Leveraging Technology to create a Middle Class for Musicians with Seth Power

Casey Combest: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Blue Sky Studios Podcast. Hope you everyone is having a wonderful day. I'm here with my friend Seth Power. Seth, I hadn't seen you in a long time. It's good to see you, man.

Seth Power: Yeah, good to see you too.

Casey Combest: You look like virtually the same. Since the first time I've met you, I don't think you've changed. You're like the most stable hairstyle of any artist I've ever met.

Seth Power: This is the only like way that I look good, so I just have to, I just have to lock it in.

Casey Combest: It works for you. It works for you.

Seth Power: Thanks.

Casey Combest: Uh, Let's kick off here. Uh, your release show 2018, you're a little discouraged. You're thinking about hanging up music.

Seth Power: Yeah.

Casey Combest: Take us back to that moment and, and why'd you keep going to where we are today in 2022?

Seth Power: Yeah. Uh, it's a great place to start. I mean, yeah, it was. I mean, as an artist, you know, you work with artists all the time. It's hard to make a living. It's hard to. Devote so much of your time and energy and effort into something and feel like you're not getting at return, you know, as you're sort of trying to scale your life up, you know, every artist wants to be able to do it full time, right? That's what we all want. It's the thing that we're most passionate about. Uh, but the economics are hard and it's hard. It's hard to create sustainable income. And so, and at the same. I was one of those people that-

Everyone is on their own line of development. Some people, you know, you see some artists who are 17, 18 years old and they're incredible. They have amazing voices. They've been taking vocal lessons for years. They've got that it factor, and those people go on sometimes to have these enormous careers and be extremely successful in the early twenties. It's easy to look at that and, and measure yourself against that and be like, Man, I'm the opposite of that, right? (laughs)

Casey Combest: Yeah.

Seth Power: I, I just needed a lot more time to, to develop and, and so a lot of my twenties were a developmental period for me still. But there's, it's what's certain inflection points have to happen to really kind of keep pushing you down the road. So that show was a big inflection point for me. I kind of felt like I'd just been sort of banging my head against the wall, like not really making any progress. I was putting out music that was okay. I didn't feel like it was great. I didn't feel like I was very good in a studio setting yet my voice still had a long way to go. And so it was just that feeling of kind of putting stuff out there and not really getting much of a response, uh, which is discouraging.

And, um, we did that show and like, I don't know, I still to this day don't know what happened, but there was like 250 people there. I think you were there. Cause I remember you text me afterwards and being like, Whoa, that turnout was crazy. And I was like, I know. I have no idea like how that happened, to be honest. I still don't know how we got that many people in the building. It was one of those shows where everything just kind of fell into place and the band was great and I felt so good about the performance and so many people were so encouraging that it just kinda gave me like new life and it was so, it was just important. And honestly, I've hit that wall a few times. Because it's just everything is an opportunity cost. It's always like, I could be doing this. Yeah. I could be making more money. And that, that grows and intensifies as you get older because life becomes more expensive. You, you get married, you, you know, you have a kid, you know, stuff like that.

And so the pressure really starts to mount. So yeah, I mean that was a, that was like a crucial inflection point for me as an artist to sort of like kind of gear get geared back up and, and. Move forward again.

Casey Combest: Yeah. Well that's cool, Seth. Well, I'm glad that you have continued and it's been fun to watch, uh, from the sidelines, just your career grow. Yeah. And uh, for our listeners, tell 'em a little bit about you personally and maybe a snapshot of what your music is about genre, that sort of thing.

Seth Power: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I grew up here in Brandon, Mississippi, outside of Jackson. And um, music is something I've always loved to do, but I've been very passionate about it. It was, it was kinda my primary hobby growing. And that was all that it really was. Um, I actually, I never had aspirations to do it. Uh, like professionally, I didn't think I was good enough , and for a long time I wasn't, to be completely honest. And it just sort of, I think that there's something to be said about like doing what you love and if you have an opportunity to do that in a professional setting, like that's the.

And, um, fortunately we live in a place that's like not super expensive. And so for a while I was able to do it, but I'm sorry, getting away from your question here, but yeah, no, I grew up around here, was very involved in sports, very involved in, you know, things that people typically do in the south. I went to church, I played sports, I went to school, I had my friends and I played music, and those were really the primary things that I did.

And, um, Genre. You know, trying to sort of determine what type of music I'm gonna make growing up was a really kind of difficult thing that I, looking back totally overthought and, and put way too much like energy into trying to put myself into a box. But I think that a lot of that came from the fact that as a listener, I love so many different types of music, you know, on one day.

I might be really into a particular hip hop artist, and then another day, you know, I might listen to Chris Stapleton and then the next day I might listen to somebody that's more like gospel inspired or something. So as a listener, I, I love so many different types of music that as a, as a creator and a writer, it was sort of like, where do I want to go?

Which direction do I want to go? Because, you know, if you're trying to do it as an artist and, and sort of build a career around it, you. It is important to have some stability around the type of music that you make. You know, you, you have to sort of build a, an image and a brand around your, your music and your style, and so I really felt like I overthought that a lot of like, what, which way do I go Continuum.

The album, my John Mayer that came out in oh six was like a moment for me where I was like, this, I think this is my lane. This is kinda like bluesy, kind of pop singer songwriter. And so I really started to kind of devote myself in into that direction. And, um, and from there it was just about writing songs and trying to write better songs and, you know, it's just growing, uh, as a performer and, and everything else.

And so, yeah, I mean, I consider myself now when people ask me like, What kind of music you make, I'm like, well, it's, it's kinda like singer songwriter, pop with some bluesy influences. Yeah. In our live shows, kind of tend to go a little bit more in like a soft. Direction because it's just fun to sort of play the songs live that way.

And when you're, you know, have a full band, you're not using tracks and stuff like that, the songs kind of tend to gravitate in that direction. Yeah. So that's usually how I answer that question now.

Casey Combest: That's great, Seth. Yeah. Um, yeah. So for, uh, for you, one of the things I've enjoyed is I feel like. When we see each other, you, you're always trying something new.

Mm-hmm. , there's a new, uh, marketing product or a new way to get your music out there. Uh, what's something you've been real excited about this year and, and maybe even have seen some momentum from an action or a platform or something like that. And hang tight on yours cuz we're gonna talk about that in a few minutes.

Seth Power: Yeah, sure. That's a good question. It feels like. It's crazy the way that technology and all these different platforms and tools change and evolve and grow because if it always feels like the window of opportunity with every new platform is, is getting smaller and smaller because they grow and they scale so fast.

So like, You know, for a while there it was like TikTok, you know, it was like tap into TikTok. Did you get, did you get pretty big on TikTok to, Did you do a lot of it? No, No, but I had some successful, really successful moments. Yeah. Like, I had videos that had, that got hundreds of thousands of views and, and picked up a lot of new followers and it, um, it did translate to streams and, and it helped grow my community a little bit.

Other than that, You know, live shows are still just the best way, I think, to make genuine connections.

Casey Combest: Yeah. You're not the only person I've heard say that like.

Seth Power: Yeah. It's just you and you have to, you have to do both. Like obviously the, the macro approach. Mm-hmm. , there's. A lot more scalability there. Like you, you know, you get, you start getting your music into the, into a position within, within Spotify where the algorithms are starting to deliver it to more and more people.

You can't beat that, you know, like the radio algorithm is a huge factor for me on, on Spotify. Once my music got categorized and picked up the right way, it, I reach a lot of new people. Just because through that particular mechanism, it took a long time to sort of build up to that point where, where I started to get some love. And so many artists struggle with that. And it's-

Casey Combest: That was me in there, man. I was just clicking on those songs over and over. But I would listen to it back to back with other things just to, just to show you I care.

Seth Power: Appreciate that was all now. Thank you. You're welcome, . Um, but yeah, I mean, other than that it's like, I, I just don't think you can be live shows. I, I haven't really found a ton of success with anything else like, There are other platforms, you know, there's a platform called Jamendo that me and a few other artists around here have gone.

Tell me about that.

Uh, The DLX. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. At one point it was really cool. Me and him were number one and number two on that platform.

And it's funny is that it's very, like a lot of the listeners are based in Europe and different parts of the world. It's not a lot of US listeners. Yeah. But it's, um, And again, at the end of the day, you know, as an artist, like if you can make money and get your music out to the world, that's ideal. Yeah.

But if you can't make money, then at least you wanna get your music out to the world, to people here. Hopefully they're, they follow one another. Right. Exactly. And they sort of experience it. So Jamendo was sort of that for me, it was like really the first place that. I started getting like actual volume.

Yeah. And I think now I've got like almost 6 million streams on there. Wow. Man. Half a million downloads and stuff like that. And so it's that, that was, that was an effective, as far as like those types of tools go and it's, you don't have to pay for it. You know, A lot of stuff is pay for play and. And as you know, most of the pay for play mechanisms out there, whether it's play, listing, whatever it is, they're mostly bs. Like they don't actually, it's a dead end. Buy it to uh, you get bought it and then honestly that ranks you on really detrimental effect.

Casey Combest: Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say, maybe this is wrong, is. For, and I'm trying to unpack this a little bit for maybe someone listening who hasn't played as many shows as you, they're not as far along in their career as you, and they're just getting started. Uh, do the live show thing, but also look for those margin, Look for an opportunity like for you, right. This platform, just right time, right moment. Yeah. And it really, really helped and, and catapulted your career in a lot of ways.

Seth Power: I'll tell you something else too. That's, that I did that I think is very counterintuitive to a lot of people and it, for me, it was just like, Sort of a Hail Mary moment with Magnolia Soul, which is the, the EP that I put out that we were talking about, the release party earlier. With that one, you know, there was kind of this initial bump where I put it out and like, you know, my friend's family, my small smirk, small circle of listeners. Listened to it and it was great. And then it just, you know, went down to, you know, almost nothing again. And that was very discouraging. And I remember there was a certain point where I was like, you know, I'm just going to, um, I'm just gonna release this music under a Creative Commons license to where essentially anybody can use it and put it on videos and do whatever they want with it, and they don't have to pay for a license, you know, anything like that.

All they have to do is credit me essentially. That's the only rule. Yeah. And I did that. It created ton of growth. Hmm. Unexpectedly that I did not foresee that did actually translate to money. Yeah. And that like those songs got used over. There was on YouTube alone, um, picked up over 4 million views on YouTube through other people's videos.

Yeah. And it actually translated to like royalties, which nothing crazy, but hey, when you're making zero and then you start getting checks for hundreds of dollars. Yeah. That's something.

Casey Combest: Yeah, you gotta start somewhere. And that's so interesting too, cuz most people, especially when you're starting out, you're like, Hey, I'm not, I want my music to make money. I don't want to have, I wanna have closed hands around this thing. And you had the opposite open hands, like, let me just see what happens. The guys Yeah.

Seth Power: And it And it was, it worked. Yeah. That's cool. It sort of took that project into a completely new place.

Casey Combest: Now that was the, I'm having a few memories here. That was the project you did here, right? Yeah. Or some, And I remember you were the first person I, I would let just stay at the studio cuz you kind of had your own way to work. I'd be like, All right dude, let's get you set up. And I would set the mics and I'd be like, Right, see you later. And you would just go after it, which was really fun man.

Seth Power: It was super fun. And honestly it was, um, It was so helpful.

Casey Combest: Cool. Cool.

Seth Power: It, it was tremendously helpful for me to be able to do that because again, I just, I was just not comfortable in a studio setting. It's, you know, it's very different and, and it, if you, you know, I'm definitely someone, and I've gotten so much better at this, but I used to really overthink things a lot.

Casey Combest: Yeah.

Seth Power: So I would put a ton of pressure on myself walking in a setting like this to make music and, um, and it would translate to poor performances. You know, I'd get really vocal. Real tight. Yeah, real tight Vocals. I felt like I'd stepped into a vocal box and I'm like, free, you know, just freeze and it was just so-

Casey Combest: And you used to wear the nightgowns all the time, is that right? You had that? That. Pink nightgown. It looked good on you, but-

Seth Power: You promised me that you were not gonna tell anybody. No, that's funny.

Casey Combest: I'm having, uh, having memories about no nightgowns. That was clearly a joke, guys. Well, Seth, uh, tell us about your new venture, man. I'm excited to hear more. I feel like I've gotten a few snapshots over the last little bit, but-

Seth Power: Sure.

Casey Combest: I, I, if you would kind of unpack what it is and then I'll ask you some more specific questions to dive deeper.

Seth Power: Absolutely. So yeah, I, I launched a company earlier this year, um, that was totally and completely inspired by your nightgowns. My nightgowns,

Casey Combest: Correct. Okay. I'm gonna leave the joke. I'm sorry. It's not that funny. Sorry. Totally, totally. But I'm just saying Power nightgown collection. I like it. It has a great name. It does have a great answer. All right. That's enough. I'm sorry.

Seth Power: We can put that on the backlog as a. But yeah, it was totally inspired by my background as an artist and, um, it really kind of like started in 2020, uh, because I was doing music and I was working in the restaurant industry. You know, Covid happened and those two industries just totally went away. So, Just kind of sitting there with a ton of time in my hands and, uh, I just had a ton of ideas floating around my head. And so I started to put 'em down on paper and start taking small steps towards seeing if it was even a possibility to make this into a reality.

And, um, essentially the first iteration of the business was a no-go. It was a non-starter. It was too expensive, um, couldn't raise the money, couldn't get it off the ground, et cetera, et cetera. And so I shifted and I pivoted into a completely different type of technology that at the time I didn't really know anything about, but it heard a lot about.

And so I went really deep into the Web three space, which I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that's blockchain, that's NFTs, that's cryptocurrency, all that stuff. And what I came to realize is that what I had sort of created, uh, theoretically for this platform, Worked so much better with that technology, and at the same time, there was a lot of attention.

There was a lot of money going into it, and so I completely pivoted essentially, and found a new starting point, and so created a company called Triply. And what we do is we give artists the ability to package any and all things as NFTs to be sold to their fans for the sake of crowd funding, but at the same time, the NFT is really more like a receipt, but it's also an access point into that artist community.

And so essentially it was, it was spurred from the fact that like we as artists really need two things to be successful: we need to be able to make money and we need to have fans. What the traditional like music industry has led us to, I think is this idea that we need, like from a quantifiable standpoint, we need as many listeners and as many fans as possible.

We need millions of monthly listeners on Spotify. We need millions of social media followers. We need millions of people paying attention to us and doing what we're doing. But we've always heard as artists grow, This has been preached by a lot of different entities that like, if you can really actually just find like your core group, whether that's a hundred or a thousand ideally, is kind of the, the key point.

If you can find that, that community, um, of sort of core fans, then with that you actually can have a sustainable career. And so to me, I think that what was lacking from that equation is a technology that sort of. More mutually beneficial to both parties and to me that's ultimately what this technology is, is it?

It's, It's more mutually beneficial because when you sell something, whether it's a music and FTA is like a digital collectible, which is a whole, there's a whole market for that that generates hundreds, millions of dollars, which is crazy to think. It's true , so whatever that thing may be, the fact that it co functions as essentially like an access pass into this very intimate community that you're building amongst your fans.

Casey Combest: Give us an example of, of maybe something someone could purchase in an NFT.

Seth Power: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, we had an, a country artist who launched a project with us and um, he essentially was like a Kickstarter. I mean, it was like a, it was a web three Kickstarter. Essentially it's a tier. Situation, So multiple offerings and multiple price points. For him, it ranged from $7 to $5,000 and you know, it was, it came with physical merch, vinyls, all this stuff.

So everything that you would sort of expect. Out of that type of a campaign. But again, what, what we call 'em on triply is we call 'em badges. It's a badge of support. It's a badge of community. It's a badge, like a VIP, like access badge. It's sort of all of those things wrapped up into one. So ultimately, like what you're buying is like, you're not buying an NFT.

I mean, that's just the packaging. It's just, it's just the way that we package it. Yeah. And, and so, you know, he, his was a like, A two prong approach. It was a crowdfunding campaign for his next album, and it was the start of this more exclusive fan club that he wanted to build and create within his larger fan base.

And I mean, it was successful. He raised thousands of dollars. We were able to get a bunch of new people to participate in this ecosystem that they knew nothing about. And we spent an unbelievable amount of time from a development standpoint building the platform in a way where like you can step in and use it and you don't have to know anything about how any of it works. It's just very user friendly and, and that's hard to do. It took a lot of time. Yeah. A lot of energy and a lot of effort. Sweat behind that man. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I mean, that's essentially, you know, that's really the whole, the whole goal of the platform is to, is to give artists a way to get involved in this new technology and, and take advantage of it.

Because really the, the primary benefit with a smart contract is that you can set up creator royalties and you can make more money as those assets change hands. And so the ultimate goal really of Trioli is to create platform where, you know, fans purchase these badges in support of artists, but then we will create . An internal marketplace that not only allows people to buy- buy and sell these badges, but also trade them. And essentially the idea is to try and create an ecosystem where we can encourage and incentivize these trades so that people can hold particular types of collections to gain access to like, really big, exciting, fun like events and different things that the platform host and . Puts on.

Casey Combest: Yeah.

Seth Power: So it's this, it's this combination of like every artist sort of has their own little world, but then the platform really is designed to just incentivize trading, buying, selling amongst fans, knowing that every single time those assets change hands, the artists gets paid again.

Casey Combest: Right. That's great, man.

Seth Power: So, So it's really just like it can we create, You know, I don't know. It's like what we're gonna find out . Yeah. Yeah. But that's really the goal is, is um, and we, we like to think really, really big. And like we, we always say that like, if we can achieve that, it, it's sort of our version of the first, you know, entrance into like actually being able to create more of like a creator middle class. Cause we don't really have that, right? Like it's sort of. And I feel this, and I think a lot of artists feel this. It's sort of this like, you gotta go big or you can't do it at all and mentality. But like if we can get to the point where like an independent artist who's good can make 40 to $60,000 a year, like that's an enormous achievement.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, and our society will benefit from having more creative people that have the bandwidth to create things like we live in America. Like our biggest, our biggest export is pop culture. Our biggest export is, is art and music. That's what we're known for. That's why people love us. It's not our politics or anything else. Thanks for that.

Casey Combest: It's not that nationally, that's for sure. Exactly. We're not popular in that format. And some of the ethos that you're hearing and Seth talk about, and he referenced earlier, is a Kevin Kelly article. A Thousand True Fans would certainly recommend you guys Google that. Uh, essentially the principle is that if you have a thousand true fans that will spend a hundred dollars a year on you, then, then you've created this six figure, uh, salary for yourself. Some less, but man, that's really cool. Seth. I'm excited for you. Uh, real quick, what do you feel like are some of the challenges you guys are gonna face this next year as well as some of the opportunities that you're excited about?

Seth Power: Yeah. You know, the challenges are, are really just scaling a business like this up. It's a new, it's a new form of technology that most people are not familiar with, and unfortunately, you know, A lot of people have looked at the primary applications of the technology and they're like, This is stupid. And I agree, , you know, like the board apes and the crypto punks and stuff like that.

People look at that and they just go, What's the point? I don't get it. And why are people spending outrage amounts of money on this? It doesn't make any sense. And I agree in, in many ways it doesn't. And so you have to sort of overcome that, uh, which is an unfortunate thing to have to combat. In the midst of all the other challenges that growing, you've, you grew this studio, like you remember what it's like.

You start out and you don't have a lot of resources and you have to sort of just figure it out and then you have to go from there. We were fortunate in that we were, I was able to raise enough money to like put a team together, finish the product, stuff like that. But we have a finite lifetime, you know, with that money.

And so really like we're expanding our team right now. And I, I'm so excited to say that like most of the people on our team are artists currently who are active in this space, who are trying to solve the same problems that we are, who are super passionate about the same things that we are, uh, which is like, can we build this as a part of all these other companies and everything else?

We're not like the sole solution obviously, by any stretch of imagination, but can we be a part of this new ecosystem with this new ethos of like, is there a way to leverage this technology to really benefit. M the majority of artists as opposed to the way that most platforms work, which just benefits a select, you know, population.

So, yeah. So I mean, really the biggest, the biggest challenge is gonna be getting from phase to phase and being able to, to make the money that we have work. Yeah. The good news is that, People are eager to invest in these companies. Um, you know, we have, we, you know, we're constantly in a state of talking to VCs and different funds that are interested in what we're doing and accelerator programs.

And the state of Mississippi just announced a new $70 million fund. You know, that we're eligible for, to, to extract money from, and we already got money from the state, um, as a part of, uh, Innovate Mississippi. So the state's been behind us from the beginning. They're excited to see a Mississippi company that's engaging in, in some cutting edge stuff, you know, But yeah, I mean, it's just growth, Growth and adoption.

Yeah. Like those are gonna be the challenges. Uh, we've seen some companies in the space like burn bright and die young because they overestimated their ability to, to, to. To help with the adoption curve. And so we're trying to grow slowly and very intentionally and just focus on like, quality. You know, Like we wanna make sure that every artist we work with feels like they have our full attention.

Like we're really trying to help them succeed. We're not taking any money out of these initial projects, so every artist keeps a hundred percent of the money that they make. Because what's, if they're successful, then it, it reflects great upon us to, to be able to say, This artist came and worked with us.

They made this much money. Um, and they're using these tools for purposes. That, that helps us tremendously. Yeah. Way more than, you know, a 5% cut or a 10% cut would, um, currently, so.

Casey Combest: Well, that's great, Seth, man. Best, best of luck to you guys. I'm excited to see that grow as well as your music. For people listening who wanna check out your music.

Seth Power: Yeah.

Casey Combest: Or your company. Uh, tell 'em how to find you.

Seth Power: Yeah. I fortunately have a unique name, so if you Google Seth Power, you'll pretty much find every good and bad thing I've ever done. Um, yeah. So brace yourself for that. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm active on, on all the. Platforms, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, um, Pandora's made some cool changes lately. Oh, okay. Check it out. Yeah, you should check 'em out. I didn't know about it until I got some notifications that I got added. Just some playlists. Yeah. And I was like, I looked at their, their new user interface. It's really cool. Cool. It's not Spotify, but it's, it's way better than Pandora used to be. . Yeah, sure, sure, sure. But yeah, so all those places. And then you got a website, sethpowermusic.com. So, yeah, pretty much everything I have is, is housed in any one of those places.

Casey Combest: Cool. And what about the company? You might have said it, I might have said

Seth Power: that. Yes. Uh, it's called triblymusic.com. How do you spell that? Tribly, t-r-i-b-l-y. It's sort of a derivative of tribe. Cool. Um, just the idea of kind of building your tribe. So yeah, triply music.com. We've got some, some collections that are active right now. We've, we're working with some really cool people, man. Like we've got three British artists that are just amazing. We got a band from Australia that's launching in a week. So we're working in three different countries, the us, the uk, Australia.

Casey Combest: That's great, Seth. We're a pump for you man. We will, uh, definitely be sharing on y'all. Make sure to check out Seth's Music and Tribly and uh, thanks so much for your time, Seth.

Seth Power: Yeah, thank you man.

Casey Combest: Absolutely. And, uh, thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the Blue Sky Studios podcast. Have a great day everyone.