How Do You Find What Lights You Up?

My guest on this episode is music industry veteran, Jay Gilbert. Jay wears a lot of hats. He’s a musician, photographer, marketer, speaker, and music executive. Jay has worked as a creative consultant to many record companies and artists. He hosts The Music Biz Weekly Podcast, is a Co-founder of Label Logic, and runs the weekly music newsletter Your Morning Coffee.

Label Logic helps artists, managers, and labels grow their audience and optimize their presence across all platforms. Jay’s newsletter is curated to give a weekly snapshot of the new music business. It’s everything you need to know, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.

I talk with Jay about his shift to being a content creator. We talk about life as a musician, working in the music industry, and being a photographer. We also talk about his management company, and his advice for creators wanting to build their audience. Jay also shares some behind the scenes stories, and much more.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Simple hacks to grow your newsletter
• Defining and reaching your target audience
• Low-budget tricks to instantly add new subscribers
• Jay’s #1 metric for becoming a successful creator

Links & Resources

• ConvertKit
• Ben Barnes
• People
• Jeff Moscow
• Travis Tritt
• Ali Abdaal
• ConvertKit’s Creator Sessions
• Music Connect (MRC)
• Chartmetric
• Viberate
• Soundcharts
• Pollstar
• Cherie Hu
• Amber Horsburgh
• Glenn Peoples
• Bobby Owsinski
• Bruce Houghton
• Hypebot
• Sound & Vision
• Music Technology Policy
• Nancy Wilson
• Roblox

Jay Gilbert’s Links

• Follow Jay on Twitter
• Your Morning Coffee newsletter
• Ben Barnes 11:11 on People.com
• JayGilbert.net
• Label Logic
• The Music Biz Weekly Podcast

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Jay:
The harder I work, the luckier I get. You make your own luck. You see these people, and you’re like, “Wow, that guy just blew up on TikTok or, Twitch, or on Spotify, or Apple Music!” Sometimes that happens. Not very often, and it usually it’s a lot of hard work.

[00:00:26] Nathan:
In this episode, I talk to Jay Gilbert. Jay’s a music industry veteran. He’s been at it for a very long time. What I love is that he’s also made this shift into being a content creator, as well as being a musician and a photographer. So many incredible things. He’s got this newsletter about the music industry called Your Morning Coffee, and he’s grown into over 15,000 subscribers.

It’s the thing that everyone in the music industry is reading every Friday morning. We talk about how he grew that, his passion for the music industry, how the industry has shifted, what’s working, what’s not. He also runs a management company called Label Logic where they’re partnering with, artists and managers, and doing these album releases, and so much else.

He’s got all these behind the scenes stories, and a lot of advice that is not only for the music industry, but also for any creator looking to build an audience, and endure long enough to get noticed, and to build a brand and everything else. It’s really good towards the end.

I also sneak in some selfish questions about what would he do to grow ConvertKit; what’s his advice for ConvertKit entering the music industry.

Jay, welcome to the show.

[00:01:39] Jay:
Hey, thanks for having me, Nathan. Good morning.

[00:01:41] Nathan:
Good morning.

We’ll dive into some of your background, what you’re working on now, but you actually had a pretty big project launch today.

What did you launch today?

[00:01:54] Jay:
Well, when you launch a big project, sometimes it’s like a wedding. You have all this planning, planning, planning, and then boom, there it is. It was pretty exciting this morning. We’ve had to keep quiet about this project. It’s Ben Barnes, who is a pretty famous actor, but most people don’t know he’s a brilliant singer songwriter and pianist.

We’ve recorded this really great record. We’ve got some amazing videos, given his relationships in that area. They’re quite special. We launched a window of exclusivity this morning with People Magazine.

So, if you go to People.com, you’ll see. the video is debuting. It’s pretty special, and we’re really excited about it. It gets released tomorrow. The song’s called 11:11, by Ben Barnes. It’s pretty cool. I think you’ll dig it.

[00:02:53] Nathan:
Nice. Yeah. If anyone doesn’t recognize the name, Ben Barnes, he plays Prince Caspian. I’ve been a fan of the Narnia series and all that for a long time. I think my kids actually just rewatched Prince Caspian two weeks ago.

[00:03:09] Jay:
Have you seen shadow and bone yet?

You got to check out shadow and bone. My, my wife and I binged watched it. And he’s, he’s brilliant in that, but it’s a really cool series.

[00:03:21] Nathan:
Nice. Okay. So maybe with that, of like a snapshot of, of what you just launched, Let’s talk about, a little bit about, logic

[00:03:32] Jay:
Sure.

[00:03:33] Nathan:
You know, what types of projects you do. And then we can go back to like the road to get.

[00:03:38] Jay:
Yeah, well, Label Logic was born out of my partner, Jeff Moscow, and I working in the major label ecosystem for years and years. And we finally got to a point where we were meeting one day for coffee and said, you know, we started our own.

So we both worked at universal for a long time. He was there 20 years.

I was there 18 years. I worked at Warner music, for five years managing Amazon’s business for we at ADA, globally, which was fantastic. but we decided to do our own things. It’s about seven years ago, give or take,

[00:04:16] Nathan:
Yeah.

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