Pivoting In A World Without Live Music

A conversation with Trae Vedder of Sixthman

Aug 17, 2020

We’re Rachel Hurley and Frank Keith IV, co-owners of the music publicity firm Sweetheart PR. Once a week, we’ll publish a new edition of My Manager, where we’ll share actionable advice on all facets of the music industry. We said last week was going to be our final free newsletter, but we have decided to include one more - and here’s why:

Last week we had a lot of subscription sign-ups (thanks to everyone who subscribed!). It was still not as high of a percentage as we expected compared to the number of free subscribers we have. In discussing these numbers over the weekend, it occurred to us that we had not laid out clearly the full benefit of subscribing. And that’s on us.

Being a part of the My Manager Network means that not only will you learn an amazing array of information about how to be a more successful musician, but it extends YOUR OWN network. If you’ve listened to the podcasts - you know that the people we have spoken to are all people that we have long-term relationships with and just about all of them have explained how to reach them. They are basically offering to consult with anyone that subscribes to the newsletter. This means that if you were to contact them and say, ‘Hey! I heard you on the My Manager Newsletter! Was hoping you could advise me on XYZ…” that they will!

If we were going to give you one piece of advice that you can apply to anything you do in life, it is this:

Hustle will always beat talent.

If you are waiting for something to happen for you instead of making things happen and taking every opportunity to increase your network, then you’re going to be waiting a long time. There are too many musicians out there reaching out to industry folks that can help them (like the people we’ve interviewed) for them to have time to come look for you. We think we are providing a HUGE opportunity for our subscribers at a price point that everyone can afford. The only real question is: Do you see the opportunity sitting right in front of you?

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming...

This week on the My Manager Podcast is a conversation with Trae Vedder, who is the talent buyer for Sixthman - a very cool destination event company that books a lot of the music cruises you’ve probably heard about like KESHA'S WEIRD & WONDERFUL RAINBOW RIDE, THE OUTLAW COUNTRY CRUISE, THE KISS KRUISE, THE ROCK BOAT, THE MELISSA ETHERIDGE CRUISE - and that’s just to name a few. Obviously, the 2020 pandemic has put most of their events out of service in the near-term, but they are still working with artists creating live streams and other content. We also discussed lots of tips for how artists can be using this downtime to their advantage and about the Topeka.live platform that allows artists including Jason Isbell, Molly Tuttle, John & Lilly Hiatt, Sarah Potenza, Marc Broussard, Scott Ian, and Sadler Vaden, to create new experiences that they can monetize, including live streams, music lessons, one-on-ones and more.