Jack McCarthy joins you on Gig Gab to dig into the real business of music, how to grow attention, capture it, and convert it into lasting fan relationships. You’ll learn why the right material works, how to transform inspiration into your own content, and why audio quality matters less than energy when you’re trying to make fans say, “who is this band?” It’s about creating cultural moments, fueling FOMO, and turning one-time listeners into repeat buyers. This is where “Always Be Performing” extends beyond the stage into every piece of marketing you share.
From building email and SMS lists to flattening the revenue rollercoaster with calendars and consistent outreach, you’ll see how indie artists can move from surviving to thriving. Jack and Dave walk through practical strategies like dissecting viral hits, harnessing UGC, and even using AI to smash blank page syndrome. You’ll hear why you’re probably not being “salesy” enough, and how treating your marketing as another form of performance makes it feel authentic, not forced. If you’re ready to stand out in a noisy world, this episode shows you how.
- 00:00:00 Gig Gab 501 – Monday, September 29th, 2025
- September 29th: National Silent Movie Day
- Guest co-host: Jack McCarthy from Indepreneur & their Creative Juice Podcast
- 00:02:35 Let’s talk Business of music
- 00:03:04 Indepreneur – Music Marketing Education
- Monetizing a fanbase
- Coaching artists
- IndieX – an agency working 1-on-1 with artists
- 00:04:42 Start gathering attention
- You need to start growing a critical mass
- 00:05:51 Once you have attention you need to capture that in a number of different ways
- 00:06:40 Converting attention into a next step
- Audience into an email or SMS list
- Or getting someone to buy from you the first time (tickets, merch)
- Buying from you again (Patreon)
- 00:08:09 To gain attention: pay attention to the types of videos that capture your attention
- Clickbait is effective for a reason!
- Apply the same ideas to the stuff that you make
- Emulate and morph it into something
- 00:10:15 Learn other peoples stuff… then learn FROM other people’s stuff
- Eventually you have something that is yours
- 00:12:25 Coaching people through creating their first posts
- So much of it involves working to “get the suck out of it”
- Learn what makes you… you!
- “I would love to make a video like that”
- Story of when Dave almost got crushed by a monitor tower
- 00:15:44 Should we always be filming?
- Capture as much as you can while you’re working (performing, songwriting)
- 00:17:33 Audio quality is better than video quality
- But there is the definition of “good enough”
- Energy matters most. Make people ask, “who is this band?”
- Create FOMO for people to come to your SHOW
- 00:20:06 Creating cultural moments
- Make people ask, “what is that?” “who is that?” “how can I be there next time?”
- 00:22:52 Creating User Generated Content-style channels for your own band
- 00:25:29 Dissecting Oasis’s creation of cultural moments
- 00:27:33 SPONSOR: Square – See what Square has been up to in your neck of the woods, and then visit square.com/go/giggab
- 00:28:51 SPONSOR: Claude.ai – Ready to tackle bigger problems? Sign up for Claude today and get 50% off Claude Pro, which includes access to Claude Code, when you visit Claude.ai/giggab
- 00:30:46 Jack McCarthy, the musician
- Creatives struggle the idea of marketing themselves. Am I being too salesy or cheesy? What am I sacrificing?
- Answer: you’re not being salesy enough!
- Always be performing means you can perform with your marketing, too
- 00:36:19 Digging into the Billboard Hot 100’s Email Marketing
- You probably aren’t sending enough email to your list.
- Creative Juice Podcast about the Email Marketing of the Billboard Hot 100
- 00:41:04 You are not competing against your competitors, you’re competing with everything else in the lives of your fans (family, job, etc)
- People get distracted by life
- 00:42:20 Posting one time is not enough – no one sees and digests everything you post
- 00:44:45 Get the content right first, THEN plug it into the advertising machine
- Small Town Titans cover of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” went viral… every time.
- Then advertise your viral content!
- Be content first, then you have an asset that you can use on different platforms and different places
- 00:48:32 Start selling to your fans
- Give them something for free in exchange for their contact information
- 00:49:30 Flatten the Revenue Rollercoaster
- Build a content calendar
- Build a sales promotion calendar
- 00:51:46 Using AI to come up with ideas…and more?
- Building internal workflows with agentic AI with tools like N8N
- Copywriting
- Brainstorming partner
- Using it as a sounding board
- AI greatly diminishes blank page syndrome
- 00:55:09 Using Suno to write songs
- Creative Juice episode on the legal concerns with Suno and
- Coding with AI is a game-changers
- 00:59:20 Look to the videos that inspire you, take cues from them, and then use that to pull your potential fans in
- If you’ve already got an audience and wants to create sticky fans, come up with something to offer them (something you can sell, a record, early access, anything that lets them go a little bit deeper into your world)
- 01:01:09 Gig Gab 501 Outtro
- Follow Jack McCarthy
- Indepreneur.io and IndeX
- Follow Creative Juice Podcast
- Contact Gig Gab!
- Follow Jack McCarthy
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