Audio Transcript:

Hey!

Ryan here—the founder and CEO of the Indie Music Academy (IMA). We’re making a few changes that might affect you—so this email is more “business-ey” than usual.

All of these changes are the “good kind” as we adjust for the new students, programs, and services that are continuing through 2023!

I want to make sure you’re involved and apprised of everything to come.

So if you’re the type of person who loves staying up-to-date with the inner workings of the businesses that you use, then this email is for you!

You won’t find any music industry tips or advice in this email…

But you’ll still learn a thing or two about how we are structuring our business as one of the leading online marketing schools for musicians!

So if you’re willing, come along for the ride!

New Programs

Since founding IMA I’ve been working to build a product line consisting of high-impact and relevant marketing programs that bring growth & clarity to artists’ careers.

Developing an online school for the next generation of artists has been a discovery process on my end as well—and with the success of the Spotify Growth Formula (SGF), aka our biggest and most popular course, the new era has been ushered in.

Next month, I’ll be announcing the next installment of our new series of trainings and it’s going to be just as epic as the SGF.

It’s going to focus on how to make a lot of money using:

• Ticket Sales
• Facebook Ads
• Mailing List growth
• Product & Patreon Sales

And it’s going to be cohort-based since you guys loved that so much with SGF.

This is all with the goal of staying on the cutting edge of music marketing to date.

Stay tuned for the official announcement coming soon!

Changes in your student portal

Because of what I mentioned earlier, this means that I’ll be working to refresh (and better organize) the existing product line.

This all starts with your online student portal as I work to update, condense, and better structure the existing courses and training we offer.

Let me be clear: you will not lose access to anything you’ve purchased.

But the portal will start to look different than what you’re used to.

Here’s what to prepare for:

• Names of courses you own might change
• Products might be combined (always in favor of giving your more, not less)
• “Old” information will be removed and eventually replaced
• Strategies will evolve to better reflect today’s music industry

See, not so bad right?

One thing you’d might ask is can I download the “old” versions to keep on hand?

Absolutely!

Now is the time to locally save any downloads, workbooks, templates, and freebies that you want to keep.

Unfortunately, videos can not be downloaded.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out by hitting reply on this email!

Once again, all of this is automatic.

By doing nothing, you will effortlessly receive all the newly updated material in your portal—so no action is needed for most students.

Spotify Playlist Promotion

Our playlisting service humbly began in 2020 when I partnered with some of the top music influencers that secure placements for Universal, Sony Music, WMG, and more.

Now we have been independently ranked as the #1 playlisting service in the world and have been comprehensively reviewed by Andrew Southworth and Jon Anderson; receiving nothing but high-praise.

Here’s what won’t change:

• Price. Despite rising costs and global economic inflation, we’ve decided against increasing prices in 2023. I know this might seem simple, but this was an intentional decision to remain accessible to all artists (not only label-backed acts).
• Quality. Our commitment to only securing 100% authentic playlists results in a 32% denial rate. This is sometimes frustrating, but is an unavoidable side effect of real marketing using only the top 1% of playlists on the entire Spotify Platform. This is not hyperbole. It’s a choice we’ve made and we are sticking to our decision to stay quality-centric rather than taking a mass-market approach like our competitors.
• Support. We will always have a real human support team (unlike others) that reads every email and manually attends to every artist we serve.

And now for the exciting updates:

You’ve been asking for a way to track the status of your campaigns and we’ve been building a portal behind the scenes to answer that call.

We are finally ready to roll this out to new clients who’ve placed new orders on June 1, 2023 and later!

I’m very excited for you to begin using this new portal. If you are a Spotify Playlist Promotion Client, click here to check it out!

A number of record labels have reached out to us asking for larger campaigns, more streams, and more playlists—they love our playlisting service but need more!

This was no easy task, but we have done it!

We have now expanded our marketing infrastructure to answer this call! We are accepting applications for our Label Services Tier of our very same Spotify Playlist Promotion Service.

If you are a Record Label or Legacy artist, check out the new offering by clicking here.

Final thoughts

I know change can sometimes be hard—so the team and I are here for you if you have any concerns about what I’ve mentioned above and how it might affect you.

But thankfully, there’s a lot to look forward to and I’m extremely proud of everything that’s on the horizon for the rest of the year and beyond.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reply to this email.

And as always, best of luck with your music!

Lots of love,

Ryan