dive into more of the podcast,
maybe we can start with sound likeMitchell segment, which I think is
always kind of funny because whenever youlook through Reddit threads, people are always
like showing pictures of microphones and otherpodcasters that they admire, going, what
is this like? How do Isound like them? Right? So tell

(04:06):
us how do we sound like Mitchell? We'll first you buy a whole bunch
of stuff off Amazon that you can'treally afford. Yes, the prime visa,
man, right, the Prime visa. Um No, it's um,
it's actually not that crazy of asetup. If I just wanted to show
you the stuff that I use forpodcasting, because then all you really need

(04:27):
is an interface and a microphone,and it's really setting up all the social
media and the website and the RSSfeed and building an audience. That's the
hard part. I can show youhow to I can show you how to
record a decent sounding podcast in notime. But here I'm gonna switch over
and you can just sort of seemy setup. Here is I run off

(04:51):
of extreme? Well, so Ihad to upgrade a whole bunch because we
started doing live streams and I neededit. I needed more inputs everything because
we're micing live bands. And soI got a couple of focus right Claire
at eight pres and linked linked thosetogether so I can get sixteen channels.
And so for podcasting, a bigissue was the microphone, So they're Joe

(05:15):
Rogan is the standard. Everyone wantsthat microphone. I forget the name of
it, but it's like four hundreddollars. Let's say you have four people
in the room for a podcast,and if you're interviewing a band, you
could have six people. You know, who knows. Those microphones are just
not affordable. So I looked intoSM fifty eights, which is the most

(05:36):
the standard for live performing, andI bought like four or five of those,
and then I bought a preamp,which is a cloudlifters, the one
I chose, and you can makeup for that loss in gain that you
would have with a more expensive microphone, you know, or if you were
going to use like a condenser insteadof a directional microphone. And so that's

(05:57):
sort of how I saved money onthat and being able to have as many
people in the room as I,you know, want, because I definitely
couldn't afford six four hundred dollars microphones. Yeah, but you know, the
question is is do you really evenneed four hundred dollars microphones? Because you
sound great? The SM fifty eightis is it's like you said, it's
a standard, Yeah, it's astandard and all you gotta. I mean,

(06:20):
I just threw a pop filter onit and it sounds pretty decent.
I don't you know. I've lookedat tons of YouTube videos comparing and maybe
I should even make one. I'lljust rent one of the microphones and see
what the difference is. But whenI'm listening to a podcast and I'm listening
to the product that I'm putting out, It's hard for me to really tell

(06:41):
a difference that that should cost anextra three hundred dollars. Yeah, and
does it really make a difference tosomebody listening in their car or while they're
jogging or whatever it is they're doing. You know, people listen to podcasts
when they're active, right right,So, I mean it's not an audio
file experience, but you want tomake sure your audio is clear and understandable

(07:06):
and you know, at least professional. Absolutely, So, like what I
would tell a podcaster that is tryingto get into the game, all you
really need is like a cheap focuswrite two channel interface and get your an
SM fifty eight and maybe maybe waituntil see how invested you are in it,

(07:26):
then get get a little preamp.You can buy the single cloudlifter pre
amps and that'll boost your gain up. And you know, run your audio
through. I don't want to necessarilyencourage people stealing, but run your You
can definitely bit torrent isotope. Notthat I did that, maybe I did
that, but and you can runyour audio through and get rid of your

(07:50):
your plosives and your ds er.Yeah. And once you've done that,
I mean you sound pretty professional.Yeah, And you just keep your eye
open for specials because there's all sortsof really handy tools that kind of come
out that you might be five bucksor ten bucks or or there's more and

(08:11):
more free ones that I see peoplebuilding websites for that you can upload your
audio too, and it kind ofcleans it up. And yeah, you
know there's hosting sites that are doingit. Now, what do you use
for your host? Pod being iswhat I use from my RSS feed?
Oh great, and you're happy withthat? Yeah? I mean I didn't
do a lot of shopping around,to be honest, because when I started

(08:33):
this, I didn't even think itwas gonna I didn't know if I was
going to keep doing it, youknow, So I think pod being,
I think pod being was like tenbucks a month or something, and so
I just stuck with them, andI've been pretty happy with it. They'll
so if you don't want to buya website and build it, or build
one yourself with Squarespace or something,pod Being has a little section where it's

(08:56):
like a mini website and it's allconnected and h it's a pretty nice streamlined
service, I think. But yeah, pod Being is what I use.
Yeah, great, I think alot of people use pod Being it.
They're one of the one of thebiggest. I don't know if they are
the biggest, but they're definitely oneof the biggest. So when you built
this podcast, you didn't know forsure if you were going to stick with

(09:18):
it. But I looked back atyour first episode. So one thing,
I don't want to interrupt myself becausethat's my annoying habit, but I went
back to look at your episodes,and your first episode was November first of
twenty twenty. I listened to thatand it's good, Like it's as good
I think as as your current stuff. Well, thank you, man,

(09:41):
I really appreciate that. Yeah,I think I've improved as a host because
I've said this on my podcast before. But like social anxiety has always been
a thing for me, so myinitial reaction to talking to someone is to
escape the conversation as fast as possible. And yeah, and podcasting has really

(10:03):
alleviated that for me, Like justhaving experienced I think I'm a little over
twenty episodes now with five in thebank, so being forced and locked into
a conversation, I think it hasreally helped out a lot. Yeah.
So your first episode was The WeirdSisters, if I remember correctly, Yeah,
and that that had to be anordeal because there's lots of them.

(10:28):
I mean, it wasn't just you. How did that whole whole thing go?
Explain how that happened? Yeah,so there's I mean, like I
said, I just started cold callingpeople on on Instagram, you know,
sliding into people's dms and seeing whowould respond, and you know, I
started checking out people's music and Iwas like, the Weird Sisters are fucking
awesome, which they you know,they still are, and they actually just

(10:48):
made a return. They were myfirst repeat guests, which was pretty cool.
But so I got them to comein and the studio look completely different
than it does now. It wasjust us four sitting in a circle with
you know, mic stands and stuff, and I don't know if you've seen
in the back, but actually havea proper little setup now, yeah,
it looks great. Lights. Yeah, you got some distance between the camera.

(11:11):
Yeah, and there that took somedeal. Now there's a table with
actual arms, like what you havethat you're using there, which is ado
and everything. But yeah, thatm that first That first episode was I
was riddled with anxiety because I'm trappedin a conversation with four people that I
have to lead, and so Ihave show notes that I make, but
I try to keep it. Itry to keep it loose, you know,

(11:35):
and so like an outline. Yeah, yeah, it's just like a
little outline sitting in front of you, just in case you run into something
where there's dead air, which younever want. Um. Yeah, then
you have talking points, so I'llmake a rough outline. But the thing
I've learned the most is to listento the person that's talking to you and
bounce off of what they're actually saying, and then go to the notes if

(11:56):
you need to. And so that'sum, I think that's something I've learned
the most front since that first podcast. So do you do any editing or
what happens after the podcast is recorded, like walk us through the um the
steps. So podcasting to me asthe podcast that I listen to, the

(12:18):
thing I love most about it isthe roughness, the rawness of it,
the the genuineness of it. Soso I try not to edit as much
as possible, but you have toso, I mean there are some sometimes
dead areas, or maybe you haveto go in and clean up your own

(12:39):
audio. It's all, you know, that's the type of thing you you
do as a podcaster. Maybe getsome mouth noises out of there, if
someone's breathing into a microphone while everyoneelse is talking, mute that, you
know, and then bring it back. So it's a process. You know,
You've got to add the intro,the outro. There's background music for
your introu and then you got toworry about licensing for that music. So

(13:03):
luckily I have been playing music forever, so I just had tracks that I
could that I own, So it'snot a big deal, but that's a
huge deal for other podcasters. Podcastingscan be a steep slope to climb.
Man, if you have no experienceand no background at all, especially yeah,
like if you're getting into this withno audio background, no video background,

(13:24):
no lighting background, no and noconversation skills. You're in. You're
in for a rough road, youknow. Yeah, so let's talk about
music licensing. I have this inmy show notes outline, but I didn't
know if I wanted to tackle it. But I'm gonna jump in since you
brought it up. You play littleclips from these musicians at the beginning,

(13:46):
and sometimes it just depends on where, but mostly in your you know,
after you do your intro, youplay their clip and then you kind of
get into it. How does thatwork with the musicians? Is it just
that you're playing kind of indie musiciansand they haven't licensed that content to any
distribution centers? Or how does thatwork? I get flagged all the time,

(14:07):
is how that works? Yeah?So on YouTube, I can't upload
anything there and ever hope to monetizeit. There's a process. I looked
into it very briefly, but butyeah, there's a process where you can
submit to YouTube like basically a synclicense, And for those that don't know,

(14:31):
a sync license is basically a contractbetween you and the artist giving you
permission to play their song on yourplatform and to monetize it, and so
that's something I've looked into. I'vethought about approaching a lawyer and getting the
and just a boilerplate sync license forthe artists that I'm bringing into sign saying

(14:52):
hey, I can put this onYouTube and make a little bit of money
for myself, because even though thisis a fun thing to do, it's
a lot of work. This isalmost a second job. I'd say it
is a second job. It's easilya second job. Have you ever thought
maybe just to cut the music outof your YouTube like the pod, like

(15:15):
the podcast version of your YouTube channel. I have thought about that, and
I don't want to. That's aboutit, you know, I want the
whole point is I want people tolisten to these people's music that I'm bringing
on the show because I believe inthem. You know, I don't have
anyone on who the music I don'tactually enjoy, you know. Yeah.

(15:39):
I always thought it was interesting whenSpotify got in the podcasting game, then
bought Anchor and now is kicking offthis collaboration between the two where you can
actually play any music on your podcastand it'll get licensed through Spotify. Interesting,
it doesn't fix your YouTube problem andit actually kind of breaks the whole

(16:02):
spirit of podcasting where it's open andRSS and this would only be on Spotify.
Yeah, but but I can seemusic related podcasts finding that pretty interesting
because you know, they want toplay the tracks and you know, it's
just a matter of time, Ithink before Apple and Spotify and those folks

(16:22):
run the same algorithms as YouTube totry to to find this stuff. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's interesting.I hadn't heard that, and um,
you know, hopefully YouTube adopts thatbecause I would love to, you
know, make a little money.I mean, that's why that's why I
started getting into because it became veryapparent quickly that the amount of work I
was putting into this was not goingto I was not going to receive a

(16:47):
monetary an equal monetary benefit on theother end. So then that's why I
started expanding into live streaming and puttingon live productions and and you know,
I'm even I want to keep doingthat. I want to you know,
I want to put on a festival. M I want to grow this as

(17:07):
big as it can, as bigas I can grow it, and I
want to make the artists money,and I want to make myself money along
the way. You know, everyoneeveryone says that, you know, it
can't be about the money. Youhave to love it and enjoy it.
Well, if you can't, ithas to be about the money at a
certain point, because I don't wantto do construction forever, you know,

(17:29):
so, so I have to makeI have to supplement the income and especially
from as expensive as the equipment canbe. You have to find a way
to make money or you're just goingto be doing this for fun. And
that's all great. You know somepeople do that, but that's not my
ultimate goal. My ultimate goal isto be able to sustain myself off of
this. Yeah, it's hard tounderstand how somebody can think both things in

(17:56):
my opinion, Like one is,I do it for fun, but yet
I want other people to listen toit. If you do it for fun,
right, there's really no reason torecord it. You're just hanging out
with some buddies, you know,having a good time. Like when you
press record to me, you're saying, I want other people to listen to
this, whether or not I makemoney on it. Building the audience is

(18:18):
the same thing, Like you eitherdecide to monetize that audience, or not
later, but building the audience isstill building the audience exactly. So what
do you think you spend time wiseweekly on the podcast? Like, if
you could sum it up, youthink it's bi weekly. So I put
the podcast out every other Monday,and so the podcast is usually about an

(18:44):
hour long. So that means Igot to sit there and listen to it
for an hour, and then Ihave to earmark everything that I want to
change. And so then after you'velistened to it, then you got to
go back through and edit, soI mean, and then you got to
add in the intro, and youhave to you know, record that intro
and put in the music, makeeverything fade correctly, master it correctly so

(19:08):
that everything's not like a million differentvolumes. Um. Yeah, but I
mean that's a long answer to ashort question. But uh, you know,
per episode, it's easily you know, three or four hours. I
would say, So let's let's digdeeper on that, because I think you're
missing a zero Oh yeah, right, yeah. How how much time do

(19:30):
you spend dming folks? Oh yeah, I'm trying to find guests, promoting
it on social media, talking tome and red it. Uh yeah,
I guess I was thinking of justthe editing aspect. But yeah, like
we said earlier, podcasting is anotherjob because it's not just the podcast,
it's uh yeah, everything you justsaid. And then you have to keep

(19:52):
your website up to date, youhave to you have to interact with people
on social media media or they'll forgetyou in an didn't yeh, And it
becomes all consuming. Really, Iwould say twenty four to seven if you're
gonna say it, like, ifyou're going to include social media and the
Internet and everything, and that's notthat's just a that's just from a podcaster's

(20:17):
point of view. Now, ifyou're trying to put on live streams with
people, you're trying to you're tryingto produce other people's podcasts because if you
have a space that you can dothat with, then you can monetize that
space. Um. So yeah,if I'm producing other people's podcasts, producing
live streams, uh and and alsotrying to put on live productions, it's

(20:37):
become such an overwhelming experience that burnoutis very very easy to approach. You
know, Yeah, how how areyou preventing burnout? It's um, I
don't know, men, because Ithink I'm preventing burnout is definitely already happening.

(21:00):
Um, but I just know thatif I stop, then I have
no more creative outlet. It's backto just construction, and there's no hope
and no escape. So that's whatthat's what keep There's no there's no hope
and no escape from the day jobif I stop. So that means I
have to be willing to do morethan anyone else and and and keep going.

(21:25):
And it's the people that keep goingthat actually succeed if you just stop
and just be like, well,this is my lot in life. And
that's a mentality. I guess Idon't really know, but I mean that
that's kind of how that's that's howI prevent burnout on myself. It's just
you know, if you stop,well then that's it. Yeah, that's
true. I mean you've built,You've taken time to build up to what

(21:47):
you have. If you stop,all that progress is gone. Like it
just your your podcast will go awayin a second. It doesn't. Even
though you know if you keep payingyour hosting or whatever, you can keep
it online. Without activity, peopleare just gonna move away. I mean,
they're just not gonna continue to listento the same episodes over and over

(22:10):
and over, so you have tokeep going, like there's no choice but
to keep going. What's your what'syour strategy? So I'm hearing these little
nuggets float by, right, You'relike, Okay, I got the live
streaming going on, I got I'mdoing other people's podcast production. Give me
the give me the grand plan forescaping the nine to five. Um,

(22:34):
I don't think podcasting is going tobe it. I think podcasting is the
the core. I think it's thecenter of the platform and it'll always be
there. It'll never go away,but it'll never be the main source of
income. So for me personally,it's it's building out into putting on live

(22:56):
productions, live streams, hosting podcasts, maybe career aiding a network. That's
I think the seed is the podcastand everything that grows around it will be
the escape plan for me. Ithink that makes sense. As far as
your social media, as far asyour social media output, where do you

(23:18):
spend the majority of your social mediatime? Oh, Instagram for sure,
which is confusing to me to seepeople on there with like five pictures and
they have five thousand followers. AndI've been at I've been at this for
almost a year now, plus fourmonths of prep time, you know,

(23:40):
trying to figure out what I wasdoing. And I have like three hundred
followers on Instagram, which is soI'm doing something wrong, I guess,
or the contents not good. Idon't really know, but it's it's discouraging
to see that audience not come inwhen you've put so much time and effort
into something. But the audience,i'd do you have. I have a

(24:00):
personal relationship with all of these people, and they are the network of musicians
in Nashville that are doing they arethey are pursuing music as a career.
That's what they're doing one hundred percentof the time. And so I may
not have a huge following, butI have a very tight network of people

(24:22):
that, you know, if Iif I wanted to have them on again,
or if I want to booth withthem for a show, I can
easily contact them and there's a personalrelationship there which the pod. That's one
thing the podcast has done for meis created personal relationships with people in the
music in the Nashville music scene,and that's how I've been able to move

(24:42):
into live production and find people thatwant to use my space to produce their
own podcast or I produce it forthem. But you know what I mean.
So yeah, I think, Yeah, instagrams where I spend the most
time, and then Facebook, Iget the most likes and views over there,

(25:03):
but it doesn't seem to translate anywhereelse. Same thing with Instagram though,
It all sort of stays in thoselittle spheres. And if I want
to try and build up the YouTubepage, which I am trying to do,
I can advertise all I want overthere for a live stream on YouTube,
and the people that come over,it's like I can see how many

(25:26):
people are seeing the post, andit's not even a fraction of how many
people actually go and make the jumpto YouTube to see the live stream.
So that's that's something I'm struggling withas well. One thing I've found,
and I'm not an expert in thisby an by any stretch of the imagination,
but what I've kind of learned isthat each channel for social media is

(25:49):
really its own audience, and thecontent that you build is really just for
them. So like I've had zerosuccess really trying to get Instagram following to
go do something on some other platformno matter what it is. Equally so
getting my podcast listeners, and I'vegot some really big podcasts, getting my

(26:14):
podcast listeners to even follow me onTwitter is like a mountain to climb.
What happens is is when I buildcontent just for the platform. And I'm
doing this right now on TikTok,on one of my shows, I build
it just for TikTok. I don'task them to do anything. I just
say, consume this content that Imake about you know, superheroes or whatever.

(26:37):
And all of a sudden, myTikTok is growing like crazy. I
just completely ignored follow my podcast,go check me out here, listen to
this interview. So my understanding ofsocial media is truly evolving. It's not
like it was a decade ago whereyou could post links and people would follow
them. That's interesting at work onYouTube because unlike YouTube is unlike TikTok or

(27:06):
Instagram or Facebook, where they sortof the social media aspect is not built
into YouTube. You know, youdon't, so you don't have a way
to really directly interact with the audience. You can put content out there for
them to consume. But the reasonI focus so much on the reason I'm
talking so much about YouTube, Iguess is because it is. It seems

(27:27):
like the best way to monetize anythingyou're putting out as a podcaster. YouTube
has a lot of benefits. It'sit's monetization platform is excellent. It does
a nice job of promoting you whenyou kind of hit the algorithm just right,
so you know, it'll show upon people's discover pages, it'll come

(27:47):
up at the end of their videos. What we've done on YouTube, and
again, you know whether it's rightor wrong, is we tried uploading our
podcast content. You know, wehave studio, we have cameras, we
you know, we spend a lotof time making one hour long videos,
and no one watched them right likewe would. We would get three minutes

(28:11):
of views and people would be likeno, yeah, like I'm not going
to watch people just sit here andtalk. So what we found is that
we build a segment into our showspecifically for YouTube. It's on the podcast
also, but but it's it's primarilydesigned to do YouTube and and it's YouTube

(28:32):
style content like top tens or topfives or Who's better than this or that?
Like things we can display and showand generate conversations with and that's helped
significantly. It changed the game,it changed the content we put up there.
And it kind of goes back tothat same social media thing where you
have to build the content for theplatform. Like repurposing content is a myth.

(28:59):
You can repurpose parts, but youalways get the best result when you
build it for the space you're tryingto share it too. That's at least
that's what I found. That's interesting. Um, yeah, yeah, that
that makes sense. And then andbut then that's you know, like we
were saying earlier, that's it's alreadya second job, and now you're talking

(29:23):
about building content for each individual platform. I mean, that's that's that's wild.
How does anyone have time for that? You don't. And that's and
that's and that's why most people focuson a single social media And that's why
I asked the question, because becausepeople try to master one, right,

(29:48):
Like you'll look at even gigantic podcastsand they'll have three hundred Twitter followers,
but they'll have one point two millionInstagram followers. Yeah, because they've just
committed to that. Yeah, Idon't even have well I have a Twitter,
but I don't even get on there. Man, I couldn't even tell
you how many people follow me.I don't use it at all. Twitter
is a different beast like Twitter.I don't know how you make content for

(30:11):
Twitter. I just I think you'rejust being annoying. Yeah, so I'm
pretty good at that, which iswhy I spend most of my time on
Twitter. So let's starry at allyou Twitter users out there. I was
just joking, Oh man, youcan find you can find Mitchell on Reddit,
so that if that tells you anything, just kidding, just kidding,

(30:33):
you find me too there, sonof a gun. Maybe we can try
to capture a couple of actionable pointsthat you've lived and learned that a new
podcaster or a podcaster that doesn't havea full year under their belt might have
not seen or heard yet. Yeah, if you're if you're just starting out,

(30:53):
man, Like, don't focus somuch on perfection. That sounds counterintuitive,
but like, I would have neverreleased my first episode because I was
so hell bent on it being perfectaudio quality because I have a background as
a sound engineer in the you know, a background in the audio world.

(31:17):
So I was so hell bent onmaking it super perfect and trying to add
gates to and to make everything soperfect. And if my wife hadn't been
like, look, just release something, I would have never started, you
know, So don't don't trip overyourself, you know, releasing that first
bit of content. Just get startedand you're going to learn these things along
the way as you keep improving.Yeah, you're you're gonna learn. I've

(31:41):
learned so much in this short amountof time I've been doing it. That's
amazing. What is one thing thatyou want to know that you haven't cracked
the code on? If you couldask the world the internet YouTube, what's
one question you would ask the community? Man a lot of marketing questions like

(32:06):
how how better? How better tomarket myself because either the content's bad or
I'm not tapping into an algorithm somewhere. And the conversation that we just had,
um, you know about making specificcontent for specific platforms. You know
that helped a lot. So justit would be a lot of little questions

(32:27):
really, not just one big one. Yeah, be a whole bunch of
marketing questions, SEO questions. Well, I commit to you that I will
find the people that know this andI will ask them on this on this
interview and we'll figure it out.Yeah, please do because I like to
know too. Yeah, we're goingto crack the code. Yeah, I
mean you can. You can spendall this time and money on a product,

(32:52):
but if you don't know how tomarket it, no one will ever
find it. But because there's toomany people doing it already. Yeah,
that is that is so true.So tell people how to find you,
give us the give us the details, man. Real Music Nashville dot com
is the website on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Real Music Nashville across the

(33:15):
board. I think Twitter might beReal Music nash I don't know, but
yeah, you can find me thereand on Instagram. I have a link
tree that links to everything that we'redoing right now. And we have our
first show coming up September one,and if you're in the Nashville area go
to my link tree. You canfind tickets there for that and we're hosting
another one in November and just yetcheck out our check out my content and

(33:38):
you'll see as we do more livestreams and live events, you'll see us
post them and follow the links.Please. Mitchell Ray, host of Real
Music Nashville, Amazing, amazing,and I just want to point out one
thing that I learned that I didn'tknow is that Nashville is not just country

(33:58):
music. Yeah, that's the pointof the show. Any music that,
any music that you think you're into, you will find on Real Music Nashville.
I poked around. You heard itat the beginning of this interview,
but you're hearing it at the endtoo. No matter what you're into,

(34:21):
you're gonna find it on Real MusicNashville. And I appreciate you being on
the show. Man. Thank youso much. Man, thanks so much
for having me. And hopefully thisbuilds into a network of podcasters. You
know, we're gonna try to builda knowledge base to help everyone. That's
the goal. That's awesome, man. Yeah, all right, sanks so

(34:42):
much for having me. Thank youso much to Mitchell Ray from Real Music
Nashville for coming on the show andteaching us all about what it's like to
run a music podcast and how tomonetize it and turn it into things like
live events and book aches. Itwas a lot of fun. I learned
a lot. Hopefully you also learneda lot. If you're an independent podcaster,
you should check out indie drop indot com ford slash Creators. We

(35:06):
have lots of opportunities for your podcastto be featured on one of indie drop
in shows, which will get moreears on your podcast, which is always
a great thing. If you likethis show and you like learning about podcasting,
hit that subscribe button so you don'tmiss any of our future episodes.
Of course, we'll put all thelinks to everything we talked about in the
show notes below. Thanks again forlistening to podcast creators, and we'll see

(35:30):
you on the next one. Byebye.