Instrumental Intel - Ep 89 Networking in the New Year: Maintaining Connections Without the Pitch (1-10-26)

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Achickwitbeatz presents ⁠the Instrumental Intel podcast⁠, bringing you information instrumental to your artistic career including music industry news & tips, insights & interviews, and beats for your inspiration. Listen on Saturdays at 7 pm EST on ⁠⁠⁠Grander Radio⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Achickwitbeatz.com⁠⁠⁠.
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Instrumental Intel Podcast

Achickwitbeatz brings you information instrumental to your artistic career including music industry news, insights, interviews, and beats for your inspiration. Listen on Saturdays at 7 pm ET on ⁠⁠⁠Grander Radio,⁠⁠⁠ Achickwitbeatz.com⁠⁠⁠, and your favorite podcast platform.

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Transcript Generated by Riverside

00:01

Hey, thank you so much for tuning in to Instrumental Intel. I'm your host, music producer, Achickwitbeatz. And I'm excited to be bringing this episode to you. Today, I'm gonna talk a little bit about networking in the new year and how to maintain connections without the pitch.  So there's that. Of course, there's gonna be music industry news and beats by me for your inspiration.  And before I go ahead and drop that first beat, I'd like to give a shout-out to my home station, Grander Radio out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. And with that, let's go!

00:32

[BEAT BREAK]

17:30

Hey, I'm Achickwitbeatz, multi-genre music producer and strategist to indie artists and labels. Visit achickwitbeatz.com for resources for artists and instrumentals in various genres available for songs, vlogs, blogs, podcasts, themes, TV, film, commercials, and more. Once again, that's achickwitbeatz.com. That's A-C-H-I-C-K-W-I-T-B-E-A-T-Z.com. Let's make something happen.

18:01

Alright, I am music producer Achickwitbeatz, back with the music biz brief. First up, Universal Music Group acquired a 30% stake in India's Excel Entertainment in a deal that values the company at around $267 million. The partnership gives Universal worldwide distribution rights for future film and series soundtracks produced by Excel and includes the rollout of a dedicated Excel music label with Universal Music Publishing Group handling publishing.

18:27

Excel will remain creatively led by its founders, while Universal expands its investment in India's soundtrack-driven music economy,  one of the fastest-growing segments in the global market. Public Domain Day 2026 added a new group of musical works in the U.S. public domain, including compositions from 1930 and sound recordings from 1925.

18:47

Songs like I Got Rhythm, Georgia On My Mind, Dream A Little Dream Of Me, and Body and Soul are now free to record, adapt, and build on at the composition level, while select early recordings by artists like Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong are also now unrestricted. This creates a new creative and educational opportunity for independent artists, but keep in mind that many later recordings of these songs are still under copyright, so the distinction between compositions and recordings matters.  Make sure you check with legal counsel before you distribute anything.

19:17

The Weeknd closed 2025 with a billion-dollar catalog deal structured around leverage instead of selling his rights. He kept majority ownership while selling a 25% equity stake to Lyric Capital and using future earnings from his masters in publishing to secure the rest, a bet that's based on sustained and growing streaming demand. With over 19 billion global on-demand streams in 2025 and year-over-year growth even on older hits, the deal shows investors are valuing long-term streaming performance as much as legacy,

19:47

went back in modern catalogs. Also, a report cited by China's state-run People's Daily says that AI-generated tracks made up 56.9% of newly released independent songs in China during the first quarter of last year. Unlike concerns raised in Western markets, the article frames AI as a positive force

20:06

pointing to heavy adoption of tools like Tencent Music’s generative platform, which has been used by over 10 million people to create more than 26 million tracks, streamed more than a billion times. So yeah, that's quite a lot, but again, you do have to consider the source. The UK music industry grew again in 2025, reaching 210.3 million album equivalent sales, up 4.9% from 2024.

20:30

Physical Formats continued their comeback with vinyl in the lead. Taylor Swift was the top vinyl seller for the fourth year in a row, having sold 147,000 copies of Life of a Showgirl.  And Oasis’ and Coldplay's reunion and stadium tours boosted legacy albums back onto the charts.  Despite a minor decline in CD sales, overall physical sales rose 1.4%, showing that touring and collectible formats are still important revenue drivers along with streaming.

20:57

Triller, the creator and marketing company that positioned its video app as a TikTok rival, has been delisted from the Nasdaq after missing quarterly and annual filings. The company says delays relate to a technical matter with consolidating accounts and expects to regain compliance soon. Triller operates other businesses like influencer platform Julius and combat sports streamer Triller TV, but its TikTok-style app struggled to gain traction against its competitors.

21:24

It'll be interesting to see what happens with that since it's another platform that offers another avenue for music promotion. It'll be interesting to see how they pull out of this if they do feel like I've been sharing stories about them for a long time, ever since the prior podcast.  But I mean, they're still in there fighting somehow. So yeah, we'll have to see what happens with that.

21:46

The great Universal Music Group has partnered with NVIDIA to advance responsible AI and music, combining their catalog with NVIDIA's music flamingo model to improve discovery, fan engagement, and artist creation tools. The collaboration includes a dedicated artist incubator to co-design AI-powered workflows and counter low-quality AI slop, emphasizing proper attribution and copyright protection. The partnership builds on Universal's broader AI strategy,

22:14

which seems to be just kinda collaborating with everybody,  but it includes prior deals with Stability AI, Splice, and Klei with a K. AI-powered music platform LANDR has acquired Stockholm-based Reason Studios, the developer of the Reason DAW and Reason Rack.  The company's plan is to keep Reason's brand intact while making its rack system compatible across other DAWs. And that does stand for Digital Audio Workspace, for my non-producer listeners out there, my apologies for the industry jargon.

22:44

But LANDR also intends to establish an Artist Council to give producers input on product development. This combines LANDR's AI tools with Reason's modular workflow, aiming to expand creative possibilities for music producers in the midst of growing competition from AI-driven DAWs like Suno and Udio. Now I would like to kind of make a distinguishing note here. LANDR offers more than AI-powered music production. They also offer distribution,  and I

23:14

got the chance to try out their distribution only. I did not use their AI music production tools, nor do I, so it's not an endorsement of that, but I am an affiliate for their music distribution. So if you're curious about that, looking for another distributor, make sure that you check out my website at AChickWitBeatz.com -> Resources for artists -> My Experience Using LANDR (for) Distribution. Alright.

23:39

Music executive Troy Carter has acquired the catalog of early Hip Hop label Pop Art Records, a Philadelphia-based imprint that helped shape the genre in the 1980s. The catalog includes foundational releases from Salt N Peppa, Roxanne Shanté, and MC Shan, including Roxanne's Revenge and The Bridge, records that most of us know are central to early battle rap history. The amount was undisclosed, and Carter said he plans to steward the catalog for discovery by a new generation. So yeah, let's see what comes of this.

24:09

Alright, and this is a little bonus tidbit of news  So while this might not be obvious, how it directly impacts independent artists, it still kind of brought up something that I thought should be addressed here on Instrumental Intel. So, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live will reduce its music performances to a variable number per week, ending its nightly musical guests.

24:33

This kind of aligns with the broader squeeze we've been seeing on late-night music programming, as other shows have already eliminated house bands or reduced musical segments, leaving The Tonight Show star and Jimmy Fallon as the only late-night program that still regularly features musical guests.  So the insight for indie artists here is, high-visibility performance opportunities might be shrinking or a little more selective. So artists should try to diversify the types of performances and promotional opportunities they pursue

25:00

instead of just relying on big gig appearances. So whether that's, you know, like company functions locally, or whatever the big deal is in your area, you might want to consider opening that up because if it's happening on a level like that, we might start to see it kind of affect us in other areas. So I recommend, you know, kind of monitoring industry trends like this to kind of help you anticipate where exposure might be.

25:25

becoming harder to get, which can kind of inform your strategy for touring, festivals, live streams,  or whatever it is that you want to do.  All right, and that's a wrap for the Music Biz Brief. I'm going to take a quick pause for the cause and back to the beats. And then I'll be back later with networking in the new year, maintaining connections without the pitch.  Keep it locked.  Hey, I'm Achickwitbeatz. You can find me on your favorite platforms, music, social, and everything in between @AChickWitBeatz. That's A-C-H-I-C-K-W-I-T-B-E-A-T-Z.  Let's connect!

25:55

[BEAT BREAK]

42:11

Hey, I'm Achickwitbeatz, multi-genre music producer and strategist to indie artists and labels. Visit achickwitbeatz.com for resources for artists and instrumentals in various genres available for songs, vlogs, blogs, podcasts, themes, TV, film, commercials, and more. Once again, that's achickwitbeatz.com. That's A-C-H-I-C-K-W-I-T-B-E-A-T-Z.com. Let's make something happen.

42:41

Alright, I'm music producer Achickwitbeatz, back with Networking in the New Year: Maintaining Connections Without the Pitch.  Alright, so at the start of the year, a lot of artists say they want to network more, but what they actually mean is they want more access to more collaborators, opportunities, basically more motion.  The fastest way to get to that isn't meeting new people, but actually just tightening up the relationships that you already have. So, if you released music last year, you already worked with people.

43:08

producers, engineers, writers, visual artists, DJs, other artists, whatever the case may be.  Some of those relationships stayed active, some didn't. That's normal. But what really matters is when you resurface, can you do it without turning it into a pitch?  A good way to reset is separating your contacts into three different groups. The first is people you've spoken to recently. The second, people you've worked with but haven't talked to in a while. And then the third is people you don't know yet.

43:37

The mistake a lot of independent artists make is spending all their time on that third group.  But reconnecting with the first two doesn't require a whole lot of creativity or a whole lot of charisma.  Just a quick message, kind of acknowledging someone's recent work or checking in, is enough.  Now this means no links, no let me know if you need anything, no request, that's kind of hiding at the bottom of the message. So a good rule of thumb is if you can't send the message without attaching a file, it's not a reconnection, you're just pitching.

44:05

Visibility works in the same way. Most independent artists don't actually benefit from the industry mixers or broad networking spaces, but being consistently present where people they already overlap with spend time. So that might be comment sections, group chats, Discords, or other small creative circles. Not to promote, I mean, underline that there, but just be recognizable. I mean, think about what catches your attention. Familiar names get answered faster, and your brain kind of filters unknown names. So offering help.

44:34

Also, isn't one of those ways that's perceived as being valuable, but actually being reliable is.  So clear communication, keep your credits clean,  like other people that have worked with you, make sure that there aren't bad stories about how you do business floating out there. Clear all that up and make sure that you follow through when you say that you will.  Not over-promising or just disappearing. So that's actually what people remember or think about when they decide who they wanna work with again.  And finally, it's important to remember to follow up.

45:04

If you only reach out when you have a release, a problem, or request, that's not a relationship. Now I'm not saying you need to stay in constant contact, because that's a lot to take on, but you do need to avoid long gaps where the only interaction is transactional. Just check in periodically, it's enough to keep the line open.  So yeah, that's the short of networking as an independent artist.  Basically, just managing how often and professionally you show up in other people's work and memory.

45:30

Alright, I'm gonna get back to the beats, and then I'll be back to close out the episode with you. Keep it locked

48:38

[BEAT BREAK]

59:39

Alright, that's a wrap for this episode of Instrumental Intel. I've been your host, music producer, Achickwitbeatz, and once again, I want to thank you for tuning in. I'd like to thank my home station, Grander Radio out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Make sure you come back next week, I've got more goodness lined up for you. Till next time, you know where to find me. Tune in, tell a friend, and I'll see you then. Peace.