Marketing Monday Written by Jon for December 8th

First of all...

I wanted to give a quick update on last week's call for help with Spotify data analysis. Here's the email I sent on Friday, if you missed it.

I've been going through the responses (I should finish over the next day or so), but for now I just wanted to say 1) I'm positive we'll be able to get this project done, just based on the volume of replies, and 2) thanks so much to everyone who took the time to respond.

There are many terrible things about the internet. But one of the great things is the opportunity for real, two-way relationships between people who've never met. To be honest, I find it rather easy to treat this as a one-way relationship: I say things (and occasionally sell them) and you receive them. But that unidirectional flow isn't really how life should work.

I have a wise old friend who told me that, when he bought a home in the United States after living for forty-odd years in Africa, one of the first things he did was go around and ask his neighbors for favors: "Can I borrow your lawnmower?" or "Do you happen to have an extra couple of eggs for a recipe?"

This sort of mindset is pretty opposed to American individualism. By asking for favors, you admit you're not self-sufficient; you show that you need other people. When you need people, you're at their mercy.

Thankfully, most people are mostly merciful (especially when the stakes are only an egg or two), and by giving them the chance to show it, you build trust and connection. This is how healthy communities work: People need each other and so they trust each other.

At least that's what my friend told me. Personally, when I moved this summer, I bought my own lawnmower, and I haven't asked anyone for a single egg.

So I don't want to over-moralize things. I wasn't thinking about any of this when I asked for help on Friday. It's only as I've been reading through some of your responses this morning that these things have been on my mind. I'm (very clearly) not self-sufficient, and whatever delusions I might half-consciously live under, I need you guys for more than just an audience to preach to.

So I just wanted to say thank you.

Okay. That took longer than I was planning.

But I think I've still got time to tackle the other thing that was on my mind today, which actually dovetails kind of nicely with the theme above:

More than ever, I think the key to succeeding as an artist in the world of AI is to be human.

Like most of the rest of the online world, I've been thinking a lot about AI recently. Today, rather than rehash all of the reasons why I think it's a net-negative for art, I want to lay out an argument for optimism.

Because I genuinely am optimistic – not that AI will "empower your art!" or "supercharge your productivity as an artist!" or something buzzy like that, but that in a world where AI is everywhere, human connection will become starkly precious.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

The first one is from my email inbox.

I am less likely than ever to open marketing emails from people or brands I only kind of know. But I am more likely than ever to read the emails that I know are from real people.

I just joined a list where the writer signs off with this:

For all I know, the guy could be lying. Maybe he even wrote those sentences and generated the fingerprint with AI. But I found the mark compelling enough that I've read each of his last three emails all the way through, and I even debated adding something similar to my own newsletters.

On the other hand, when an email appears as if it might've been AI-generated, I find myself quick to dismiss it.

(I'm going to take a small text section to rant about the sort of marketing emails I don't open. By-and-large, these are the ones that use one-line copywriting. You know what I'm talking about: the format where marketers write one sharp, staccato line at a time because they know their audience is made up of stupid third-graders with bad eyes who can only comprehend (or see) one sentence at a time. Like this:
​
​Hey Jon!

I just found the best strategy ever to get music streams.

It works every time.

...But most artists don't even know about it.

It's not your fault though.

Because the strategy is actually a "secret"...

A "secret" I only found after kidnapping Daniel Ek, smuggling him to Peru, and tickling him until he talked.

I'm just kidding.

About Peru haha.

Anyway here's the thing.

I'm literally giving away the secret.

You read that right...

Giving away the secret.

Giving. Away. The. Secret.

Givingawaythesecret!!

All you need to do to learn it?

Wire $8,000 dollars to my bank in Bolivia.

Seriously. That's it.

This is literally a steal.

(Daniel Ek told me through his tears the secret costs 16 billion.)

So I almost can't believe I'm doing this.

But I can believe it.

Because I'm doing it.

Because I care about giving indie artists a fair chance.

The only catch?

I can only tell you the secret until 12:02 tonight.

After that I'm gonna give myself amnesia with one of those little flashlight things from Men In Black.

Haha.

(I'm not joking.)

So wire me the money now if you want to know.

Rooting for you!

– Mark Eter

PS – Want a hint about the secret? It's bot streams.

I don't mean to hate on my fellow marketers too much, and actually there are plenty of people I like who send emails that use something close to a one-line format more honestly and to much better effect than I've illustrated above. But for the most part – and especially when I join a new list from someone who hasn't yet earned my trust – these sorts of emails tempt me immediately toward the delete button.)

The second example comes from my own music fandom.

I've recently found a couple new artists that I like.

One is an indie-pop group called In Color. I got an ad for their song "Lighter" while I happened to have my sound turned on on Instagram. I listened to it and I thought it was kind of good, so I clicked through and saved it to a Spotify playlist.

But I won't lie: The ad video was pretty generic. It was the lead singer sitting in some cool location while lip-syncing the song. The song itself is well-produced and catchy, but in exactly the way you'd expect an indie pop song to be well-produced and catchy. It's tasteful, not weird. And my first thought was: "Is there any chance this is an AI song by an AI band?"

That's where my head is at. I haven't listened to the song since first hearing it.

The other artist is a songwriter who goes by Medium Build. I clicked on a live performance of the song "White Male Privilege" from a suggested YouTube video. Both the song and performance are over the top; like, the guy has a cool voice, but he sounds as if he could desperately use a lozenge, and while his songwriting is harshly emotive, it's also about as unsubtle as a toddler banging on a table.

I had no doubt for even a second that it was real.

I went on to watch like six other videos from him, and I've been streaming a bunch of his stuff on Spotify. The humanness of it hooked me.

Don't get me wrong. There are a few things I'm not saying.

First, I'm not saying that the way I interact with music is the way everyone interacts with music. I know plenty of people who not only don't care if music is AI-generated, they actually think AI-generated music is cool. In other words, AI is a selling point for them, not a drawback.

But it won't be any sort of unique selling point for long. We're only at the beginning of this. A kid born today will never know a world in which humans are required to make music. In other words, the novelty of AI-generated art will wear off, but the volume of AI-generated art will only increase. Drastically.

I'm optimistic that this will make most people hungrier for human-made art.

Second, I'm not saying that the only way to connect with people will be to make weird-bad, singer-songwriter music.

You won't have to be Medium Build. You won't even have to be Bob Dylan. You'll still be able to make down-the-middle pop music and get it heard. But to do that, you'll have to work harder at showing you're a person beyond the music.

Taylor Swift is the ultimate example of this. Anyone who thinks her brand isn't the most impressive media universe outside of Marvel is lying to themselves; anyone who thinks her most recent album is good is lying to themselves, too. I love how Pitchfork put it: "Showgirl sounds like much of the pop music you have heard over the past 10 years and throughout your lifetime; it asks that this time, you listen more closely, because this is Taylor Swift."

They wrote that line to hate on her music, but it's also a backhanded compliment to the value of the relationships she's built. If you make music in a genre where human touch is less obvious (and truthfully this will soon be most genres), then you'll need to follow Taylor's lead in your own small way.

You might be annoyed as you recognize that, as with all relationships, this sort of thing will take work.

Relationships aren't easy.

You'll need to be consistent. You'll need to show up again and again, and not just over some short period of time. You'll need to be present as an artist over years and years if you want to create real depth.

You'll need to be vulnerable. You'll have to bare your soul in all its weirdness, which is another way of saying you'll have to put yourself at the mercy of other people's judgment. The good news is that people are mostly merciful, though, at least about small things like eggs and songs.

You'll need to give and receive. The artists that make things work over the next years won't go it alone; they'll give to and get from their fans.

TL;DR – if you're worried about AI, try asking your neighbor for an egg.

– Jon

Jon Anderson Founder @ Two Story Media Surprisingly Good @ Super Smash Bros on N64

P.S. – Last week's email was about the things I've seen change in the music marketing world over the last year. You can read it here.