Marketing Monday Written by Jon for August 24th I've always felt some cognitive dissonance related to marketing. It's not really due to marketing itself; at a basic level, marketing is merely the act of presenting a message to an audience. This is a worthwhile profession since messages are meant to be shared, and it's even more worthwhile when the message being shared happens to be good music. So all that's wonderful. But the worthiness of marketing is complicated by two things. First, you've...
16 days ago • 4 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for August 17th I, like most people on this list, am a hobbyist musician. Before my wife and brother come at me for applying that label to myself, I'd like to clarify that I don't think being a hobbyist is a bad thing, like it means you're a second-class citizen or an un-evolved Pokémon or something. I think it's a normal, good thing to be. Most people – even people like you who read music marketing newsletters – don't do music as a full-time thing, and thank...
23 days ago • 3 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for August 10th I've soft-pitched paid communities over the past couple of weeks. My basic argument is that mainstream music success has become rarer than ever (see here), but also that small-scale music success has become more achievable than ever (see here). So it makes sense for many of you to launch some sort of paid community that will support your artistry at a small scale – something like a Patreon or a Substack, etc. But this doesn't make sense for...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for August 3rd Last week, I poured cold water on your hopes of ever becoming a superstar. Basically, I told you that you won't ever be famous, on the facts that: You are now competing against all the music that's ever been made, including the very best songs from every era. Pop culture has fragmented and there are very few mainstream distribution channels left by which to become famous. Maybe you'll prove me wrong (I hope you do, and I hope you'll invite me to...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for July 27th It's harder than ever to become a superstar. Let's be real, your odds have always been small. But in 2026, they're even smaller than ever, for at least two reasons. 1) You're competing against all the music that's ever been made. You will find this hard to believe, but for most of human history, we haven't been able to pull up and stream any song that's ever existed on our iPhones. Between the creation of the phonograph and the advent of the...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for July 20th Compared to an average person, I'm good at music. If you were to ask me what instruments I can play, I would tell you guitar, piano, and clarinet, and I would only be completely lying about the clarinet. I can sing in tune if you don't judge me with the ear of Jacob Collier, and I can clap on the beat as long as the beat is on the two and the four. Basically I'm good enough at music that I can semi-competently lead a four-chord worship song at a...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for June 29th "The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb." Those words are from Marshall McLuhan, spoken during a 1969 interview that he gave to Playboy magazine. It is just now dawning on me that the fact that McLuhan said this in Playboy magazine is more than a little ironic, but leaving that aside I'd say his point is both hyperbolic and directionally true. We severely...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Marketing Monday Written by Jon for June 22nd I'm back. Chances are you didn't notice I neglected to send this newsletter last week; if you did notice, chances are you either don't care or are my mom. But I feel bad anyway, the same way you feel bad when you skip a workout or die on level 255 in Pac-Man, because it was the first week this year in which I didn't send a newsletter and now 2026 is wasted. (Thankfully, Tom sent his weekly email as per usual to cover for me. Apparently he hates...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Two Story Tuesday Written by Tom for June 16 Hello again. (I wrote this earlier today to be posted elsewhere, and just edited it down for use in this newsletter because I don't have three hours to write another whole new thing today. I think the points in it apply to the music business as well, and hopefully you find something helpful somewhere. And if not, see you next week. Anyway, here we go...) Social Clubs are the dumbest things imaginable. In my city there are two that I know of: Soho...
3 months ago • 4 min read