Sofar Sounds x Salt Lick Incubator “If you’re an independent artist… the machine does not notice you”

Jim: “If you treat the artist as the customer in every show that you do everything else falls into place. If the artist feels like it’s their show and feels that from the first person who greets them right from the people who load in the gear, you can feel it in the audience. So maintaining a level of humble awareness that we’re there because of those artists who are willing to play these shows. That is the most important thing. I think if those artists feel that way then it’s a special gig for them, and that’s going to come across in the room.”

Starting then, what kind of challenges did you face?

Jim: “Doing tens of thousands of shows across hundreds of cities all around the world, there are all kinds of challenges from figuring things as mundane as loading to all kinds of stuff. Every show is a little bit different. Overall learning, I would say that snare drums and cement are still enemies. So, lots of snare drums, and lots of cement rooms, and I still don’t have a great answer for that. That’s something that hopefully one of these days there’ll be a solution for.”

”There are many Social Media channels through which you can share your music now. However, we encourage artists to get out in front of a real audience and develop their chops as performers”

That ties into my next question. Over COVID, where there were no live shows, bands and artists had to look at different ways of promoting the music. There have been bands jamming with each other, I’ve seen bands performing in cemeteries, I’ve seen all sorts of stuff going on over the past couple of years. Do you think in a kind of weird way it helped smaller artists to see that there was essentially a world there other than live shows that they could get their music to?

Liza: “Totally. I think that people were able to connect from their bedrooms and everyone needed that connection at that time. So I think a lot of artists that we’ve seen broke out of that time, they were there, everyone was hungry for connection and they were able to just do it from their homes. There wasn’t an expectation of huge productions or any of those things. It was just acoustic and raw and real. I think that’s what set the tone for this wave of folk-pop that’s big right now.

Going back to what we said earlier about Spotify and then just going down that rabbit hole of just clicking on a button and discovering a whole world of new artists without leaving the house, that’s probably where I started going down that rabbit hole of discovering new bands.”

Recently, you’ve done your first tour with three emerging artists. What challenges do you face with doing something like that, especially with emerging artists?

Liza: “For those artists if we hadn’t funded that tour that probably would have been cost-prohibitive just in terms of renting the van and getting places to stay. The nice part again was that Sofar Sounds was providing the audience and they were able to pull in some tickets as well.

Then it’s just about stamina. Do you have what it takes to hold on and be out there for a month and be sleeping on the blow-up mattresses meeting every single fan that comes to that show and then making sure to connect with them online after the show?

Are you comfortable showing them your merchandise and asking them for a follow on streaming platforms or social media? It’s all of those things. If that’s not a piece of you as an artist or your business, you’re going to have to think about other ways to connect, but we feel like it’s so, so important to get out there and do it.

Also get in your 10, 000 hours. Get your chops, learn to play at a rock climbing gym one day, and then at a dispensary the next day. Learning to play for those different crowds and those different vibes, I think is a great skill.”

You both come into this with a wealth of experience in the music industry. Do you feel like artists post-COVID are more open to trying something like playing in a dispensary or playing in somebody’s backyard than they kind of were pre-COVID where there was a record label cycle of tour, record, tour, record, tour, record? Do you think people are more open to try something different?

Liza: “I think DIY has become a very sexy term. It always was before but now you see artists announcing I’m a proud independent artist and I’m doing a DIY tour and who has a house where we can crash on your couch?”

Roger: “I also think COVID was a bit of a bushfire for small venues and wiped a bunch of them out. So people are probably more open just because they have to be because if you want to get out in front of people, you can’t start with a 500-seat venue. You got to get to a small place. I also think Liza’s right. I think there is this whole idea of a hybrid between being in your bedroom singing to someone and being in a brewery or someone’s home. It’s a very intimate setting, and this kind of intimate music often really works in there.

As you said, sometimes you play at a bar, and you can’t get anybody to shut up, and the noise is so loud that if you have subtle, nuanced music, it’s hard to get people to listen. But I think, you know, Tiny Habits has had real success. They opened for Gracie Abrams, and she has a raucous crowd who are there to rock they listen to her, Tiny Habits and often would sing the lyrics to them. This was much earlier in their career. So, I do think getting out in front of people is important. I think you can’t ignore either vector. You got to work the social media side and then you got to work the in-person, face-to-face side.”

” COVID was a bit of a bushfire for small venues and wiped a bunch of them out. So people are probably more open just because they have to be because if you want to get out in front of people, you can’t start with a 500-seat venue.”

Liza: “We have an artist named Kieran Rhodes, who’s part of The Incubator, and he’s been having some opening slots and dealing with the loud bars because it’s sort of a piano man thing. He opens with a song he wrote called “You’re Not Here to See Me” which is like just facing its head on and it hits every time.”

Jim: “I think for us, the impact that COVID had on us and our community was huge. We had 3000 artists who had shows scheduled that we had to cancel. We ended up paying them for those shows. We created a global artists fund because the majority of artists who play our shows make the majority of their money playing live, or teaching. We created an online listening room where a hundred per cent of the donations went to the artists and on average artists were making about 450 per show, which was great and just a testament to the Sofar Sounds audience community. We did those things to get through. Certainly, when it was time to get back to shows we saw increased demand on the artist side, on the host side, and folks who wanted to get involved in starting Sofar Sounds in their hometown.

I think there was just a real recognition of the importance of live music People missed it. That led to a lot of demand and interest in coming back on the artist side. I think there’s always been an interest in playing a room where you could be heard and where the audience is focusing on you as an artist and you’re given the space to tell a story. That’s always been the case, I think, for SoFfar shows and certainly was after COVID.”

Jim: “I think for us, the impact that COVID had on us and our community was huge. We had 3000 artists who had shows scheduled that we had to cancel. We ended up paying them for those shows. We created a global artists fund because the majority of artists who play our shows make the majority of their money playing live, or teaching. We created an online listening room where a hundred per cent of the donations went to the artists and on average artists were making about 450 per show, which was great and just a testament to the Sofar Sounds audience community. We did those things to get through. Certainly, when it was time to get back to shows we saw increased demand on the artist side, on the host side, and folks who wanted to get involved in starting Sofar Sounds in their hometown.

I think there was just a real recognition of the importance of live music, people missed it. That led to a lot of demand and interest in coming back on the artist side. I think there’s always been an interest in playing a room where you could be heard and where the audience is focusing on you as an artist and you’re given the space to tell a story. That’s always been the case, I think, for Sofar Sounds shows and certainly was after COVID.”

We talked about the Catch-22 situation earlier. What advice do you give an artist that’s struggling out there?

Roger: “I think some of the strongest advice we give artists is to write a lot of songs. Collaborate in your writing, and try to get the best possible songs. Just because you can sing beautifully or you can perform well, you put on a Spotify playlist and you’re sort of paying attention and you’re sort of not, does the song grab you and shake you and say, who is that artist?

I know in my experience, probably one out of 10 or 15 songs that come along, I will stop and say, “what is that?” so the song has to be strong because, the torrent of music pouring at us from every channel is so huge, even in TV series there, there’s so much licensed music embedded in the show.

So, the question is, can you write the strongest possible songs? I do think in a different era, a super-talented artist might get two or three records before they got their songs just right but I think in this day and age with so much music, including maybe some AI music, lead with your best stuff. That’s probably our strongest piece of advice.”

Jim: “It’s a great question. What Sofar is about is we fill the room for you as an artist. So you just show up and play. We don’t put any pressure expectations on you to sell any tickets to our shows. No one’s there with a clicker at the door. We are responsible for filling the rooms so you can focus on playing your music and building your fan base organically by playing out. I think that is a critical role that we hope to play out with thousands of artists because of that catch-22. Someone has got to make a bet on you.

Years ago, I was lucky enough to have a couple of residencies and that’s because a club owner or a booker was willing to give me that time to develop. I think what we’re doing with Sofar is trying to create those opportunities where, at least for these gigs, you could just focus on playing. You could play two or three Sofar shows in a week, play to different audiences and promote your headliner show on a Saturday night and to us. You’re not taking any tickets out of the room for us. That’s exactly the role that we want to play to help artists get to that point where they can sell a couple hundred tickets in their hometown or in new markets that they’re developing.”

I have a friend who works for a music college in the UK and we talked about how he had looked at different ways of getting people to work with music over COVID. One of the challenges he’d found was convincing parents that music’s an option for the children and it’s a career. What are your thoughts on that and for anybody wanting to go down that route?

Roger: “I’m not in the business of convincing anybody they ought to be a musician. I mean the cliche is most people in music will say, don’t do this unless you can’t think of anything else you’d rather do, because it’s hard and it can undermine your self-confidence and there are a lot of people who want to do it, and it’s a winner-takes-all-all field. Sadly, the people at the very top, I mean, the people at the very top in music do well, but it’s a shame in a way that that’s not a little more evenly distributed.

”I think there’s always been an interest in playing a room where you could be heard and where the audience is focusing on you as an artist and you’re given the space to tell a story”

So a beginning band who gets 200, 000 streams on Spotify, they really can’t pay their rent yet despite 200, 000 people listening to them, which feels pretty good. So, I’m not in the business of trying to advise people. What I’m in the business of is if someone is devoted and committed and has a lot of talent, then I want to give them the best possible chance of sustaining a career as an artist. Not necessarily becoming famous and, you know, throwing televisions out of hotel rooms, but just having a sustainable career where they get to write music and perform music and, and have that small impact on the world that beautiful music has.”

There’s been a lot of talk in the press recently about trying to break up the Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopoly on live events. I just wondered what your thoughts were on that.

Roger: “I think the music industry and I think this is not just Ticketmaster, Live Nation, major labels. It’s always been a winner-takes-all-all field. It’s been heavily concentrated with a few major players that have a lot of power. I can see the power that a major label or a major booking agent or a venue manager has, and, if it works for you, it’s a great thing but it’s hard because if you’re an independent artist and you don’t have any of those things, the machine does not notice you and it does not care about you, if anything, it might see you as a distraction. I think part of our role is sort of a Robin Hood or a David versus Goliath trying to help the indie artist who is just getting started. have a little more of a fighting chance in a world that has had a lot of concentrated power.

It’s the whole history of the industry from when it was born. I think we’re doing our small part. I hope we’re helping. We’re seeing some bands and artists start to have success. I think Tiny Habits is one of those artists who now is pretty clear that they can sustain a career as musicians. How big do they get? I don’t know. I’ve always felt like you don’t want to get too big then your life gets ruined. The world is littered with people who got too successful too fast. I almost think it better to be an artist who has a long sustained career that you can be proud of than to be someone who’s just blowing up and it’s way too much for them and it overwhelms them.”

I think of Tiny Habits as almost timeless. You could listen to it in 10 years and it not sound dated.

Roger: “It also feels like 10 or 20 years from now, they could still be relevant.

Like if you’re riding the latest pop trend of some sort of pop confection that gets played in clubs, that’s going to change a month later. People are going to want different sounds and different faces. Again, nothing wrong with that.

Music is not a homogeneous thing. It’s a lot of different things and it serves a lot of different purposes. You bury people to one kind of music and you get married to a different kind of music. You party to a different kind and you mourn or grieve the loss with a different kind of music.

So it’s all, it’s all very powerful and useful, but I think bands like Tiny Habits and many of the ones we’re working with, I think do have a timeless quality about them.”

Just to wrap up then, what are your ambitions or plans going forward?

Roger: “The tour was a pilot, a test case to see if a sustained Sofar tour would work both for the artists, for Sofar Sounds and for us. I think the evidence is it was successful. I think the artists got to know each other. They now have a kinship with one another. Every one of them saw a perceptible increase in Instagram followers. They sold a bunch of merch. They got to test their songs on a lot of audiences who didn’t know them. I think early in an artist’s career, they’re often playing for friends and family and that’s great but it’s really good to get in front of a bunch of people who don’t know you and love you already and see if they like it.

So I think it was a big success. So we’re already planning version two with another group of three artists. You talked about the catch-22, the biggest catch-22, these days, the catch-22 used to be that you didn’t have enough money to make an album. If you made an album, you couldn’t get it in a record store for anyone to buy it. You had to get big enough for that to happen. That’s gone.

Now you can record something and put it on Spotify or DSPs, and people can find it and you can certainly put it on TikTok and Instagram, but the catch-22 today is particularly sustaining a tour is more expensive so if you can’t fill a room of 100 people, how do you go on tour? How do you get in front of an audience? This solution feels like an excellent one where it delivers the audience. The artists don’t get paid much but as I say to them, the minute you can put 250 people in the seats, you’ll get paid more. And then you don’t need, you don’t need this model.”

” I can see the power that a major label or a major booking agent or a venue manager has, it’s a great thing but it’s hard because if you’re an independent artist and you don’t have any of those things, the machine does not care about you…”

Jim: “I’ve known Liza and Roger for years before when they were still at Berkeley. Roger wanted to create something that was focused on artist support and by doing that through the lens of a nonprofit, they’re just supporting artists at a critical time. At a time when artists are expected to do a lot on their own, tour support, promotional support and so on, artists are, for the most part, running their businesses at that stage. For Sofar, it’s just a natural fit. We operate in hundreds of cities. These artists want to get out and get on the road.

For us to present a solid tour with an amazing group of artists, they get to know each other while they’re out on the road and start forming together which comes across in the show too. So, for us, it’s just very natural. We’re doing thousands of shows too so we get the ability to stand these shows up pretty quickly and work with the artists and work with Liza and the team around where they want to go and then Salt Lick is also working to fill their days whether that’s with other opportunities that they can create in some of these cities.

It’s just a natural fit. We’re already talking about doing more and there are some other new Salt Lick grantee artists that I’ve seen, and I’m excited to get them on some of our shows. So for us, it’s just such a natural fit.

I think for Sofar I hope that we continue to grow things locally, so when we get things right, every city is uniquely its own and has its character and sense of self but every one of those cities feels connected to the broader Sofar community. Getting that balance right is a constant living, breathing challenge but that is what it’s about, such that when you go to a show in London or Boston or Kingston, Sydney, Australia, everyone should feel different and uniquely of that place but there are commonalities too that you feel connected to a bigger global community.”

For more information on Sofar Sounds visit the official website here. For more information on Salt Lick Incubator, visit their official website here.