A conversation with Lauren Kasper who is the director of label management at The Orchard in Nashville. If you aren’t familiar with The Orchard, it is the leading music distribution company for independent labels operating in over 40 markets worldwide.
On today’s show we’ll talk how to authentically connect with your fans, how important metadata is, and why having a plan for how you are going to release your music can help you get those coveted playlists and other marketing opportunities.
TRANSCRIPT
Rachel: Hello everyone, I’m Rachel Hurley from Sweetheart PUB and this week on the Music Rookie podcast is a conversation with Lauren Casper who is the director of label management at The Orchard in Nashville. If you aren’t familiar with The Orchard, it is the leading music distribution company for independent labels operating in over 40 markets worldwide. She’s also a good friend of mine. We serendipitously met at Goner Fest in Memphis, a few years back, and then ended up working on several album campaigns together.
On today’s show we’ll talk how to authentically connect with your fans, how important metadata is, and why having a plan for how you are going to release your music can help you get those coveted playlists and other marketing opportunities. So let’s get started.
Rachel: First of all, just want to thank you for helping me out with this . I really appreciate it. We’ve worked together in the past on different projects. You at the orchard and me as the publicist and we have a few projects we’re coming up to work on together. And I know we’ve kind of had some conversations before about what your kind of responsibilities are and I’ve
gotten some good information out of that. And I’m still unclear about some information. So I’m just going to dive in and ask you to tell us what you do at The Orchard and what a regular day is like for you.
Lauren: Sure.
So, I am our director of Nashville label management. So that means I oversee our roster of clients that are based here, basically in the South, they have a range.
We work with folks in New Orleans in Alabama. We have accounts here based in Nashville, and I even have one in LA that’s split between LA and Texas. So it’s a broad range of labels. I am basically the main point of contact for all of these labels, with their distributor, which is The Orchard
so for a typical day, I’m doing things like receiving everybody’s release schedule, helping them fix their or work on their marketing plans and getting ready, you know, advising on strategy for releasing music. Our job at the orchard is to distribute that music that the labels and artists create to stores both digital and physical.
So that also means, you know, advising on. Physical, you know, needs and sales and pricing and merchandising and all the things that it takes to set up, you know, to sell physical records at stores across the country and around the world, as well as digital. So helping labels come up with the strategy for getting on playlists
on services like Spotify or Apple music or Amazon. So it is a very diverse role where I’m looking at everything from, you know, marketing and sales strategy, to accounting and finance and reading back like statements to labels and helping them understand their business. I do reviews with labels where we look at their business year over year.
So I really touch every aspect of a labels business in this role. And it’s, it’s my job to guide them and help develop them and grow their business as a partner to them. In distribution. So that’s a very important relationship between the label and the distributor. So, you know, just like a romantic relationship, you have to keep it healthy.
You have to have mutual goals. You have to achieve success together because you know, labels can leave distribution and go to others. So it’s being a teacher, it’s being a business partner and a lot of relationship management every day, just serving the needs of our labels and making sure that they’re happy and that their businesses are healthy and successful.
Rachel: Let’s Talk about what that partnership looks like and how it is made. I don’t think that I’m quite clear on exactly who pays who what the partnership looks like. Who chooses, who, you know, you just said that the label can go to another distributor. But you also have to like decide to work with that label.
And a lot of labels want to work with you.
Lauren: Well, every distributor has different sort of levels of service that they offer. So a big part, if I think maybe the best way to explain this as if, as if I was a label looking for distribution. So, you know, I’m a label that maybe has four staff and we release 10 albums a year, right?
So you’re looking for a distributor that offers you the resources that you need to be the most successful. So The Orchard is, you know, the largest independent distributor by market share. We serve, you know, thousands of labels, but we have, you know, certain services that we offer that are different from others.
So in-house advertising or strong relationships with all of the different digital service providers and a global sales team that is working releases all around the globe. We also do a lot of technical stuff like YouTube management and partnership. And so it’s really about as a label, you’re looking for the best fit at a distributor that serves what you need.
So, you know, if you’re a label of a certain size, The Orchard is great because we have so many resources that are things that can be complex for you as a small label, like accounting processing analytics meaning like looking at the data, coming back from streaming services and understanding it. So we spend a lot of our Orchard services have we’re really focused on technology that serves our labels so that they have a lot of access to tools on demand without the need of another person helping them.
If you are a smaller label, maybe it’s just one person you’re starting it in your bedroom. And you’ve got like your music and a friend’s music. And you’re just trying to put it out there into the world and like, You know, get it up on SoundCloud and like, just make it available. You might want to look more towards somebody like a Tunecore or a CD baby where it’s an upfront fee.
You pay at one time, they’re just pipes to get your music out there. And then they offer a lot of services that are dedicated to like the DIY label or artists. The Orchard is a little more advanced, right? Like we. Have spent a lot invested a lot into technology and global teams and global distribution of physical goods and digital goods.
So , the way it works, when you come to a company like The Orchard you’re usually charged a fee of your revenue. So that depends on your business, on the size of your business, your annual revenue. And that’s where the partnership opportunity comes in. Right? Like, We’re looking for people that we can partner.
And we take that percentage off the top of their revenue of the sales that we help them achieve. So we want to look for people that are going to have a healthy amount of sales and streams and revenue coming in that our fee is worth the investment. We’ve made an employee time and services, and, you know, to some extent, sometimes we offer advances
Almost like getting a record deal, right? Like you are looking for somebody who is going to offer you what you need on a contractual terms that are agreeable to your company. So, you know, when we’re looking at accounts, we have to think about long-term like, does this label of a long term.
Path, are we going to make revenue on this is our, is it going to be worth our fee to take them on? So working with a person like me, I’m an expert. So I’m only gonna work labels that have what we call frontline releases. So big new releases that actually take a lot of work and effort and are likely to be.
Profitable like winners, things that are going to be in the front line. That’s not everything wins and it takes a lot of work. But so yeah, it’s, it’s really like, there’s so many different levels of distributor and everybody now it is, there are so many different independent artists with so many different kinds of needs.
It’s really just about matching, like where you’re at as a business. With a distributor partner that can help you either grow into the next level, support your needs right now, or like help you manage, you know, an unwieldy business that now you need to be able to tap into radio or. Larger marketing or other services like PR and you know, promo and other things like that.
So The Orchard is very big and there are many others in between our size, since we’re the biggest fish. There’s many from the bottom up and there’s a lot to choose from. So you should just always be looking for things that are what suit your business needs at like the greatest cost benefit for you.
There always comes a point where like, as you grow, you might have to pay more for some of these things because you just need more support than before. And that’s really where like leveling up from a Tunecore or a smaller distributor
Rachel: But you don’t work with any independent artists. You just work with labels. Correct?
Lauren: Well, I’d only work with labels. We typically don’t sign artists directly because an artist has many more needs than a label would Maybe, they need somebody to market their releases. They need press. And those generally are just hired out. If we work with an artist directly, they’re usually signed to our artists services division, which is basically like you’re going to pay a slightly higher fee.
But we provide a lot of the services that a label typically would do for you. So that’s artwork and design and manufacturing of your physical goods. It’s hiring a press person. It’s hiring a radio person coming up with your marketing ideas. Those are all the things that like a label typically would do for an artist.
Whereas a distributor would just. Ultimately at the end of the day, our job is to take your product from you and deliver it to stores and help itself at stores. All of those other things are things that help it sell, but we, as a distributor, don’t typically touch it. So there’s a different level there.
We do work with artists in that sense, and it’s really cool and interesting that artists can now really own their career in that way and own their copyright and just. Pay people to do the label services for them, but you know, it’s all on a case by case basis. It depends. The Orchard is so large. We can be so flexible in a lot of different ways.
Rachel: Let’s talk about what you see as kind of the performance indicators that one of your campaigns is successful. Are you guys just basing success off the number of albums sold or streams is a totally monetary, or do you have other things that you look at to show that a campaign has been a success?
Lauren: So we are very much driven by industry performance indicators, which are mostly, you know, sales and streaming figures.
We look to an industry resource here in the States called Nielsen. You might remember them as Soundscan. They have a new product called Music Connect and that’s where all of the different digital retailers and physical retailers report. Scans and sales and streams to this national company. And then that’s the benchmark for most music industry people on the recorded music side for success.
So, you know, when we get a number one record, that’s a win that’s success. But at another level too, I’m always looking at moments of success for even smaller labels, even if they’re not going to sell, you know, platinum records. I think I’m looking at growth in sales, from release to release. I’m looking at.
You know, growth in streaming or foreign artists getting them perhaps on more editorial playlist so that their audience can grow social growth. If you’re setting goals for each release and then achieving those goals that to me is successful. And I think it’s important to remember that there’s a certain level of success for every artist or every label.
And it’s, you’re not always going to be able to get the number one record, but. Is it fun when you have like a number one song at radio and a number one album sold that week? Like that can be a really great thing, but that is, you know, in independent music, more uncommon than common. So you have to find those other things that are, is this, does this make me successful?
And I think that ultimately comes down to like, are you in the green or in the red.
Rachel: So, are you not working directly with many musicians? You’re more working directly with the labels.
Lauren: Yeah, I mostly just interact with the people at the label. I’ll meet with artists. I love artists. I love helping advise them on, like, how they should use their socials to promote their music.
You know, we’re leaned on for all kinds of things like that. But the majority of my day to day is spent dealing with salespeople at the labels product managers at the labels presidents of the labels, because those are our clients and it’s their job to work with artist management who more often interacts with the artist.
Rachel: So if you do get a chance to interact with the artists and they ask you for a piece of advice, do you have a go-to piece that you give.
Lauren: Yeah, I think because my experience is so wrapped up into digital service providers or DSPs as we call them like Spotify, Apple music, Amazon, I’m often asked by those artists, like, what should I be doing to make Spotify happy?
So what I often tell artists is, you know, make sure that you are authentically just talking about your music and giving your fans an opportunity to go experience it on whatever platform that they use. So whatever the current best practices are right now, whether it’s using Spotify’s canvas feature, and then making sure you’re sharing that out to socials so that Spotify can see you using their tools and engaging with their platform.
That also benefits you because now your fans are like, Ooh, this is cool. I’m going to go click and listen to the song on Spotify. Those types of things are often what we advise artists on most often. So our job is to keep abreast of what all the different service providers are wanting to see from artists.
At any one point on their socials and then feeding that back to labels and therefore management. So that as a part of everybody’s album campaigns, they can build those moments into their marketing. So I most often advise artists to. Don’t worry about being on playlists too much, because it’s totally not in your control, you know, make sure you’re talking about your music and also just make sure that you’re interacting with your communities so that none of these services can ignore you.
That should be your goal, like building a huge fan base so that your fan base is powerful. And if you ask them to go like your music on Spotify or pre add your album on Apple music, they do it. And if you can build that, then all of those services need you because they want people on their platforms.
They want people listening to music and subscribing to their services. And ultimately those people are fans. So the artist has a lot, actually quite a lot of power. If they have a deep, strong connection to their fan base and can get their fans to do stuff. Like if I post a pre-save are people pre saving?
If they are then that triggers all kinds of bells and whistles off on the other end and that gets you featuring and promotion. So building that connection with your fans in a digital space, especially now is so important. I just recommend artists, make sure you maintain those relationships, make sure you’re building your email list, make sure you’re growing your socials and like engaging with your fans and communication so that when you need that moment, when you need their help, they are ready to help you.
And you know, you have like a strong foundation
Rachel: and I was reading something today that I was going to ask you about, about metadata in songs. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Lauren: Yeah. Metadata in general just means the information that is attached to the audio files. Metadata can include artists, name, track name, there’s something called an ISR RC, which is an identifier that’s assigned to the sound recording or the master.
That means like, This sound recording is this audio file. And wherever it lives on the internet, you know, that ISR C belongs to this song. And the other important identifier that’s in metadata is called the UPC, which you might know from like the grocery store and the barcode, right? That’s a UPC, well, that exists in a digital space too.
And these are important things that. Services and companies like the performing rights organizations, like C SAC, BMI, and ASCAP as well as sound exchange and all of these different services, we all rely on these. Codes that help us identify what song is this? Like? What audio file is this? There can be many versions of a song.
We recorded versions, the album version, the acoustic version. All of those are going to have a different ISR RC, and that helps all of these stores just identify what the product is be in cases of fraudulent activity. Somebody might take your sound recording and put a different artist’s name on it and our attract name on it.
So like, because we know what that ISRC is, and someone has mapped that to a release, whether that came from the distributor that went to Apple music that went to Spotify. Those stores scanned it. These days, everybody uses a fingerprinting technology, which means they actually map the sound recording and are able to then scan the rest of any other release in their database and find like, Hey, this sound recording is exactly the same as this sound recording.
And so that’s why registering, your metadata, registering your music. Digitally by uploading it through a distributor like us that sends it out to like all the societies and everywhere else gives you a record of that. And that’s, you know, how on YouTube, when you upload a song that somebody else’s that’s how YouTube knows that that doesn’t belong to you.
We registered that with Universal Music Group. So metadata is so important in actually claiming. Who this music belongs to, who are the rights holders, who should be getting paid for that? And in the digital music world, we’re using that metadata to identify that and catalog it. So that’s why it’s really, really, really important.
Like if you were uploading your music through a Tunecore or a distributor like us, that you have all of the information, including performers on the songs who played drums on this track, we. Aggregate all of that into the metadata around the song. And then therefore it can show up when you ask Alexa, you know, Hey, play me the new Katy Perry track or play me in songs this drummer played on, right?
Metadata is key. And it’s really important that you keep track of your own metadata. So make sure you have a spreadsheet that has all of your ISR CS, and you, you might need that one day. You might want to come back to that. And also just make sure that whenever you upload it, that you give all the right information because otherwise a songwriter might not get paid when it gets streamed, you might not get paid when it gets streamed.
You know, you might not, you might be missing out on revenue. And from our perspective of, like, somebody sending that metadata, we’ve all experienced trying to import a track in iTunes. And then it shows up with like one underscore track, one underscore name, like how annoying is that? You just want it to look right.
So that’s what metadata ultimately is. And it’s a big, scary word, but it really just means like, what’s the information that we are assigning to them, the song.
Rachel: So let’s wrap this up so you can move on with your night. I know I’ve already taken up an hour of your time. The last thing I wanted to ask is, do you have something that you see that musicians do
and you’re like, that’s a huge mistake.
Lauren: I definitely always feel terrible for artists a little bit when they, maybe, are too precious with sitting on their music. If you’re an independent artist and you have a batch of songs and you have four or five songs. We live in a world where that’s very easy to get it out to your fans.
So making your fans wait months and months for new music, because you want to like accrue and have a full thematic album, and then you’re going to pitch that album and you’re going to like get a record deal. It just feels like. A lot of artists these days should just be releasing more music more frequently.
I think if you look at the young artists who are, like, seeing success in new and unique ways outside of the old school structure of music, they are just more connected with their fans. It’s more about that online relationship between fan and artist and they are releasing music so that those fans keep feeling something from them every couple of weeks, you know, they’re like staying in their lives, staying in their feed by releasing a new song every once in a while, every six weeks or so is I think don’t wait.
Like, don’t wait for permission from somebody to do something. If you are an independent artist and you’re in control of your music and you have four or five songs that you really like, and why not just release them as singles, leading into an EP and just let the music build at digital services, let the songs live and have a life.
And. Get your fans engaged and happy and listening. I think if you don’t and you just go stagnant for like a whole year before you put out another album, 2020, in case in point, you don’t know what’s going to happen in a year, like release the songs now while you still like them and want to talk about them, it is important to have press and radio and things moving together so that it can be successful.
I absolutely believe in that 100% and often a lot of the time, my job is to go back to labels and go, great. This is a great song, but what is your plan? Because of course that’s what. Digital services want to know as well. How are you going to build an audience for this song? What’s your plan? How’s it going to be advertised and marketed and well, I hear it on the radio and will I see it in a movie?
Those are important things. I’m not saying that you’re not building plans around releasing new songs. You absolutely should know how you’re going to market this on socials. You know, what visuals are you going to have for this song? Are you going to have your press person premiere it, all of those things still apply.
I just think that sometimes. We put too much into the album campaign, in an era where people are just, like, wanting a quick hit of a song, you know, a track, new music, more often from the artists that they love. And that year can be just such a long wait now, you know, like it’s not like it used to be where you would really anticipate it.
Like that’s why you see so many artists these days putting out a record and then like, Six months later, they might release, like, an EP of acoustic songs or remixes of this, because really your, your attention span is gone after a couple of months, you forgot that record came out. So it’s like, it’s just building on it.
It’s just like, maybe it’s not necessarily about releasing music, but like. Engaging digitally, whether that’s live streaming or putting up performance videos of yourself or doing more than even music, like not letting yourself get caught up on like professionalism in those things. If you’re an independent artist, I think people get worried about the look and feel.
And while some artists who have various, strong aesthetics, if the choice is between sitting on your hands or producing something for your fans to engage with, produce something for your fans to engage with. And don’t worry about, if it, if it’s not perfect enough, because they just want to see you. They just want to have that moment with you, and then they’re going to want it again later.
Like, and if you’re not in front of them, then their attention span is going to go somewhere else. So I think it’s that hesitation that I advise artists against. Like, don’t be afraid to try things. Don’t be afraid to try something new on the internet that you haven’t done before, whether that’s hosting a live stream or, you know, doing a takeover of somebody’s account or whatever that might be.
Don’t be afraid of those tools because those tools help you build that fan engagement, help you build that experience and a fan that shows up for your live stream on YouTube and watches. The whole thing. That’s a fan that will come to your show when they come, when you eventually get to go to their town, look to those young, those young musicians who are, like, starting out on Tik Tok and then becoming global sensations.
It’s because they’re not afraid to try something different. Those things can be hard for any, any level of musician to do because they just want to play or write but you do have to develop that you do have to have a rapport with your fans and, and some of that means you need to kind of become your own little,
you know, movie star, and do things that people like will have an attachment to you outside of music. Okay.
Rachel: And I’ll wrap this up with circling back to what you were saying earlier about what the plan is for a song. I did see that in a client’s Spotify pitch today the label had pitched the marketing spend.
In that pitch and like a bunch of stuff that they were going to do for the song. But I don’t know if you guys do that or not, but I thought it was an interesting piece. Like when you’re going internally to pitch, if you can say, you know, there’s a $4,000 ad spend on this and X, Y
Lauren: absolutely. That is a lot of what, like I said, I do as.
The Orchard and distribution has worked with our labels on understanding what that, what we would call retail marketing strategy. As that includes advertising the song on pivot links, smart URLs call them landing pages. But those links that show you each of the different stores, that information is really important to the digital service providers.
Like I said before, They’re being pitched every song that comes out every Friday or every day of the week. And there is a lot of competition. So when we include information like, Hey, this has got a $5,000 ad spend pointing to Spotify, or this has a. You know, $30,000 digital ad spend plus radio by this well-known radio promoter and press by sweetheart PR or trying to think of what else, like They’re appearing on Colbert.
All of those things matter because if you’re looking at, like, a service, they only have so many spots on their stores on playlists. They have to pick the winners. So, how do you know if it’s going to be a winner? Well, if it’s going to be in people’s faces and on TV or on the radio, good chance. People like the song.
So it’s really about showcasing. Like ultimately even if you don’t have a lot of advertising budget, even if you’re not, if you’re not hiring those things, if you can just try to explain in a simplified way. How am I going to build an audience for this song? Is that a contest on my social media? Is it cool and unique music videos, and I’m going to put out, or I’m going to make cool graphics for my fans or an Instagram filter, anything that kind of shows.
Well, how are you marketing this song? How is this song going to get to your fans and an audience or grow from your fan base is important to share with distributors. There’s two sides for every DSP. There’s the editorial end that is like, we only really care about the music where the we’re supposed to be the experts in our genre
and then there’s the business teams and the business teams are the ones that are looking out for. Is this record going to get people to subscribe to my service. If I do something special with this artist, like an interview, or if we co-market this release with a billboard or something like that.
Is that going to affect the popularity of my service. So you have to think with both brains, you have to think, how do I please the music nerds here? How do I make them understand what the song’s about? And it’s so cool and the moods can fit so many things and the texture of the sound and the tambour of the instruments.
That is editorial. That’s like, I love the song. I’m going to program the song. That’s going to fit really good in this playlist. The business teams are the ones. Those things balance each other out in the sense that like, even if a song isn’t super great, or like, you know, if this artist is a certain size and the campaign is going to be a certain thing, they can kind of battle each other for, Hey, we need to support this because the plan behind this, the, the reach this song might have, or the artists, the reach this artist has is big.
And that’s why you’ll sometimes see that. And I do recommend that. Any artist who’s pitching their music really think about, you know, how do you succinctly say that? How do you try to kind of distill down a little bit of what’s happening on both ends there? Like, why is the song meaningful, but also like what’s going to happen with it after you put it out.
And why should a service take a slot for your song that could have gone to another song that is going to be on the radio? You have to play that game. You have to compete. And kind of sucks, but it’s not just what’s cool music anymore, but it never was like that before.
Rachel: Well, there’s just so much cool music, right?
There’s so, I mean, so much, really good music that the services want to pick winners. And if you can show that you’ve got a game plan to make it a winner, then they’re much more likely
Lauren: It’s just, you also have to help those. I mean, I can’t imagine having to be an editor and pick. What you’re going to play every day.
It must be challenging.
Rachel: I want to interview one of those curators and see how it works. Cause we think they do. They’re just sitting there listening to music, going. Yeah. Like that. I like that. And yeah, let’s put that in there. Oh, I love my job, but I know it can’t be that way. Right?
Lauren: Yeah. I can only I’ve I’ve worked with many of those curators in my previous jobs and it’s.
As stressful as any of our jobs. Plus at the end of the day, it takes a lot of work. It really does. And like I said, you can’t rely on a playlist because there is. So there are so many factors there and so much competition that you need to have a plan of. How do I get people to listen to this song?
How am I going to get fans to show up to a live stream? Like you, you have to answer those questions yourselves because. Relying on you know, Dusek Mokena and like getting a playlist is so uncontrollable, but if you work with a great press PR person who can get you, that press, that, that editors reading so that you’re in their mind.
As they see your next song come up in their pitch tool. They might be more likely to listen to it, then they’ll go, Oh, I read that. I saw that article in Rolling Stone oh, I read about this artist. Like I should make sure that they’re represented in my world because those editors of course are supposed to be experts of their genre space, that community of music.
And so ultimately you just want to become like, Known in your community. And if you are creating culture in your music, genre or space, then you are going to become something that those services can’t ignore because it’s their job to represent what is happening in some of these genres spaces. And what’s the cool and new hip thing to do.
So, you know, artists work hard, labels got to work hard. Distributors got to work hard. Radio and press people have to work hard. And we’re all of our job is to amplify the voice and the message of the artists and the label. And that like having a really clear, strong signal from the start is the only way it makes it through that big game of telephone of all the different people like yourself and I that have to carry on that message.
Down a tin can down to the next person on the other end. It can be challenging. So, yeah. Being really strong in your foundation, having your plan and then being really good to all of the people on your team will really help
Rachel: that’s right. Be nice to the people on your team. Anyway, I will wrap this up. Thank you so much for chatting with me.
I really appreciate it was great to catch up. Yeah, it’s so great to hear from you and I hope people learn something and you know, thanks for having me on your show.
Rachel: And there you have it. Thanks again to Lauren for taking the time to chat with me this week.
And thank you for listening to the show this week! If you’re interested in more insider information, just like this, be sure to check out our weekly newsletter. You can sign up on sweetheart pub.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast to be notified when the next one comes out.
If you’ve got a specific question. Feel free to tweet me or shoot me an email. I’m not hard to find. Now. Go do something useful.
