Self-promotion for musicians in the digital age with David Taylor

Michelle Lynne: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Fearless Artist Podcast. I am your host, Michelle Lynne. And today I’m super happy to have, uh, David Taylor on. David, welcome.

David Taylor: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Michelle Lynne: Nice to see you again. Uh, we just, uh, met for the first time in Berlin at the Classical Next Conference. You are an arts innovator. You’re a coach, you’re a consultant. You work with organizations to help bring innovation, entrepreneurship. Uh, I’m excited to talk to you today and to dive in.

David Taylor: Definitely, there’s so much we could talk about, so it’ll be great to see where this, this ends up.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, I’m curious too. So first thing I would love to see, like, yeah, could you just maybe give us a short intro? I know that you’re, did you tell me you were a recovering cellist or former cellist or something like?

David Taylor: The wording’s spot on. I’m a recovering cellist.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, great. Well, there you go. It’s a good branding tagline to introduce yourself with.

David Taylor: Definitely. Um, so that was my, my route into this, this strange world. I studied at music college. I was a cellist for a short period of time, probably to everyone’s, uh, happiness. I’m no longer a cellist, particularly audiences. Um, but yeah, so I now do a mixture of coaching and consulting, both with musicians and arts organizations, usually around marketing, digital careers, social media, and audiences, which is quite a, a sort of a catchall. But in essence, it’s trying to help people and organizations in the classical music world thrive in the modern age, which is a cheesy way of putting it.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, I know you’ve done some really cool stuff. I mean, the BBC said you’re an arts innovator. I’d love to hear more about that. Forbes 30 Under 30, that’s always a great accolade. Um, I’m way past that. I can never get that again. That’s really sad.

David Taylor: I got straight in, bang on 30, if that makes you feel any better. I was…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: I was very lucky.

Michelle Lynne: That’s awesome. So I’d love to hear like, yeah, what kind of organizations you work with. What’s the, what’s the change that you like to make and what’s the big message behind, like, what’s driving you?

David Taylor: Really good question. So organizations, that’s the easy one. Uh, they are usually based in the UK or Europe or, or United States. Uh, that’s ranging from people like New World Symphony in Miami, company working with the St. Louis Symphony in Missouri, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Philharmonia, uh, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, uh, and also then going and speaking at conferences. So, uh, it was a conference…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …in Norway recently. Also attending things like Classical Next and sharing ideas and things there. Um. When it comes to sort of the big message that I try and share, particularly with organizations, it’s that the status quo isn’t sustainable… And we’re trying…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …to replicate a 20th century model in the 21st century world. Change is something that’s needed, but also change is something that is not expensive either. Particularly in digital. We keep fretting about the cost of all of this, and it’s expensive, and what is the possible return on investment? And actually, to, to thrive on social media, you don’t need a big, giant, fancy television studio. In fact, the organizations that have the most resources tend not to be ones who are finding the solutions to their problems. So actually there’s, uh, a real positive outlook there. And also that we are living in a world of potential, and that even though it is scary, this is actually a really exciting time to be working in the arts. The thing that we have is of great interest and value to people. It’s not that we’re trying to sell spoons or something incredibly boring. Like people are desperate for what we want. Classical music continues to be one of the fastest growing genres on streaming platforms, almost in spite of the work that we’re doing. And so we are in essence, in a really lucky scenario. So we have this opportunity. We have tools that are cheaper than ever to use, and we have, uh, potential to hopefully expand and connect. So that’s probably the main one. And then the same for musicians: that there’s great opportunity, but equally, um, on the musician side, a huge amount of empathy because we’ve been almost trained and conditioned into a way of thinking that means we’re not able to, to navigate this world as much. So it’s about breaking those boundaries and, uh, hopefully finding paths to, to, uh, finding success for individuals.

Michelle Lynne: That’s so great. I mean, there’s so many ways that we can go in this direction. First of all, like how did you get into this? What I, I mean, you just speak with so much passion, enthusiasm, obviously a lot of motivation. I’m sure you’re coming into these organizations and you’re firing everybody up, talking about possibilities, talking about how we can create change. It doesn’t have to be, uh, overwhelming. There’s a strategy that you’re presenting. Like where did this come from for you? What was your first jump into this?

David Taylor: So I, I basically started by not knowing what I was doing. Um, so after music college, I went and taught the cello at a Music Academy, uh, in the Middle East, uh, and then came back to the UK not really knowing what I was going to do. Uh, but I saw the experience my students had out there, which is incredible. And also my contemporaries at Music College from National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, or National Youth Orchestra of Wales and places, who had this incredible, uh, sort of sense of community, but also opportunities available to them. And I grew up in somewhere called Yorkshire, which is where I still live. It’s in a population of around five and a half million, but it doesn’t have the same sort of cultural identity within an, an organization or an orchestra in the same way as a, a youth orchestra for an area. So I thought in my spare time, maybe a couple of hours at a weekend, side project, side hustle, I will create a residential youth orchestra course that happens once a year. It’d be dead easy. How hard can it be to, um, to start a nonprofit? Um, short answer: hard. Uh, and so basically it was from, this was age 26, no experience of working in an organization properly, let alone running one, uh, and googling my, my way through. And it turned out within the region, there’s a, Yorkshire’s famous for being quite a stubborn region. Um, everyone kind of falls out with themselves here. And so the local stakeholders, they didn’t want to collaborate in the way that I was expecting, which was sort of from our national, uh, um, plan for music education, which I was expecting. And so I was in this situation where I was unable to connect with students and musicians, uh, their parents or even their teachers. And so came this idea of experimentation and trying to find new ways of doing things. And so bizarrely, from being utterly naive, that actually became almost a superpower in that I would go off and find a way of doing things that would happen in other industries and not be trying to replicate how an organization would do it within our classical music world. I basically, we ran for four years over, and we did four courses with a concert each year, so four concerts. We reached about seven and a half million people in that time through a mixture of press coverage, media, social media, all these different things. And also we were the first youth orchestra to use iPads instead of sheet music in the world. We had digital concert program apps, and this is way back in 2017, I think it was, for, for implementing those. Uh, and also then we were doing things like parity within the orchestra. So players were swapping around in between pieces, let alone in between sessions. Um, yeah. And working with soloists like Ray Chen, Stephen Hough, Esther Brame, all these incredible people. So it was a, a wild ride.

Michelle Lynne: That’s huge. I mean, you, that sounds like a multi-step process that you just described to get from like, like just to say, oh, like a nonprofit once a year kind of thing. Um, I wanted to say when you were mentioning using other industries, that’s what I really like about in your book, because you’re talking a lot about examples from the real world, um, in other industries and how we can bring those examples into the music industry. When you’re saying things like, you know, using Netflix as examples or like other people have figured this out, we can just look at the same models, bring that into the music industry. Um, what were some of the, the biggest effects you saw from it was the YYS, right? The Yorkshire Youth Symphonia?

David Taylor: That’s always the thing as well, like the worst name imaginable. So it’s Yorkshire Young Symphonia, and I’ve heard every permutation of…

Michelle Lynne: Young Symphonia.

David Taylor: …the name ever, which one was potentially…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: …a regret, but equally it never seemed to have a net, like a negative effect. So, uh…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: …a, a learning thing going backwards. Um, so yes, that was the, the name of the orchestra. And I think, in that level of curiosity of seeing what happened elsewhere was certainly interesting. And what I realized is from having no idea what I was doing, we had all this success and I was then looking at the industry and becoming frustrated that they weren’t getting the success despite having all the money, resources, PR, marketing teams, et cetera. So what has my unorthodox approach learned that can help support those, uh, and…

Michelle Lynne: Okay, so what? Yeah, what was working for you? Like what, what was this? It was the digital approach?

David Taylor: A mixture of digital approach, but also in a bizarre way, traditional press as well. We’re very good at getting traditional press. And one thing I found was almost, trying to identify the story really early on of what would be of interest to people and not what we think is of interest to us. And I think particularly do…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …we do this is a slight tangent, but into, uh, press releases. It’s always what we are desperate to say and not like what is actually a good story where that people might want to know. And also to be blunt, kind of adapting my products around what would get coverage. I mentioned the, uh, digital sheet music. There was an opportunity to…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …pair with this sheet music app called Nusic with an N, uh, who are based in France. Um, and there was so much innovation there. It was a much better experience for the students. They got to be involved in giving feedback. The project itself is great. Honestly, like they were given the pitch meeting and I started writing the press release because I was like, I reckon I can get eyeballs on this. ‘Cause it’s clickbait, kind of like a blunt way of putting it. But in, in essence, the project was done because it would get us more coverage, which would get us more students, which would get us more potential money and that sort of thing.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: So the project was almost reverse engineered around how could this get us to an audience?

Michelle Lynne: But that’s just being strategic, right? Like you’re just thinking what’s interesting for a wider audience? I think one of the hangups that I hear from people who don’t want to market the music is the, the argument is, well, Beethoven should be enough just to sell on its own because it’s so worthy. So it’s interesting to hear more about how you weren’t touching the music per se. You were talking about the packaging. Is that accurate?

David Taylor: Yeah, certainly. And like there was some things like the, the sheet music were more, this is something that will cut through. So we, on, if you’re watching the video of this, it’s, oh, I’ve taken it down. Um, I’ve just changed around my room. Uh, so I used to have a frame, like it was the third page of a national newspaper. We got coverage and on BBC News and on Sky News, we’re not going to do that for youth orchestra plays Beethoven. But this was an opportunity to get more eyeballs around it. On the music side, you can do, but it’s, that wasn’t how music was marketed at the time. That was…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …so…why would we try and replicate how Mozart or people were, were marketing themselves as well? Um, or we should, we should be doing that. Sorry. That they weren’t doing, here’s a new piece. It was around the experience and models and those things. And I think the world has changed. There’s so much competition for time now, so we have to compete with Netflix, football, books, computer games, wine tasting, all these other things that weren’t necessarily in our faces in the way they were before. So we have to really make sure we can identify what the value proposition is early and demonstrate that rather than just say, would you like some music?

Michelle Lynne: Right. So when these organizations, and you named some really huge names, I mean, it’s super cool you get to work with these big orchestras. What is one of the first things that they’re, first of all, what are they bringing you in for, and are you giving them what they think they’re bringing you in for? Or are you like, actually this is what you need? You know, I…

David Taylor: Uh, good question. So I’ve started with a model that’s usually a very light touch at the beginning to kind of address the point you just mentioned, that, which is, am I gonna come in and do what they, they want in essence? And that’s sometimes what the original conversation is, isn’t actually what the organization needs. So that’s where I usually start…

Michelle Lynne: Right. Yeah.

David Taylor: …with a very smaller, light evaluation to try and just sort of lift the hood, see what’s kind of, uh, the possibilities that are available, but also the challenges that they face. Um, I’m yet to find two organizations that work the same way, so that really helps with, um, identifying what could be a solution for an organization because the same answer doesn’t apply everywhere. And then from there is either a mixture of creating strategies for them to go forward, staff training in some circumstances. I’ve got my hands dirty. So I did a long project with Leads International Piano Competition a couple years ago. So it was in-house for nine months, and that was creating the content, leading a huge digital transformation of the organization. So, um, it’s quite varied on that side. And organizations, sometimes it’s like one person who has marketing as an element of their role through to here’s an entire marketing team.

Michelle Lynne: Can you jump in a little bit to the Leads Piano Competition? ‘Cause I know when we, when we chatted in Berlin, you showed me like the case study and there was some really cool stuff in there. I’d love to just share that a bit.

David Taylor: Definitely. So the, the big fancy stats from there…

Michelle Lynne: I…

David Taylor: …is that across all their social media channels, before they were, I think around 4,000 video views per month. Fast forward to six months time, this escalated to 1.5 million video views per month. And this was with zero advertising spend. Um, the journey of going through there was in essence identifying content that they could use that they had already recorded because they were once every three years, this competition. So really a vast amount happening you can post about in that time.

Michelle Lynne: Right, which is super pertinent for people listening. ‘Cause they’re always saying to me, oh, I don’t have any concerts coming up. What can I post about? And you’re saying like digging into the archives, you went from 4,000 to 1.5 million views. So…

David Taylor: Yes, and with that as well, some of it was…

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Just a good point.

David Taylor: …repackaging what was there, so it wasn’t purely here’s a performance and walking away and hoping that the music speaks for itself.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: We had a series where it was the scrolling sheet music, which you may have seen on social media where the music sort of flies by as the music’s playing, and that was repackaging the content into shorter clips to be able to do this, but also in a way that is gonna be grab people’s attention. It is a great knowledge equalizer, so if you are, you don’t know anything about music, you see things moving and passing a line so anyone can do that. They’ve played Guitar Hero or they don’t know the concepts. But also if you are a full nerd who wants to do shaky analysis, you can also get like value from it as well.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: So that was a great equalizer as well as driving our engagement. And then we were able to do longer performances as well. Um. Yeah. And then really leaning into what could be of interest and, uh, of value to the, the audience. It’s, when I do presentations on this, I joke that our, our sort of innovative, groundbreaking strategy was we made some content that people would like and then we just did it over and over again for a long period of time, which…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …is funny, but also it’s actually hard.

Michelle Lynne: I mean, it’s funny, but like that’s what we learned from Gary Vee and Alex Hormozi and everybody saying like, find what works and then double down on it, like find what your audience is interested in. And so you’re saying like old footage, you’re bringing awareness to the festival in the in-betweens of the having the competition itself. What were some of the other things that you were bringing to the organization?

David Taylor: Yeah, so part of it was also then looking forward to the, uh, broadcast of the competition itself. Previously they were, um, broadcast on Medici.tv and also BBC Radio 3, and there’s a highlights program on the BBC itself. One of the things we identified that they were constantly giving away their audience to third parties and not retaining it for themselves. The social media following was quite small, and in essence, everything they did would be almost a benefit to Medici.tv. So what we decided to do…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: …was bring streaming to be both on the Leads International Piano Competition website, but also on Medici.tv. We created an entire media hub there for the streaming and broadcast. And what we found through there, it was, um. Oh, sorry. That was also hosted on YouTube, but embedded in the website in a, a more of a Netflix style platform. And, uh, I can’t remember the stats off the top of my head, but in essence, I think we got about double the number of viewers of Medici. So around, I think it was 100,000 live viewers for the final, around 50 or 60,000 on Medici. So all of a sudden they actually bring it in house as a big benefit. And then also from there, you retain that relationship with your audience. So going forward, they can keep in contact, they can push fundraising, they can promote applications and things. So there’s lots of then good stories and reasons as to the power of owning your audience and also not having to rely on Medici.

Michelle Lynne: Right. So it sounds like you, to summarize very briefly, like it was visualize, um, got the visibility up of the organization, huge numbers, and then you found a way to retain them so that you can keep talking to them. Right. So when we’re talking to our freelance musicians, we’re talking like the social media strategy that we really try to hone in on. It’s not just about the views because we don’t need millions. And you mentioned this in your book too. You don’t need gazillions of likes. You don’t need gazillions of followers. You just need your core following and then how can you talk to them and nurture them? Actually, do you wanna like, walk us through the, the three-step, um, process that you were describing in the book? I thought it was so great about how to, uh, take your audience, nurture them, and then sell. ‘Cause you were saying people ask for money straight off the bat and that’s kind of a turnoff for people.

David Taylor: Yes, definitely. Uh, this is a very good test. I’ve not actually looked at the part one of the book for quite a while, so I can’t really remember those four, three steps. Um, but I imagine it would be something lines of generated.

Michelle Lynne: They were saying that like they, you know, the orchestra started charging immediately to watch a concert like $5.99. First off the bat was the idea and that we’re like asking for money immediately from people.

David Taylor: Oh, that bit. Yes. So in essence, it would be: generate attention by providing something of value that people want to watch. Then from there, continuing to build relationships by demonstrating you can provide value for a long period of time. Then provide products or services that are of still of interest and value to them once you’ve done that at a further later date. So initially…trying to say, here’s the thing, do you want it? Yes or no? It was a really hard sell in the digital world. You have to really sort of buy and build relationships. Um, for me, as an example, I think it’s in the book as well. Um, there was a, a photography YouTube that I was obsessed with called Peter McKinnon.

Michelle Lynne: Canadian, you have to say Canadian. Yeah.

David Taylor: I love that you know him. Um, and yeah, he was giving away all these incredible tips about photography, and that’s where I, in essence, started to learn about it myself. And at no point did he charge me. It was giving away content. It was entertaining, it was educational, it’s all there. But from there, he had like an additional ring of products and services you can get like, uh, presets for, um, editing. He had his own range of merchandise and these different things. And then he also got sponsorships ’cause people then want to sell to his audience. So all my camera equipment is Canon pretty much primarily because he shoots on Canon and therefore that was my like, route into all of this. So there’s, there’s all these different, it’s more of, um, an ecosystem of monetization rather than being this direct transactional model that we used it from the, the, like, the 1900s of it being, here’s the thing, do you want it? Yes. No. This is now a sort of a wider ecosystem. You’re not quite sure where people jump in and equally where they’re then gonna jump off for some sort of purchase.

Michelle Lynne: What would you say to the freelance musicians who are saying, um, whenever I post on socials, you know, because most people are using their accounts to like, hey, I have a concert coming up. You should come, and then they don’t post at all for the next three, four months. How would you encourage them to embrace this ecosystem, like you’re saying, of creating value? Offering value? What does that mean for a typical freelance musician?

David Taylor: Yeah, it’s a really good question. Um, I might actually jump back a step as well just to sort of go…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, please. Yeah.

David Taylor: …when it comes to a lot of social media, a lot of the advice, particularly from like record labels is like, Instagram’s a really important platform there. If you should be on Instagram. And we tend not to think about the person who’s making the content and their skills and strengths and their preferred communication styles. And we’ve all seen some poor artist who is like absolutely petrified to be on camera, being forced to make like a video for Instagram because Decca told them to. And like, no one likes to watch it. They don’t like to make it, it’s never gonna convert. So when I work with musicians, I always go into like, who do you prefer to communicate? Do you love writing? Is it long form? Is it short form? Are you great at speaking on camera? Are you great at speaking but you hate being on camera? All these different things. And from there, find the right platform for you and the right type of content for you, rather than trying to like keep forcing yourself into being like square peg, round hole type scenario.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: So that would be the first part of the ecosystem is identifying like what works for you as a person, as a human, and then lean into it.

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

David Taylor: Regardless what the world says. Uh, and then from there with the ecosystem, I think trying to identify what could be of interest or value to people. And from there you can also say what’s of interest and value to me? Like what do I get excited by? Because I, we’re in a world where you can now connect with those people who, who find the same things. There’s a whole world on YouTube of train spotters, and I imagine historically they would’ve been quite isolated, and yet that’s a, a niche. So if that’s thriving, I imagine there’ll be someone who’s also interested in your element of baroque music or, uh, period ornamentation, all these different things…

Michelle Lynne: Are you following the train spotters?

David Taylor: I am not, but like I live near a big train…

Michelle Lynne: No.

David Taylor: …station in the UK and they are there relentlessly.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: So,

Michelle Lynne: I.

David Taylor: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a world. Um, so that’d be my first point. And I also have a slight hack when it comes to like this temptation to always bang on about your concerts because understandably you want to sell tickets, but also it’s the main thing that’s happening. And we’ve all been there and done it. Like I am delighted to announce type posts, and we all know they’re cringe. Really, we, when we see other people do them, we cringe, and yet we keep doing them ourselves.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: My initial hack for it would be to change it to, I am excited that I’ll be doing X because Y. It is the same type…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …of post. You’re still saying what it is that you are doing, but all of a sudden you get to talk about the reason. It’s interesting and that straight away sort of turns it into being valuable. It’s like I’m so excited to be playing this ’cause I did it when I was six as my first concert. And it’s great to revisit the music or the music of Bach is really powerful to me. And this is something that’s really special that I look out for that’s really interesting and I’ve been working on this particular technique or it gives you such a range to to be passionate and that’s where I think where, where social media worked really nicely. There’s someone who used to be the…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …head of marketing for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, um, who was incredible. Matt. And, yeah, so here’s this like, fascination with their musicians. When he talks to them in the pub about music, they’re so engaging and delighted and exciting, and yet when it’s, um, speaking to like them on stage about music, they go into being really corporate and quite boring. So it’s giving you opportunity…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …to be passionate about what it is that you do.

Michelle Lynne: I appreciate you bringing up the multiple platforms. It’s something that we’ve been discussing more and more in our community because there are people who prefer the blogs and there are people who prefer long-form writing or even just expanding on Instagram captions. I mean, I really appreciate your newsletter that’s coming through. Is it monthly, right? I think it’s, yeah, super fun. Really interesting. Lots of different things in there to poke around about. And you’re creating connection with your audience. You’re creating, your relationships, you’re nurturing them over time and you’re not doing a ton of talking head content or Instagram stuff. So we, we are trying, you know, we have people in the, in the membership who are saying, oh yeah, like, I prefer the blog. And for, for us it’s like, yeah, do whatever you like. You know, Deanna has her mom and kids blog. It just needs to be consistent. You need to be consistently building your relationship with your audiences, whatever form that takes. And I think I’m still always gonna say, you’re talking to people in person. Let them see your energy, let them see your face, your tone of voice, your, uh, personality, your enthusiasm. And so if you have to talk on stage anyway, just bring that onto the camera. It’s gonna make people like you that much faster. Um, but I totally appreciate like the, the people who wanna stay behind and writing the words. And I think that’s equally as valuable.

David Taylor: Yeah, and I think it’s, it’s good to be out of your comfort zone, and this will always feel weird and awkward. It’s just working out if one, it’s playing to your strengths or if it’s like a step too far.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: The example I use is that, uh, I worked with a, a client…he from an orchestra in Mexico, coming out the pandemic who was late sixties, digital novice, had no social media of any kind personally, let alone professionally. And to her full credit, identified that YouTube was a really big thing for musicians. And so I had this wonderful idea of a project and wanted it to be a YouTube channel, and in our first call, we found out that she hated being on camera. She absolutely was petrified about the idea of video editing and had absolutely no idea how to use a video camera. So we’re like, whole journey would’ve been this huge uphill struggle. But we found out…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …that she loved writing and didn’t hate photography, so we just switched her idea to being a written format that was relying on blogs because that’s where she’d get her energy from. And if you are energized by something, it’s more likely to be sustainable. But equally, you’re right…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …about this presentation. People love files, spaces, smiles and faces, and, um, it’s a great way to, to build relationships with people.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, can you talk a little bit about the mindset? ‘Cause I feel like what you’re doing a lot with your work is shifting mindsets. You’re probably coming across old mindsets, um, of course innovation, obviously it’s in the name. But how are some ways that you’re helping people reframe things that they’ve maybe held onto for a long time? Whether that’s beliefs about, like the music should just sell itself, concert formats should not change. Uh, why should we have to do anything extra? I mean. I love the idea, the photographer that you mentioned, the YouTube stuff. He’s got the merch, he’s got the affiliate links, he’s got the, you know, you, you switched to your iPhone because he was recommending the camera. Like, I get that. But I can imagine a lot of people are like, we’re here to play music. We’re not here to be this like Disneyland. For people to come in and pick and choose. Like, how are you presenting this message? And, and then I’d love for you to share some, some case studies or results that you see, like transformations.

David Taylor: Yeah, definitely. So I think particularly with musicians, the most powerful thing that I’ve found is that actually, um, highlighting that we always used to be entrepreneurial. That was a default…

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

David Taylor: …setting. And like going back to Mozart and Paganini, people like they were entrepreneurs. And we’ve only had this weird period of specialization for around a hundred years in like the 20th century of you are a concert recitalist or an orchestra player and you do one thing and you get a pension and a salary and that’s it. And you don’t have to do anything else. And that’s not who we were, our core. So Mozart was like the epitome of a portfolio musician being a viola player, a chamber musician, a composer, a conductor, a fundraiser for his projects. He had to like schmooze to get people to, to be supporters for him. Um, Paganini I mentioned when he heard rumors of selling his soul to the devil to become amazing at violin, he started dressing in black to like really sort of amp it up. But my favorite, uh, example is a pianist called, uh, Paderewski… Who was Polish, uh, late 1800s into 1900s. Went on to be the first prime minister of independent Poland. He was like the OG influencer. And so he was deliberately curating his image. He was an early adopter of this weird new technology called photography, so there’s lots of moody images of him, which is fascinating. He also was writing quotes about himself and fabricating them and then giving them out on leaflets outside his concerts to get people to come being like, Paderewski is amazing, but it’s something he just like did himself.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing.

David Taylor: And he got loads…

Michelle Lynne: So funny.

David Taylor: …of hype as a result. He then went across to London from Poland and was actively trying to get in gossip columns and it went so well to the point that he had to have a police entourage on stage to stop women throwing themselves at him. Um. Then…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: …Steinway him all across the United States ’cause he was doing so well. There’s articles in like the Boston Globe of like, what would Boston’s leaders look like with Paderewski’s hair? Because he had this big giant like Steven Isley style hair or like Albert Einstein style hair. And from there, yes, he was being active, but he also then generated wealth through other means. So he had his own range of shampoo and cigarettes and sweets. And it became so rich that he helped then finance the foundation of in Poland when it became independent. So…

Michelle Lynne: That’s phenomenal. It’s so cool.

David Taylor: …through generating attention, building relationship and audience and these weird sort of left field things. Uh, so yeah, that’s who we are at our core. So it’s not that we, we’re selling out in doing this, which returning to our entrepreneurial, and I’d almost say creative way of doing things.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, being creative means we have multiple skills and strengths and we can work in different areas. I mean, look at you. You’re like, you were in music now because of your music. You know how to talk to people who are in this industry. You’ll understand how they’re thinking. You’ll understand why they might not be open to the idea. Do you have a moment where you are in a room and it wasn’t hitting, and then suddenly there was like a shift or reframing perspective that came in and people were like, okay, we get it. Like we’re willing to to try this. And then someone was surprised.

David Taylor: Yeah, I think it’s, it depends on the scenario and it’s also depends on the individuals. Uh, for musicians, I think it is trying to sort of give them permission to feel scared almost that this is…

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

David Taylor: …scary going, putting yourself out there and going through a period of transition. I always highlight as well that we are living through one of the biggest, groundbreaking, changing moments of history. Uh, the digital and the social media and internet age has changed how we communicate as a society and it’s democratized information and that then leads to chaos and, uh, periods of, of huge, huge change. So last time that happened was the printing press and in Western Europe we saw new ideas of God and wars and all these different things happening. So that’s two times in the last millennia, probably since that we’ve had these moments. So we are living through something that is quite a scary, scary and difficult time. So that tends to give openness and that tends to be for individuals in group settings. That moment of, oh, it’s okay to feel like this and we’re all in it together for organizations and when, especially musicians in organizations, that’s a different scenario. There’s an element of us and them, which is always exists in every organization, which is always quite fun to try and navigate. And trying to see that it’s a shared collective is usually one of those challenging scenarios that’s sort of, um, a ways to get to, but that’s a broad way of saying that it changes in every single scenario. So I wish I had a magic wand that could light bulb moment people at exactly the same time. But, um, yeah, I think empathy tends to be sort of the common theme for, for that.

Michelle Lynne: So when you are coming into an organization, what are one of the first things that you’re working on is like increasing visibility and engagement with the audience? Is that what you would say? Or like is there a specific approach you’re using mostly, or are you adapting every single time?

David Taylor: Adapting every single…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …time. So, I am yet to find two organizations that work the same way. So the first thing I do is, in essence, it’s more an audit. And that’s tends not to be like, what have you done that’s been like good or bad? It’s more like, how does your organization work? What are people’s workloads…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: …what’s happening, et cetera. So for example, I was working with one organization and they do about four or five concerts a year, and they rehearse the day before. So getting any musicians to be involved in making content is an absolute nightmare because if you do that, it’s like, great, we’ve got a day to sell and promote this, which probably isn’t gonna be of a lead time. So the solution we found from going through was identifying that as being the main challenge. So in essence, we just came up with a template that allowed them to fake it. So in rehearsal one for concert one, they were like capturing content for concert two in two months time or three months time, and would just fake it the whole way along. But giving themselves a process and a template to enable them to do it. So that’s…

Michelle Lynne: That’s smart.

David Taylor: …a scenario of doing it. So that, that solution wasn’t gonna work everywhere. For example, I mentioned Leads. They, the way that they succeeded was having 40 years worth of archive footage, although at the time they didn’t own all of it. Like that’s not something that is accessible to everyone. Also, a lot of their former participants have gone on to be big names as well, which also helped. Again, that’s not suitable for everyone, so it’s identifying what is within the resources an organization has.

Michelle Lynne: So you’re coming in, you’re looking at the audit, you’re seeing what’s available, what pieces you have, but the general strategy is scaling, is visibility. What’s like your main angle when you come in?

David Taylor: Usually visibility, but also, um, workflow. I tend to ident, like my metrics usually process rather than results. So if we make it…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: …that people are creating content consistently in an audience focused manner, in a way that we think is quote unquote good content, then the numbers hopefully take care of themselves at some point.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: I mentioned that project with Leads. Uh, in particular, the, our main success was on Facebook. It took us four months to see a difference on Facebook. So after three months, if we did like an audit of like, is it working or not? If it was purely on metrics, we would’ve said no. If our paradigm for looking at it’s, we’re like, are we creating content with it’s effective? Are we posting regularly? Is it audience focused? Are we getting engagements? That’s a type of engagement we like. Then it was successful and then eventually we got to the stupid numbers side. So…

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

David Taylor: …kind of in the same way of it being music, like I’m slightly fascinated that we tend not to use our music brain for our business brain. And that if we were like, have I played all the notes in the right order after my first lesson? No, it’s not gonna be there. But like, am I practicing a way that it’s gonna be methodical going forwards and set me with good technique? It’s, it’s those sort of things. So it’s, um, yeah. Process driven.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. So people giving up before they even have a chance to see results. I’d love for you to share more about audience focused. How do you switch the messaging on like a, say, if you were promoting your upcoming cello concert or to an arts organization? I mean, I know you have this big thing right now about like season releases and they’re being super boring. So I’m assuming that that’s not an audience focused piece of content. So is that maybe something that you would start by saying, let’s shift this messaging and, and how do you do that?

David Taylor: Definitely. So the cheesy phrase that you can come back to is social media. Is media that is social. Having that as like an initial mindset, even though it’s cheesy, is it how it’s, um, it’s a really good way of like, what’s the per, why are we posting this? And if you are just announcing…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: …like, here’s a list of things that are happening in the next 12 months…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …not necessarily interesting. Even though those products could be interesting, that individual piece of content isn’t gonna get attention. And if it’s not getting attention, then it’s not doing service to the thing you are trying to sell or promote or create. Um, so for me, audience focused would be like, are we communicating in a way that sounds natural to other people on the platforms? A big one. Then also, is this gonna be something that would be of interest to people who we’re trying to connect with? And, uh, it’s called, that’s basically it. You can really dive into it on a more deeper level, but that’s sort of the initial foundational parts. Um, with, it means social as well. That’s then more of like an interactive or communicating style. Um. I, brands like Duolingo are always fascinating at being like quite sassy on social media. Ryanair, the airline, again, being like very personal, like probably to a level I wouldn’t recommend to any other organization…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: …but…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …they’re able to communicate in a way that feels natural and authentic and therefore that gives them license and a platform to, to really experiment and thrive. For example, season launches, it’d be like, why am I putting this on? What’s the stories behind this? Both in the music themselves, but also in the organization or the event or the people participating. Then from there, you’ve probably got a lot of content you can create from people’s own individual journeys to playing something about their instrument, the setting it’s in, all these things that are exciting. And ultimately if it is a, a concert. Demonstrating the experience of the consumer. It’s when you watch things like perfume adverts, it’s not like a list of things that the perfume smells like. It’s the experience of wearing it and the sort of person you become by wearing it. And it’s similar a scenario like what would it be if I went to a concert? Would I enjoy it? Am I stood on my own like a lemon or is it fun and I get to meet friends and like sort of things. So anything you can do to to showcase that. So I think we’re now seeing some really good season launches in classical music. So there’s definitely a turning of, uh, of things there. There’s still some absolute shockers, but, uh, it’s great to see some experimentation and, uh, community building as part of it.

Michelle Lynne: Do you have one in mind that you recently saw that you were like, okay, they’re onto something here?

David Taylor: Minnesota Orchestra two years in a row have been phenomenal. They’re really good. Uh, the most recent one is sort of like around the power…

Michelle Lynne: I.

David Taylor: …and why to come. I can’t remember the wording exactly, but it’s lots of like mini quotes from the audience with like, really, um, emotive music in the background. There’s a really sweet clip in the middle from a small kid who’s talking about like how fun it’s for him to come to these concerts and things and how it moves him. And it ends with like a small montage of like the face of the people who are involved in creating it. So it’s, you get that connection and it sense of it being emotive. It feels very, I. To me, like Christmas adverts of that whole like tear jerker, like, oh my God, this is a special thing that comes around every year. So…

Michelle Lynne: Mm.

David Taylor: …default go-to. Um, but there’s some really interesting ones elsewhere, which are always good fun to, to have a look at. Um, there’s one from Luxembourg Philharmonic, which was the a pick and mix concert season launch. And the idea of being around that you should try different things from your season subscription and it was all around food and pick and mix, and that was quite quirky and stunning out. So the, almost the marketing then suggested how you should then engage with the concert season, which I thought was quite fun.

Michelle Lynne: That’s really cool. Yeah, I, we love to give our musicians examples of people to model after, because a lot of people don’t know where to start when they’re posting or how to avoid that. Like, here’s my upcoming concert that I want you to come to. So I’m hearing you talk a lot about people. The experience people will have when they hear you play storytelling. What would be interesting for the audience to know about you or to know about the music or about your experience? That’s how you can bring people in.

David Taylor: Definitely, um, particularly for the individual musicians that’s really achievable to do. You don’t need to have some incredible creative idea to like come up with the most like groundbreaking adverts. Minnesota’s a great example, but that’s probably took a lot of creative thought to come up with those, those ones. But if it is small snippets of people talking after your concerts around what they liked and why it was special and what they enjoyed, or just clips of how audiences engage after the concerts. That’s really easy to do and you just need a phone and that’s something really personal. People always love connecting with individuals and musicians, so I’m sure they’d be very happy to do that. So it’s, those things for me always seem really quite nice and achievable.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, that’s really smart. I was actually thinking about that this morning with my concert series, but like there’s this one girl who saw a poster one time, and then she came to every single concert afterwards and she’s always so excited and she’s bringing new friends and they’re in the psychology department, and it’s a perfect example of there is an audience out there, we just need to find them and connect with them and stay engaged. Rather than saying, classical music’s dying, the audience is dying. It’s like, well, no, we need to bring it, the messaging in a way that speaks to a wider audience.

David Taylor: Definitely, um, there’s a, a famous cellist who lives just north of me called JB Walton, and he lives in the, the North York Moors, which is really rural area, and he set up a music festival there for people who live in the area in the Moors… and I. The audience, there’ll be the most sort of traditional easy listening, classic fan type audience of “Lark Ascending,” maybe Beethoven Five, probably nothing more adventurous than Tchaikovsky sort of scenario. So Jamie puts on this chamber music festival of Stravinsky and Schoenberg and as much like experimental stuff as possible. And because it’s a small community, he drives around the villages and tells people and has a direct relationship with them. And so he tells the story…

Michelle Lynne: Amazing.

David Taylor: …one of the farm’s…

Michelle Lynne: That’s good.

David Taylor: …coming up to him at the end of like Stockhausen something. And it’s like, I hated every single second of that. I’ll see you next week. ‘Cause he’s managed to build a community. He’s like, I don’t really care if I enjoy the music or not. ‘Cause I come for this experience in a wider thing, maybe “cares” is the wrong word, but I’m willing to trust the musician on a journey and like it’s fine for me not to like stuff and it’s fine for me to like stuff. So that’s something you think you can actually replicate online going forwards.

Michelle Lynne: And that comes to a deeper why of why we’re doing this. We’re educating people about music in general, so of, of course they’re gonna have things that they don’t like. Just like if they go to a restaurant, they’re gonna have dishes that they don’t like.

David Taylor: Nailed it.

Michelle Lynne: It doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t come back. It just means that you’re widening their experience and you’re teaching them what’s actually what is actually classical music. I mean, that’s also our roles to educate people.

David Taylor: Exactly. And the trying something and not like it is part of one of the positive reasons to go.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: Like we all go try some sushi. And it was weird, but like, I didn’t like this one, but this one was cool. And that’s the reason I went.

Michelle Lynne: Right. Or bubble tea?

David Taylor: Uh, I still don’t get that.

Michelle Lynne: No. Ugh. Okay. Next time we’re at a conference, I’ll take you. My favorite one is brown sugar. Brown sugar taro.

David Taylor: Like,

Michelle Lynne: There we go.

David Taylor: I keep seeing it everywhere. Like maybe I need to try that experimenting side. It still confuses me.

Michelle Lynne: Do you get any pushback? Do you come into these organizations and they’re like, no, we, we’re not doing this.

David Taylor: Oh yeah. Always. Um, or there’s some things, more hesitancy to change. Sometimes it is around, I think it might be in the first book, or maybe it’s the second book. There’s one about, um, survivorship bias. And in essence, uh, it was around an, an orchestra that said that, um, they were wanting to, uh, connect to new audiences, and I said, maybe you should stop wearing tuxedos and be a bit more adventurous. And it was, oh, we, we thought that, but we asked our existing audience and they said, no. Uh, so we’re not going to, uh, and also the same organization we were talking about their online concept platform. And, uh, they were like, it was all funded by grants and things didn’t need to make any money out of it. They were purely doing it for reach, which is their main metric. And they did 10 concerts for free and then we’re gonna put a paywall up. And so highlighted the paywall was gonna properly stop the reach and they went, we agree with you, but we think we should charge music ’cause that’s what musicians deserve, so we’re gonna do it anyway. And so there’s still those elements where you get pushed back in various scenarios. And so it’s, um, it’s always a journey.

Michelle Lynne: But you also agree musicians should get paid. So it’s just them mis-misunderstanding the strategy. Like you would never be suggesting like money’s, the point of them bringing you in is to help grow.

David Taylor: Yes.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I don’t need to tell you that. I’m just like, I’m, I’m just like, wait, what? Like, there was obviously a…

David Taylor: Exactly.

Michelle Lynne: …misunderstanding here. Yeah.

David Taylor: It’s sort of this like, again, direct transactional thing. And it’s, again, like with streaming music, you wouldn’t be like, you have to pay me every single time you listen to my song. And that’s kind of what they…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

David Taylor: …were trying to replicate for the Netflix style. So it’s, um, there’s, there’s various challenges on that side. So there’s, there’s always elements of friction. It’s never from a place of we don’t want to do things. It’s always usually from fears, anxieties, challenges, uh, uncertainty. And also business is difficult. Any sort of experimentation’s gonna be risky or certainly feel like it’s risky?

Michelle Lynne: Right. Okay. You mentioned earlier your magic wand, so just to wrap up. If you had your magic wand, you wave it. What’s like, what’s changing about the music industry?

David Taylor: Uh, that’s a good question. I have like 50 answers, but not one. Um.

Michelle Lynne: Multiple answers are allowed.

David Taylor: It’ll be a culture change to a culture of experimentation and trying…

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

David Taylor: …new things, both as an organization, as individuals, is encouraged and positive because I think most of the time it’s that we could never change. And anyone who tries something new gets like knocked down instantly. But the idea of if we did, uh, we celebrate all these composers who really push the boundaries historically, so we should probably do the same celebrating of people trying to do that now, both musically and also organizationally and business-wise.

Michelle Lynne: What’s the first step to getting there?

David Taylor: Uh, getting me a magic wand. I think, um, I think maybe on this study it starts with individual musicians and or us as a collective…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: …and that if we start to be empathetic towards each other when we see things and supportive, regardless of what they’re doing and whether we agree with it or not, start to be a pro process going forwards.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting because there’s been so much hate on people who are trying new ideas or reformatting concerts or, you know, making different attempts. And then the purists, let’s say, in quotes are like, you can’t do that. You’re ruining our tradition, you know? So, yeah. I love that you shared about. The original entrepreneur, Mozart, like how people have done this stuff before. Portfolio careers. I remember I was walking by a statue and it was listing his, uh, career and it said, you know, philosopher, composer, organist, you know, church pastor. It was like, okay, people back then were doing more than one thing. And now in our current age, it’s like, no, you can only play one instrument. And by the way, it has to be one genre. And by the way, it should only be Baroque music and you have to be a specialist. And that’s. The only thing you can do all day or else you didn’t practice enough and you weren’t serious. Right. Quote, so.

David Taylor: And what do you mean you are teaching? If you’re teaching, you’ve obviously failed. And, which I always find fascinating ’cause there’s an element where like teaching is like not acceptable until you get to being very, very, very, very famous and then like master classes and like, well how have they learned to be a teacher if they’ve not taught through this process? And…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: …I know from my experience teaching, it made me a much better player than any of my time studying. So…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

David Taylor: …those bits I’m always fascinated…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

David Taylor: …by.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. So it sounds like we need to find a magic wand. Um, we love to finish every episode with an action point. So besides finding a magic wand, do you have one thing that our listeners can do after this very fabulous conversation? I so appreciated this.

David Taylor: I do… I did thought something halfway through. Um, it’s a little bit of a journey to get there, but the action point’s very succinct.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

David Taylor: I tend to find with musicians that when it comes to social media, we’ve mentioned about creating content, all these different things, it still feels quite draining to come up with ideas, particularly when you’re on concert day and coming up with social media content. It’s a creative endeavor, so your creative battery gets drained in doing it. And if you’re doing that on concert day, you are draining your battery when you need to use your creative battery for your main thing, your performance. And so therefore, people are either nervous about posting, they get paralyzed in what to do and post or create or do something, and that’s scary… So my takeaway is templates. I love templates. So starting off with a piece of paper of like possible potential thing you could think of as a type of social media post on a concert day. And then next piece of paper, getting rid of the ones you don’t like. And from there you’re left with a menu of possibilities as your template. And that could be, make it really granular, so like: photo looking out from the stage, photo looking in from the stage, photo outside the concert hall, photo outside the concert hall with me in it, and like as most painfully basic stuff as possible. And then from there you’ll, with this list, you have so many options. So when you turn up to a venue, you can go like, these are the three things that I want to do today. Or like, I can’t do this today, therefore I’ll do something else. So like if you say, for example, it’s like, I must have a photo of the conductor and the conductor says, no. If that’s your one idea, you’re screwed. But if you can just look at your little menu of ideas and be like, cool, next on the list. And then you can choose the next thing that works for you. So that your takeaway would be to make some form of templates or menu for your concerts. That means you can focus on the creative thing that you are there to do.

Michelle Lynne: I love that. It’s also very helpful to think we’re not gonna. Do the posting on the same day that we need to play. ‘Cause it is a distraction. We don’t wanna have to be split minded, but it needs to be done in advance so that you’ll have more people coming to your concert, paying attention online. I have, I have my next concert on Saturday, so I’m gonna think about this. That’s my action point… David, thank you so much. This has been super helpful. I love, love chatting. Is there anything that we missed that you wanted to mention?

David Taylor: Um, I don’t think so, but if you are interested in more of my ramblings, I have a blog at david-taylor.org, so feel free to come and say hello there…

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

David Taylor: Also, always love chatting, so please come and reach out and say hi as well.

Michelle Lynne: Sounds great. Thanks for your time and everybody go check out David‘s blog. It’s awesome. I love it. I’m a big fan and, uh, yeah. We’ll see you in the next episode. Bye everybody.