u/Radiant-Orchid-9474

I’ll go first!

All time favorite is probably Sandstone Peak / Backbone trail, which is the highest peak in the Santa Monica mountains. Looks like Hawaii in the spring and you can see clear out to the Channel Islands with jetliner views of the mountain range and ocean. A bit far out but worth the drive.

Close second is Grizzly Flats Trailhead (use Google Maps, the Apple Maps one is wrong) in Angeles National Forest with views out for dozens of miles across the mountains.

And a less dramatic / more convenient hike that’s still gorgeous is Wildwood Canyon in Burbank, with 360 degree views with the Angeles National Forest on one side and the valley out to the hollywood hills out to the distant ocean on the other.

What are your favorites??

Will make this concise:

The good: car gets a lot of compliments, great ride quality, very quiet inside, feels like a proper luxury car in the $100k range. Love love love driving it.

The bad: infotainment system is super glitchy and phone doesn’t always connect (better now than at beginning), tire noise isn’t as low as the Tesla we have but you can replace the tires or you get used to it.

The ugly: the whole motherboard died a few months in, the car stuttered to a stop a few time and then turned into a brick. Had to get it towed. Took weeks to put a new brain in it. On the bright side they gave me a higher trim as a loaner! Ha! Been about 8 months and no more problems since the replacement.

Overall favorite car I’ve ever had, and if a trip to the shop as they work out the bugs isn’t the end of the world for you, I think it’s the best car for the price. If you want perfect convenience, maybe wait until it’s out longer and they work the bugs out. I personally don’t care about perfect convenience, I’d rather have a car I love driving every day.

What’s your experience been?

I figured I’d share what I learned from this experience in case others find it useful.

1. You can make it profitable if people are really connecting with the music, you release routinely (every 4-6 weeks), and you reinvest everything you make. But be patient. Even with a really hot project, It will take at least 6-12 months to get to monthly return on ad spend.

2. Spotify’s algorithm works off repeat listeners. Whatever else you’ve heard about saves and playlist ads, it’s not actually how it works. You need Spotify’s algorithm to kick in to become profitable. If you’re running ads, below 2.0 on a song in the last 28 days won’t work, you ideally want above 2.3 once you’ve been running it for 2-4 weeks.

3. You want a really low Cost Per Click (Cost Per Result technically, running an engagement campaign) for this to work. Below 40 cents you’ll get some momentum but not profitable. Below 30 cents you’ve got a shot. Below 20-25 cents you’ve got something you should invest in and below 15 cents you’ve got something you can really push that’s hot. That’s for tier 1 countries, assuming a $50 a day budget just to have a benchmark. Lower budgets are easier to keep the cost per click low, and higher budgets will be higher cost per click, which is normal.

4. You HAVE TO release routinely, every 4-6 weeks tops. If you can do more often, that’s better. We eventually got up to every other week.

5. when you see a certain type of song working, do more of that. When you see a certain type of song not working, no matter how much you like it, do less of that.

6. remember that once you get a streaming catalog to a certain point, you can sell it or get advances - you don’t have to self fund forever.

7. the songs have to be so good they’re addictive. There are a million songs a week released. If they aren’t so good that the person can’t live without them, the listener will forget about the songs and won’t really become a fan. You need to make fans for this to work.

8. we started at $50 a day and scaled up to a few hundred a day and still made it profitable. Every time we jumped the budget, it took a few months for the revenue to catch up and become profitable again.

9. enjoy the ride and appreciate every win! Set short term goals and celebrate every milestone! It’s a long haul, make it fun!

Feel free to ask any questions, happy to try to help.

I hear all the time “there’s no money in streaming” and wanted to share my personal experience and some data some of you might find useful. I currently have a project making $20k+ per month from streaming, primarily Spotify. I’ve also been writing and producing music professionally for decade, so I had years to accumulate many skill sets (writing, producing, mixing, marketing, etc).

For every success I’ve had, I’ve had a lot more failures. There are no overnight successes.

Short answer - there’s a TON of money in streaming. Don’t believe me? Look at how many private equity firms and investors are jumping into the space over the last 5-10 years.

There’s also a ton of competition, and hands in the pie, and you have to know what you’re doing.

So here is what you should know:

1. With a million songs a week being currently released, no music, no matter how good it is, will just “find its audience”. That’s a thing of the past. You need to be able to market your own music

2. all marketing resources are on the Internet. There is no “secret sauce” that’s entirely gate-kept. There are a LOT of details about these marketing techniques that can be mastered, but nothing that can’t be learned with hard work. For me it was meta ads, for others sync, for others organic vitality. Find what works for you.

3. streaming is a recurring revenue source, which means its actual value is 3-10x what it makes per year. So you won’t see a return immediately, but you’re building equity in a song catalog that can be worth a lot. Just because you’re spending more than you’re making short term doesn’t mean you’re failing.

4. the playing field is leveled. Major label artists have no secret advantages anymore. They do however, have a lot of money to throw at songs and teams that know how to use the money correctly (sometimes).

5. you need great music AND marketing for something to work. It needs to be so good it’s addictive, and very professionally mixed and mastered. Even if you release once a week, you’re competing with a million songs every time you release.

Feel free to ask any questions, will try to help!
Also feel free to share your own experiences.

I’ve seen a scam going around of someone who supposedly works a major label (Colombia Records is a common one) reaching out, then asking you if you believe in yourself and want to invest in yourself, want to work with Colombia records etc.

ANY REAL LABEL WILL BE OFFERING YOU MONEY, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

No label will ever ask you for money out of your own pocket. No label will ever ask you to match their investment (you out $50k, we’ll put $50k).

Also if you don’t have a few hundred thousand monthly listeners, or more likely over a million, there’s no way these big labels are reaching out.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.

Share experiences here if you’ve had them so others know what to look for.

I’ve seen a scam going around of someone who supposedly works a major label (Colombia Records is a common one) reaching out, then asking you if you believe in yourself and want to invest in yourself, want to work with Colombia records etc.

ANY REAL LABEL WILL BE OFFERING YOU MONEY, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

No label will ever ask you for money out of your own pocket. No label will ever ask you to match their investment (you out $50k, we’ll put $50k).

Also if you don’t have a few hundred thousand monthly listeners, or more likely over a million, there’s no way these big labels are reaching out.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.

Share experiences here if you’ve had them so others know what to look for.

I’ve done sync at a high level for almost a decade and get asked a lot what types of sync fees to expect.

There are a lot of variables, especially how big the artist is. But here is a rough outline of what to expect as an indie artist with a good sync agency negotiating for you. Fees can go higher or lower than these numbers, but this is an average range. The more leverage (success) you have, the higher fees you can get.

To clarify, this is for sync licenses where one-off licenses are negotiated, NOT library music that involves low quality music at mass scale with licensing prices advertised on the website.

TV (IN-SHOW)

Reality shows: $500-$1500

Netflix: $1500-$7000

Other streaming services:
$5k-$20k

Network (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC):
$5k-$20k

TRAILERS (TV or Movies)
$30k-$80k, can be higher for big movies.

ADS
Online only:
$10k-$50k per year (can renew)

All media including broadcast in one major region (North America, Europe, etc):
$50k-$100k per year

All Media worldwide:
$80k-$150k per year

TV promos (where a network advertised their own upcoming shows on their own network). These are billed weekly.
$3k-$10k per week, can run from 1 week to 12 weeks or more.

Feel free to ask any questions!

Every distributor has different payout rates negotiated with Spotify etc, so they pay different amounts, varying up to 20%. Highly recommend releasing through different distributors and finding which pays out the most for your most popular countries, as it may differ by country (company 1 may pay higher for country a streams, while company 2 may pay higher for country b streams). Feel free to comment below if you’ve ran any of these tests and what the results were. Make sure it’s for the same countries you’re comparing, as of course a song that’s popular in the US will pay significantly more than a song popular in Indonesia.