Plan for Momentum Before It Happens (Russ Rieger of Not Dead Yet Media)

Also available on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify

Music executive and Not Dead Yet Media founder Russ Rieger has worked with artists including The Replacements, Cyndi Lauper, Prong, Modern English, and The Prodigy. We discuss building diehard local fan bases, finding creative ways to break through, and creating sustainable careers without chasing short-term attention.

Key Takeaways

• Longevity is about continuing to matter. A sustainable creative career comes from making an impact, remaining curious, and helping other people move forward.

• Artists should learn the business before handing it off. Booking shows, registering songs, organizing merchandise, understanding finances, and building relationships make artists better prepared to choose and work with a team.

• Creative marketing should inspire new ideas, not copies. The goal is to take what worked elsewhere and make something that rhymes with it instead of repeating the same playbook.

Follow Russ Rieger:

Instagram (Not Dead Yet Media)

Website (Not Dead Yet Media)

Linktree (The Indie Music Network Podcast)

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Transcript:

Mike: Hey Russ, how’s it going?

Russ Rieger: It’s going fantastic. Pleasure to meet you, Michael.

Mike: Pleasure to meet you as well. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. It is such an honor to have you.

I’m really excited to deep dive into your career in music because you’ve covered so much ground and have so much insight that I feel many of us can benefit from.

I do want to start with the fact that you’ve had such a long career in the music industry. What does longevity mean to you? When somebody says the word longevity, what does that mean to you?

Russ Rieger: To me or to an artist?

Mike: That’s a good question. Let’s start with you and make this about you. What does longevity mean to you?

Russ Rieger: My favorite thing is that I hate talking about myself, and now I’m doing this.

I look at longevity differently. To me, it is more about wanting to matter. I want to matter to artists, friends, and the community.

When you’re able to do things that matter and move things forward in any way, whether that is through impact, music, or anything else you love, that is important.

You’re a lot younger than me, but I’ll be like those old blues guys or Jagger. It is never going to stop. As long as you do something you love and can make a difference, you keep going.

I guess the best thing about getting older is the experience. There is much more history and context that I’m able to help people with now that I’m back in the industry, and I love that.

I love being able to look strategically at an artist. There’s only one percent who really make it to that enormous degree, but the greatest satisfaction in many ways is giving artists longevity.

It is helping them build enough of a fan base that they can continue doing this for the rest of their lives, whatever they choose to do, because artists are more creative than just one thing.

If you can create longevity for an artist, because music is everything and impacts people everywhere, bingo, you won.

That’s longevity. It is staying in, mattering, remaining relevant, always being curious, and continuing to learn.

Mike: I can already tell how much you care about artists and making sure you matter to people. Not even just artists. I could tell how excited you became when you talked about helping people with their careers.

Was that always part of you? Even when you were younger, was helping other people something you were passionate about?

Russ Rieger: There is a fine line between being transparent and honest while not sounding self-serving or like a jerk.

I think being respectful and kind has always been important. Having a team and working with people has also always been important.

It is great to have a group of people working toward a goal and achieving it together.

I know how much music gives to me. That’s my religion.

We are in a different world now. It is always about navigating whatever world you are in, but the same truths remain the same.

I’m going to attribute this to Springsteen. I don’t know if it came exactly from him, but I would bet that it did.

He talks about how it takes two and a half or three hours to watch a movie. It could take two or three days, or maybe a week, to read a book.

Just give me three minutes and I’ll change your life.

I always called it chasing the magic, but that’s what it is.

Music gives us so much, so you want to give something back. I’m no different than anyone else.

If you can make an impact and give something to people, everybody wins. There is a right way to do things, and I was taught by some really good people.

Mike: Who were some of those people?

Russ Rieger: Besides people you might not know from the industry, Roger Ames was a great mentor. Peter Koepke was a big mentor. Freddie DeMann was a big mentor. Don Passman was a big mentor. Gene Salomon was another.

There were several people I always learned from, watched, and tried to emulate.

Mike: Is that something you still practice today?

We were talking before the interview about learning in general. It sounds like you are always an active student and constantly learning, even today.

Russ Rieger: Why wouldn’t you?

It is the same as going to the gym. When people talk to Arnold about it, it is like asking, “Why do I eat breakfast or breathe?”

You’re always learning. There is a flood of information. How do you come up with new ideas unless you hear something, talk to people, learn, and remain open?

I’ve always found that fascinating, even in the music industry. When I grew up, it was a vertical business, and in many ways it still is. A lot of things were left on the side.

When you were a manager, you dealt with everything. Before they invented the 360 deal, you were already doing everything.

I like to call it the gray area. I always try to find different ways to do things.

The idea is to create many doors of opportunity for an artist, or many doors through which people can enter. The more you can create, the better.

You read more, talk to people, and listen to podcasts. I never go anywhere without listening to Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher.

I even learn a lot through politics. I apply a lot of James Carville’s approach to music and use some of the same philosophies around creating communities.

You grab ideas wherever you can.

It was beneficial for me to jump into different areas of business while I was out of the music industry. All that curiosity and sitting in those different chairs widened my aperture.

When I came back, I started looking at things and saying, “I don’t know. Why not?”

I always start with why not.

Mike: Is that how you originally got into the music industry?

I found it interesting that you went to college for political science and mentioned that you were planning to go to law school.

Russ Rieger: I was going to law school. I studied political science and philosophy.

I became involved in college radio, and then The Clash came out.

I’m sorry, The Clash are everything. If you want to know me, it is The Clash and Joe Strummer. It all starts and ends with The Clash.

I love Springsteen. I have my five. Bowie is another one. Everybody has their group.

I remember when London Calling came out. I said it was the greatest gift to mankind since Moses came down with the Ten Commandments.

In everything I do in music now, I’m still a diehard fan.

My company is named after an artist’s song. Every name in the company is a tribute to an artist.

Frank Turner is my favorite. I don’t know if you know Frank Turner, but Not Dead Yet comes from his song “Get Better.”

“We can get better because we’re not dead yet.”

Everybody has to listen to Frank Turner. He’s not big enough in America, and he deserves it.

I fell in love with music, and it became the religion. I called my parents and said, “No, my life is changing.”

I became a philosophy and political science major, lived at the radio station, became the music director, and put on my own shows.

I learned never to take no for an answer. When people said something couldn’t be done, I always had to do it, for better or worse.

That taught me a lot and gave me an entry into the music business. The Clash were life-changing for me.

Mike: Can you give me an example of a time when you were told something couldn’t be done, but you ended up doing it anyway?

It doesn’t have to be from your college radio days. It could be from any point in your career.

Russ Rieger: I could give you three right now, but they’re not closed and I can’t talk about them.

Mike: Fair. Are there any that you can talk about?

Russ Rieger: I have spent the last several years of my life pulling things together. You envision something, pull it out of your tush, and then make it happen.

That’s entrepreneurial. You see something and it becomes the North Star.

You also have to be willing to iterate.

There’s a great moment in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals, or maybe it was in the movie, where they talk about true north.

What good is knowing true north if you do not know about the chasms, valleys, and things you might fall into along the way? You’ll never get there.

It is always about iterating.

I found this both in the music industry and when I was working with tech startups that wanted to enter media.

I thought, “These guys are freaking geniuses.”

I’m not taking anything away from anybody. I respect anybody who starts something.

However, data would come in and tell them to go left. They would say, “No, this is the idea. We’re staying this way.”

No. You just want to win. The idea is the North Star.

If you need to turn left, right, around, spin, or jump on your head, do whatever gets you there.

The examples I would love to tell you about right now, I can’t.

However, when I was taking the job at Maverick, the label was going after The Prodigy.

They had not been successful in the United States, but they were starting to blow up. I think they had been dropped by Elektra, although I do not want to say that incorrectly.

They were preparing to release that record, and at first nobody had heard anything beyond “Firestarter.”

That story in itself, including how they made the video, was magic. They were geniuses, and the UK labels were the best.

Everybody was going after them.

I was accepting the job at Maverick, but I kept thinking that if I didn’t close The Prodigy, Freddie would think he had made a mistake hiring me.

Roger Ames and Peter Koepke were very gracious and generous. They allowed me to work two jobs at once and fly to the UK to try to sign them.

I made a call, and to this day nobody knows who I called, that got us the final meeting.

We had only met the band once. We flew to London and had a meeting with people I knew at XL, Beggars, and Mute. We closed that night.

In the UK, you would usually put out one single, a second single, maybe a third single, and then the album.

That was not how it worked in the United States, especially as SoundScan was arriving. It was more like opening a movie.

They kept delaying the record.

I took the entire budget and spent it before the record came out. There was no more money.

People went nuts.

I went into Freddie’s office and said, “I know you just hired me, but this is going to work. It is going to be number one. If it doesn’t work, you can fire me.”

What an idiot. That was a scary thing to do, but I didn’t know any better. Why not? Of course it was going to work.

We all worked really hard. I had friends at MTV, and we were fortunate.

That was what was great about being at a label. You could have a team and a goal and make something happen together.

We made it happen. That record is behind me right now.

Back then, it sold seven million copies. It was a situation where people said, “This just isn’t done this way.”

There’s always another way. There is never only one way.

Mike: I completely agree.

It’s funny that you mentioned true north. I like to visualize entrepreneurship as having point A and point B, but the path between them is never a straight line.

You meander, go in different directions, move backward, and maybe end up at point C or D instead. That might actually become a better situation than the original destination.

Russ Rieger: Absolutely.

Not only that, but how many times do we fail?

I tried to explain this when I worked on Wall Street.

In the entertainment industry, you’re three out of ten. Seven things fail, two do well, and one pays for everything.

There are times when you go five for five, but three out of ten got Derek Jeter into the Hall of Fame.

We’re like baseball. That means you fail seven times.

Mike: Exactly.

People don’t understand that perspective. Those can be the odds even when you are doing everything correctly, with correctly in quotation marks.

You can put everything behind something and have access to resources, but those are still the odds.

You can use your best judgment, but you never truly know what is going to hit.

Russ Rieger: We don’t know.

I always hated the term people used at record labels when they said, “We broke this artist.”

I had the biggest fights with people about that.

You broke them? You get to drive that car and live your life, and you’re saying you broke the artist?

I was taught by the right people.

We were conveyor belts. We came up with multiple doors and different ways to bring the artist to people.

Was there magic or not?

It is the same thing with a movie or television show. People don’t try to make something mediocre. They try to make something great.

That’s why it’s called magic.

Mike: You’ve talked about having a team and how much that helps, which I completely agree with.

When you first started in management, were you working by yourself or did you have other people on your team?

Russ Rieger: I always look for a team.

My first job was working for Will Botwin, who became a great manager and was also president of Columbia Records for a period of time, if I remember correctly. He is a terrific person.

The first band I ever worked with in management was Modern English. I helped get them onto Warner Bros.

There was a team there.

When I first started, I made subway-token money. That was all I made, but I had a percentage.

When the band became successful, the financial demands of a small business meant that percentage went away.

It was nobody’s fault. That is what can happen in a small business. However, you cannot live on that kind of money.

A close friend of mine who worked there and I left and started our own company.

We left Modern English there and eventually managed bands including The Replacements, Juluka, Prong, and Cyndi Lauper for a little while.

It was not necessarily something I wanted to do at that point. It was more something I was forced into, but again, it was nobody’s fault.

I’ve always had partners. I have them now.

There are a lot of things you need to do. If you do not have people around you, you cannot have people challenge your ideas or help execute them.

Without a team around you, I do not think you can succeed as well.

Mike: I completely agree.

I do want to go back for a moment. You were in college, working at the radio station, and then suddenly you were working for somebody who eventually became president of Columbia and starting your own management company.

What happened between the radio station and getting hired in the music industry?

Russ Rieger: There was no gap.

My goal was to become the music director of WNEW in New York, and I eventually became friends with people there.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to be involved in music. I had no idea what that path looked like.

Music was like a mecca for me.

I attended a conference that no longer exists, and that is where I met Will. We were talking on a street corner.

My first job was something like being a middle agent.

I would call colleges to see if they needed a band, then call an agent and try to book the band while getting a percentage of the deal.

I didn’t know what I was doing. Everything was self-taught.

That eventually evolved into working with Modern English.

I made a call to somebody who is still a friend today. That person answered a call from a young 22-year-old and connected me with a legendary A&R executive.

That was Ruby Marchand, an amazing international A&R executive who later became a vice chair at the Recording Academy.

She introduced me to Karen Berg, a legendary A&R executive at Warner Bros., who then brought me to Sire.

That is how it all started.

Everything I learned as a manager came from confronting new issues.

Here is a new issue. What do you do?

It could involve touring, finances, meeting people, or even learning how to do interventions.

With Juluka, I argued with the government of a Caribbean nation and got a special law passed that allowed the band to enter the country.

They were the first multiracial band from South Africa during the time when people were protesting apartheid.

I was also working secretly with the ANC because they were illegal in the United States at the time.

Johnny Clegg and Juluka were an amazing part of the fight against apartheid in South Africa. They were regularly arrested when they were young because they were a multiracial band.

Mike: That’s incredible.

It shows the lengths you would go for the artists you represented.

That is the thing about being a manager. You can be thrown anything, and your job is to solve problems, put out fires, and open opportunities.

I would say open opportunities rather than create them because it is ultimately up to the artist to take advantage of those opportunities.

Your role is to open as many opportunities as possible.

Russ Rieger: It is the greatest education you can get in the music industry.

I love managers.

Even when we became involved in purchasing catalogs from independent artists, I would call the managers. I feel most comfortable talking with managers.

It is the hardest job.

When I worked at a label, I could call somebody and just use my name.

Other people would call and say, “Hi, I’m so-and-so from Warner Bros.” You might not know the individual person, but you knew the company.

Managers deal with everything, from laundry to whatever epic thing happens in a stadium.

You also have to be the most strategic person because you need one foot in the creative side, one foot with the label, one foot in business, and somehow even more feet everywhere else.

I have tremendous respect for good managers, especially managers today. There is a lot to balance if you want to do it correctly.

It is also the best learning curve. It is graduate school and a PhD at the same time.

That experience allowed me to walk into a label as a general manager.

Mike: I’m curious about your thoughts on management today.

We have such an interesting music industry landscape. The question always comes down to representation for artists, especially emerging artists who are trying to build momentum.

When is a good time for an artist to get a manager? Is there a particular point when it begins to make sense for them to have representation?

Russ Rieger: That is what brought me back into the business.

I was not doing this, but I saw so much of the struggle.

It has always been hard. You have to put things into context and remind artists that it was just hard in different ways before.

I felt it was important to jump back in so I could help.

I look at it more as, “When does a manager want to help an artist?” rather than, “When does an artist need a manager?”

I think an artist can always use a manager.

The question is how much time a manager can give an artist who is still developing and where that relationship might go.

I help a lot of artists without paperwork or anything formal attached. You have no idea whether something is going to work.

A lot of times, it does not work out.

Today, it is important for artists to do a lot themselves. They have no choice but to be entrepreneurial.

Even back in the day, I told artists they were the CEOs of their companies. They had to look at their careers that way.

Many people do not care until they see data now. That is not necessarily the way I like it, but it is a fact.

So many things are in the artist’s hands.

The more artists learn, experience, and do, the smarter they will be when they meet potential team members.

The worst thing they can have is a bad relationship, a relationship that moves them three steps backward, or somebody who takes their money without helping them.

The smartest thing an artist can do is build the initial stages of the career and touch the different areas themselves.

Book your own shows. The song is obviously the most important thing, but learn how to perform, get people paid, set up merchandise, make sure your songs are registered, and understand distribution platforms.

The experience of doing those things is important.

You cannot just close your eyes and say, “Believe in me,” and expect everybody else to take it from there.

You need to be able to ask questions.

Why are we doing this? What are you doing? What did I find when I tried it?

The difference is that a manager comes in to scale it.

Sometimes an artist will say, “Wait, I can get this for less money.”

Yes, but we can go onto these other platforms and sell more.

You have spent too much time eating an individual pizza. We want a full pie where everybody can eat family style.

You want to take those learnings and make them family style.

When you are worried about making ends meet, you can become afraid to expand the pie because you think you will lose certain things.

No. You are going to gain certain things.

That transition is important for an independent artist.

The more they have already done, the more prepared they are to ask questions. They will not know everything.

Read Don Passman’s book. That is the Bible and a great place to start.

Having those experiences helps tremendously.

Know the club owners and bookers. Learn how touring works without a road manager or tour manager. Understand some of the finances.

It is also better for the manager because the smarter the band is, the better the relationship will be.

Mike: I strongly encouraged all my artists to learn, and I tried to teach them along the way.

If there was something they didn’t understand, I would explain what it was and why it mattered.

I told them, “I want you to know this stuff.”

Artists should understand the different aspects of their careers because they may have to handle those things themselves at some point.

They also need to know whether the people on their team are doing a good job.

You want to know that your manager is doing what they are supposed to do. You want to make sure your publishing is being handled. The same goes for your label or publicist.

How would you know whether those roles are being handled correctly if you have never tried them yourself or learned the basic responsibilities?

It also helps you ask the right questions. You will not know what to ask unless you have tried it or taken the time to learn.

Russ Rieger: You’re 100 percent right.

Remember how I keep talking about the North Star?

The fundamental thing is that this is the artist’s life. They have been gifted with something they believe in.

I have no problem telling you that I’m an amazing air guitarist. I do not use a tennis racket. I’m an air guitarist.

If the music is loud enough, I actually sound good, even with this Long Island accent that I lost in Los Angeles but somehow got back.

This is the artist’s life we are dealing with.

If you work at a label, management company, or agency with 30 artists and one project does not work, you still receive a check every two weeks. You might have health insurance and a travel-and-expense account.

It may not be like the old days, but everybody is doing okay.

For the artist, this is their life. You are either in it or you fall off a cliff.

Even if they are signed to a label, I try to teach them to think about their priority level.

If you are the number six priority, you might as well not be on the label.

There are many things artists need to consider.

I probably look at management more intensely than some people, and that intensity is not always good. It is one reason I stopped managing for a while.

You are responsible for their lives.

The manager is the closest thing to a band member without actually being a band member, because becoming a band member would be bad.

Thinking you are cool would also be bad.

A manager is the closest person to understanding what the artist’s life is like.

You live their life. Since you are taking a percentage, you are also connected to the same financial situation in many ways.

You are in the trenches together.

That is why the relationship is important.

I have a different philosophy than some managers, and other managers have different ways of doing it.

There are plenty of good managers. The question is where the chemistry is.

There are artists I might love but would never be good at managing. I would not be as effective with them.

Other artists are directly in my wheelhouse.

I’m a strategist. I can see what to do.

I cannot always explain it in a linear fashion. They actually sent me to school for this.

I learned to work backward so I could explain the individual steps to people.

When I know, I know.

Again, it is three out of ten, but when I’m standing on a table for something, chances are it is going to move.

You want to be together because who else is going to run through walls to make it happen?

Everybody has a different style and belief.

I spend time talking to artists about fighting the algorithm. I look at different ways to release records and develop different theses.

Everybody has a different plan.

Mike: I love that you mentioned chemistry.

That is the most important part of any representation or team-building relationship.

You need similar ideas and philosophies about how to approach the goal together.

Everybody approaches things differently, so you need to find the right match for you.

I also appreciate what you said about release strategies.

We were talking about this before the interview, but I want to talk about momentum because that is something that spans your entire career.

You mentioned fighting the algorithm.

The conversation about virality seems to have toned down in the last year or two, but I’m curious about what happens when somebody captures that magic.

When something goes viral or a project starts becoming a hit, how do you keep that momentum going?

Once you have people’s attention, how do you keep it and build from it?

Russ Rieger: From a label’s perspective, when we were going to put out a record that we really felt would matter, we had already planned for that possibility.

Tim Collins, Aerosmith’s manager, used to teach me this.

It was a war strategy. That terminology might not be appropriate now, but you knew when the air cover would come, followed by the Marines, Navy, and Air Force. You knew how everything came together.

Before anything was released, we had the plan.

Once information came in, you would iterate and change. You did not blindly stick with the original plan.

However, you knew the framework of where you wanted to go, how you would keep the momentum going, and what needed to happen next.

You already had the vision.

Maybe you believed the record would sell a certain number of copies, capture a particular audience, or establish an important foothold.

You need a plan. I do not know how you go after anything without one.

More ideas will come afterward, but you cannot sit there and say, “Wow, this thing is starting to move. What do we do?”

You have already lost it.

If you are not three months ahead, know what you will do when it happens, and prepare for it, you will lose the momentum before you can respond.

If somebody does not have a plan, that is a reason to say, “Wait. Let’s step back before we release this.”

Assume it is going to work. What will happen if these different things occur?

When the project reaches this point, what happens? When it reaches the next point, what happens?

You change accordingly, but the important thing is that the artist is their own magic. The momentum has to be real.

There was recently all this negative conversation about Geese.

Do people know how many things we have always done in the gray area to create attention in entertainment?

You create perception.

Tech people say, “Fake it until you make it,” and act like you are already there.

Why is it suddenly negative to try to get attention for an artist?

Nothing changes in entertainment except the technology.

That is what fools everybody.

The problem happens when everybody starts listening to the technology gods and saying, “We have to adapt to them.”

Wait a second. That is not the music industry.

Nobody discovers a band in three months and then says, “You need to release a new song.”

We spent our lives writing the first record, but now we are told to put something out every three months.

That is a great plan for the platforms. Does it work for the artist?

Everybody complains about the traffic because there are around 100,000 songs released every day.

Why would the solution be to release even more songs and increase the traffic?

We are stuck on the 405, so let’s add more cars.

That makes sense for them. Does it make sense for the artist? Has anybody asked that question?

Can we rethink how records are released or how long we stay with a song?

It does not matter how old a song is. Until somebody hears it, it is new to them.

I have a visceral reaction to people assuming there is only one way things have to be done.

There is never one way.

You are often more successful when you fight the expected approach, do something different, and break through.

What the team did with Geese was an attempt to break through the attention barrier.

If Geese were not good, it would not have stuck.

People would have said, “I heard about them, but I hated the record.”

Did they do something to get attention? Yes.

Did the band have the goods to back it up? Yes.

That means every other band wishes they could be Geese.

There are multiple ways to break through.

The problem is that the next person says, “Get me another Geese,” or, “Let’s do exactly what Geese did.”

Mike: The interesting thing is that this might not have become a controversy if the marketing company had not discussed it at South by Southwest.

They disclosed what they had done.

Whether you agree with the method or not, enough people felt the approach was inauthentic that it created a backlash.

Russ Rieger: That is because people do not have the historical context.

Everybody is living only in the present.

If you go back through the history of the music industry, you will see how many different things people have done to break artists.

Everybody has done this.

Mike: I always loved the documentary about Shep Gordon. He is an amazing manager.

One of my favorite stories was about how they got Alice Cooper Canadian citizenship because Canada had a law requiring a percentage of the music played on the radio to come from Canadian artists.

That was brilliant.

They found a way to play the game that nobody else had considered.

There was also the story about intentionally breaking down a truck with Alice Cooper’s image on it in Piccadilly Circus and completely blocking traffic.

I’m not saying anybody should do that today, but it got people’s attention.

That is what it ultimately comes down to. How are you going to get people’s attention?

More than ever, there is an infinite supply and an infinite demand when it comes to entertainment, including music.

When you have that situation, how do you rise above the fold?

You need to think differently about how you get that attention.

Russ Rieger: All those examples are brilliant. Hats off to the teams that do those things.

That is what makes it fun.

I remember first seeing Portishead’s video for “Sour Times.” It was a movie.

You were not simply thinking, “This is going to be successful.”

You were thinking, “This is amazing. We have to get this to the world.”

You find interesting ways to be creative.

That is what creative marketing is. You figure out ways to get people to pay attention because you know the work is great.

I think all that stuff is fantastic, and I respect everybody who does it.

The last thing you want is eight people in a row using the same plan. Then everybody goes right over the cliff because it stops working.

You need to take the inspiration and create new things that rhyme.

It is more about rhyming than following.

Take the great idea and look at it in a new way.

Step back and say, “There has to be another way. Let’s try this. Has this been done?”

Even if the approach is old, you can bring it back.

Artists are competing not only with everything being released now, but with the entire history of music because people can listen to anything.

It is tough.

That is why you need to be hyper-local.

You need to do everything you can to reach the people around you.

The hardest thing for a new artist is the same thing people experience on social media. They see everybody else’s lives and become intimidated, jealous, or depressed.

A new artist looks at everything and thinks, “How am I ever going to compete with that?”

I keep saying, “No. Let’s capture New York. Let’s capture Philadelphia. Let’s capture your neighbors.”

Do a porch performance. Do a pop-up. Capture the people around you.

If you can reach 50 or 100 people and begin developing diehard fans who will stay with you, those people will bring three more people.

Stop staring at the entire world.

If the local approach does not work, then there might be an issue. Go back to the drawing board and try again.

It is always about getting off the mat.

Trying to reach the entire world is too intimidating.

Artists have always started hyper-local. We just did not call it that.

People would call independent record stores and ask what was selling.

Great A&R executives would call the stores and say, “What is selling that I have never heard of?”

The owner might respond, “There’s this band whose records I cannot keep in stock.”

There you go.

The band was not competing with the world. They were maximizing the impact they had on the people around them.

If you change people’s lives and matter to them, they will stay with you.

There are bands that never became enormous but still built careers that lasted for the rest of their lives.

You do not have to become gigantic.

I tell people this repeatedly because it is only about the fans.

I’m a diehard fan myself.

Billy Joel played Madison Square Garden hundreds of times. It became his living room.

People would say, “That’s amazing.”

I would ask, “Do you think anybody new came?”

Maybe the children of the original fans came, and they still bought merchandise, but his diehard fans were going to return again and again.

I’m never going to stop attending Frank Turner concerts and spending all my money on merchandise.

I’m never going to stop telling people about him on podcasts.

I’m a diehard fan.

The new Social Distortion record is the best record this year. I’m going to tell everybody.

Why? Because I talk a lot, I have a loud mouth, I love them, and I’m going to the show.

Leave me alone because I’m going into the pit.

That is what allows artists to have careers.

Social Distortion might never become an arena band, but they can play for the rest of their lives.

That is the goal.

Everything else is luck, timing, or dependent on whether genres shift. You cannot control those things.

You can control a career.

You build it through songs, touring, and a fan base.

That’s it.

Songs, touring, fan base.

They are all hard, but then you navigate the world around those three things.

If you have this creative bug, what else are you going to do?

You have to write the song.

Unless you go to law school, which is probably what all of us should have done.

Mike: I don’t even know if law school is a good idea these days, but yes.

After your time at Maverick, you took a break from music and moved into consulting, holding companies, and other areas.

Russ Rieger: The music industry took a break too. Remember, it was not having a great time after Napster.

Mike: For timeline context, was this during the early to mid-2000s?

Russ Rieger: Yes, up through around 2010.

I worked with a great company called Edison Media Research, which conducted radio research and also worked on presidential elections.

I was getting into so many fights because the industry was suing its own customers.

I would send blank CDs and markers to street teams and say, “Burn this record and share it.”

The lawyers were freaking out and telling me we had to get everything back.

The record went beyond gold and almost went platinum.

People did not understand what was happening.

I had Edison conduct research, and they proved that people who downloaded music also bought more music than people who did not.

I thought, “This is why it was good to leave.”

I left and felt like I had been kicked out of Krypton and had to find a new home.

It was actually beneficial.

I had a branding company working on what is happening more commonly now.

We worked with branding companies to bring music platforms into campaigns.

Maybe a company needed more people to enter its stores. Whatever the return on investment was, we would figure out how music could help create that result.

That was a great lesson in branding and marketing from a different perspective.

We developed inventive approaches.

The Gap wanted to sponsor tours but did not have enough money for the type of national sponsorships it wanted.

I called friends who were agents and said, “Wait a second.”

I asked The Gap, “What are your biggest markets?”

The consumers do not necessarily know whether you sponsored the entire tour.

What if we only activated the sponsorship in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and a few other major markets?

Would people in San Francisco assume the sponsorship only happened in San Francisco?

We also gave them radio time.

I called the agents and said, “If this helps the artists sell a second night, they will make even more money.”

We made it appear as though The Gap had sponsored the entire national tour while only activating in around six markets.

We used music-industry thinking and asked, “Why not?”

Perception is everything.

Nobody in Kansas City was going to say, “That Dave Matthews Band sponsorship did not happen here, so The Gap is lying.”

Nobody thought that way.

We also created performances and in-store signings that brought people directly into the stores.

That was fun.

Later, we experienced personal tragedies that I will not discuss, and we had to move back to New York.

I began meeting with technology companies that wanted to become involved in media.

I thought it would be incredibly cool, but many of those plans were not working.

Then I met with the venture capital firms and family offices backing those companies and asked, “Why are you investing in them? What was the plan?”

That eventually led me to a position at a family office.

Those experiences have proven beneficial now that I’m back in music.

There are amazing executives today who think this way and are doing more things the industry did not do before.

However, being in other industries gave me a different perspective when I returned.

Being kicked out of Krypton turned out to be okay.

Mike: That’s how you get to become Superman.

Russ Rieger: I’m probably Superman’s dog in that analogy. I just want the little cape.

Mike: What made you decide to come back?

Russ Rieger: I left the family office because I was interested in buying independent music catalogs.

I was involved in the Dropkick Murphys deal and then the Dead Kennedys deal, which took a year.

If you want to make an impact, you find a band nobody thinks is obtainable and close the deal.

The members were not even talking to each other, so that was awesome.

However, it became difficult to find the right people and work through the valuations in that field.

I was enjoying it, but my heart was not fully in it.

We are talking about doing it again now as a more full-time part of the company because I apparently like doing six things at once.

I was talking with a friend who runs a conference and giving him some feedback because relationships are about relationship capital. Friends are always trying to help one another.

He said, “You should meet this young woman. You would love her.”

I said, “Great. If I can help her in any way, I will.”

I met Heather and thought, “This is great. She is me at 25.”

She was a manager, a go-getter, and already had something established with The Orchard.

I then went to another friend I had known since my Island Records and London Records days. She was a great marketing executive who had worked with Portishead.

I asked whether she would consider jumping in with us and building something focused only on independent artists.

I said it had to become a media company. I did not want to build something that only did one thing.

An artist is like a starburst.

Artists do not only write songs and perform.

They might also paint, act, or write screenplays. You cannot control creativity or tell the muse where to take them.

I wanted a company that could support all those directions.

We had great chemistry, which goes back to what we discussed earlier.

We could take an artist from Baby’s All Right or Baker Falls to Madison Square Garden. We have that experience.

If we were going to do this, I wanted us to be able to do everything.

We had the label through The Orchard, the management company, and a consulting company.

We work with international labels, which I love because there are many great labels that find it too expensive to break artists in America.

That type of consulting was also done in the past. The model used by [unclear name, sounds like “Kirkup-Jensen”] was famous.

It is fun to help without taking over completely because the labels still have their own teams.

That became the music side of the company.

I was also fortunate to become friends with Fred Zollo, one of the most iconic Broadway and film producers.

His work includes Once, Angels in America, Buena Vista Social Club, and Sing Street. We are also working on a Miles Davis project.

He is a legend, and his partners are legends.

That became the beginning of our production side.

Then we thought we should start producing podcasts because if we were going to work in media, we needed to create more doors.

An artist needs all these different access points.

Now we have podcasts, and next week we are launching a salon series.

There was something called the Algonquin Round Table in the 1920s.

Writers and poets would gather at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City and talk.

I have always wanted to create something similar.

When I was at London Records, we created a tea area. I also tried to create community spaces at Maverick.

I even talked to people from the Obama team about how they had created their own community in Washington, D.C., which was fascinating.

Conferences are great, but they are often all the same.

I wanted to do something different.

We are holding a roundtable discussion about the New York independent music scene and eventually expanding it.

My position is that the doors are locked and nobody leaves without a plan.

I do not want everybody simply pontificating.

What are the three things we can actually do? Why don’t we meet once a quarter, have a couple of artists perform, and create that atmosphere?

I’m trying to bring in a poet as well.

It is happening inside a gallery. I love the owner, and people are trying to develop a television series about him.

For our event, he is building a Warhol-inspired installation.

It is very New York.

It is a non-conference conference. It is organized in the round, like theater in the round, and built around conversation.

Then we leave with actual ideas.

I’m also trying to create an independent music coalition.

People talk about independent music as a nine-billion-dollar sector, but it is still made up of individual mom-and-pop operations. Some are much larger than others.

Martin Mills did it best. He created a coalition of labels.

Independent artists constantly talk on Instagram about not making money on tour or being unable to accomplish certain things.

The problem is leverage.

We are not going to change anything without leverage.

I’m going to try. We will see if it works, but I’m committed.

Part of the mission is to create this coalition and get people to help one another.

The hip-hop community was fantastic at doing that.

It is not that nobody has done this before.

That community was entrepreneurial, understood how to iterate, and changed world culture.

Alternative artists never did it to the same degree.

The hip-hop community knew the pie would become bigger for everyone.

They ran circles around the alternative community.

Why can’t we learn from that?

Why can’t an artist say, “I’m going to make a post for you,” or, “I’m performing in Detroit, so let’s work together?”

That is going to become my soapbox.

I do not need to manage every band.

If we help one another, everybody becomes bigger.

Otherwise, everybody will be picked off one at a time.

That is the company’s mission.

How do we take an artist, incubate them, help them grow wherever they want to go, and give them a career?

That is the North Star.

The company provides multiple access points.

If the artist wants to try something else, we can help move it forward.

We can also give back to the community through the salon series, discussions, podcasts, and promotion.

How much fun is that?

That is doing well by doing good through music, which has given us so much.

I cannot go a day without putting on a song and having it change my life.

Go back to Springsteen.

Talk about somebody who still matters in his 70s.

That recent show was unlike other Springsteen shows, but it felt like a church rally.

It was depressing and difficult, but he still matters.

Joe Strummer still matters.

This is why I do not sleep.

All I want to do is be in these waters, help artists, and experience that ride.

When you have something that starts moving, that ride is like a drug.

It is everything.

You are chasing the magic.

I also loved when artists became successful enough to buy homes and establish some stability.

What a great feeling.

Artists give so much, the work is difficult, and they are often the most vulnerable people involved.

There’s your answer about longevity and what it means to matter.

Mike: That is a great way to begin wrapping things up.

I have a few fun questions that I always like to ask my guests.

What was the first concert you ever attended?

Russ Rieger: It was the worst.

Back then, some older friends were interested in bands like New Riders of the Purple Sage and some other substances.

I was a budding punk kid at heart, and I went to that show.

It was the worst.

My sister had shown me Gimme Shelter, and I could not believe how bad my first concert experience felt.

My brother, God bless him, came to me and said, “No. We cannot let this happen to you.”

He took me to see a band you might not remember from before they became big, the J. Geils Band.

Mike: I know the J. Geils Band.

Russ Rieger: The best bar band in the nation.

I broke my seat.

That wiped the slate clean.

From there, I was always in the pit.

I got kicked in the head at The Prodigy. I was always in the pit.

Mike: I’m going to rephrase my next question slightly because you’ve mentioned so many amazing artists.

I want to give you an opportunity to shout out a newer artist, ideally somebody you are not currently working with.

If you want to shout out one of your artists, that is completely fine too.

Who is a newer artist you’re really enjoying right now?

Russ Rieger: I cannot talk about some of the artists I’m working with.

To me, she is already big, but how could you not love Lola Young?

The Beaches and Wet Leg are also killing it.

I probably listen to 200 new songs every weekend. That is still only a drop in the water.

I do not have time during the week, so I try to listen on the weekend.

The problem is that I’ll return to the Social Distortion record and lose time because you fall in love with something.

I want the end-of-year Spotify recap to show Frank Turner at the top. If it is not Frank, I want Social Distortion there.

I love Lola Young’s newer material. I think it is awesome.

I have also always been a fan of Courtney Barnett, at least over the last five years.

There are some great independent bands in New York right now.

There is an artist called Torture and the Desert Spiders who I think is terrific. She is amazing.

It would be a privilege to work with her, but right now I’m a fan and try to help when I can.

Selfishly, I want to talk about my own artists, but that was not the question.

I’ll champion Lola Young. I think she is awesome.

I also think she has great management.

If I remember correctly, her manager worked with Amy Winehouse and went through that experience.

I have been involved with interventions and had three artists die in different ways, which was part of why I stopped managing.

One died from drugs. One died in a car accident on tour that I still have never gotten over. One was connected to Juluka and a violent grudge situation.

It devastated me.

When you are that close to somebody, those tragedies are overwhelming.

The fact that Lola Young’s team was able to get her help and stop things is important.

We used to stop projects to try to help people get straight, but it takes a lot to turn down money.

It is like Jalen Brunson turning down money so his friends could join the team and they could try to win a championship.

It takes a lot.

Her team cared enough to stop everything and say, “No. You need to get better.”

She is such an enormous talent.

Amy Winehouse was a gift from God, and what a waste that was.

Lola Young writes and performs in a way that demonstrates how vulnerable artists are.

There is no filter or protection for many of them.

It is difficult to perform that way night after night.

I love her work, and I’m going to champion her.

Mike: The final question is one I ask every guest.

If you could only give one piece of advice to an artist, what would that advice be?

Russ Rieger: One?

Mike: One.

Russ Rieger: Nothing matters without the song.

Give me three minutes, and I’ll change your life.

Nothing matters except the song.

If “Born to Run” had never been written, nothing else would matter.

Go through anybody’s career. Look at Tom Petty or any artist you love.

Here is the exercise I would give an artist.

Think about an artist you love, but pretend you have never heard of them.

You need to hear something and say, “Oh my God.”

“Like” is the worst word in the English language.

If somebody says, “I like this show,” you say, “Okay, great. Next.”

The response needs to be closer to, “I hate this,” or, “I love this.”

Think of an artist you love.

Now somebody comes to you and says, “Play me the song.”

They might hand you an entire album, but ultimately, it begins with one song.

If they have five songs and are trying to decide which one it is, even better.

Play me the song.

That is the entry point. That is the connection.

It is the song.

It is like, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

I’ll be the James Carville of music.

It’s the song, stupid.

It is always the song. Period.

That is the one piece of advice.

Put everything into the song.

That is why you cannot settle.

Even if the song initially fails, some people will understand it.

There are songs that failed and became great later.

You do not know what is going to happen, but it has to be great to you.

You have to feel like it represents everything you are and that it matters.

It’s the song.

Otherwise, what are we doing?

Mike: That’s exactly right. It is all about the song.

Russ Rieger: It’s all about the song.

Mike: Thank you so much, Russ.

This was such a blast, and I really enjoyed the conversation.

We will make sure the show notes include links to Not Dead Yet Media, the podcast, and everything else you are working on.

It was an honor speaking with you, and I really appreciate it.

Russ Rieger: It was a privilege to come on.

We are going to return the favor because I have so many questions to ask you.

I know we talked about that off the air, but I’m saying it on the record too.

I would love to learn more about what you do and what you have done because I’m really impressed.

Another time, when you are not recording, we will do that.

Mike: Sounds good. Thank you so much.