transcript of Emily white’s interview

 A Conversation with Emily White

Emily White has built a career at the intersection of music, entrepreneurship, and civic life. She is the Amazon number one best selling author of How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams, host of the top ranked music business podcast of the same name, and founder and CEO of #iVoted, which produced the largest digital concert in history to increase voter turnout.

She sat down for an interview on Tutors, Mentors, and the City, hosted by Kevin “Dotcom” Brown through The City Tutors, to talk about owning your work, building real revenue streams, and why sleep and green smoothies matter as much as any strategy.

Kevin “Dotcom” Brown:
When people ask, “Who are you,” how do you answer that?

Emily White:
First, thank you for having me.

I usually say I am an author, entrepreneur, and longtime music industry executive. I wrote How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams, which became an Amazon number one best seller. I host the number one music business podcast globally under the same name.

I am also the founder of #iVoted. We built the largest digital concert in history to increase voter turnout, and we are back in venues in 2024. On election nights we partner with concert and entertainment venues so that fans can get in if they show a selfie from outside their polling place.

Building a sustainable music career

Kevin:
Your book title is very direct. How do you actually build a sustainable music career and collect all the revenue?

Emily:
The short answer is that you need to own your relationship with your fans.

Collect as much contact information as possible in the form of mobile numbers and email addresses. Tech companies are the most valuable companies in the world because they have our data. Artists need to think the same way. Social media is fine, but algorithms change constantly. If you are only relying on that, you are missing money and long term stability.

On the revenue side, when I ran management companies our income was commission. It was literally my job to understand every revenue stream that is owed to an artist who writes, records or releases music, and plays live. The modern music business was constructed in the 1950s to confuse artists. The information exists, but it is rarely presented in the right order.

I structured the book like a step by step course, from recording to release or creation to execution. You would never teach a kid division before addition. In the same way, artists should not be trying to market or negotiate deals before they understand what they own and how money flows back to them.

There are roughly a dozen revenue streams tied to a song if you write it, record it, and perform it. Things like performance royalties through a PRO such as ASCAP, publishing income through an administrator like Songtrust, digital royalties, live performance income, and more. The book walks through the entire process so musicians, comedians, and any performing artist are not leaving money on the table.

Pre orders, Patreon, and practical moves

Kevin:
You gave me some advice that blew my mind. You said, “Do a pre order.” Most people just drop a Spotify link. What should new artists actually be doing?

Emily:
Even superstar artists do not wait until release day.

If you know your project, maybe it is an EP, a single, a concept album, launch a pre order through your own website and through Bandcamp. That is where you will earn real dollars up front and collect contact information.

Too many artists wait until day one and say, “Here is my Spotify link,” which pays fractions of a penny. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift runs pre orders on re releases. Run The Jewels does pre orders on re releases. They do not need the money, but they are still collecting it because it is smart.

If you are creating as you go and do not yet have a clear vision for a release, launch a Patreon. Invite your audience into the process. Let them support you while you are in the studio.

And on the admin side, register your songs. Join a performing rights organization like ASCAP, then a publishing administrator. Basic infrastructure plus direct fan contact is the foundation of a sustainable music career.

From small town swimmer to music executive

Kevin:
Let’s go back. Where did you grow up and how did you end up in this world?

Emily:
I grew up in a village called Hartland, Wisconsin. I used to joke that there was no music industry there, although my parents’ friends actually owned the local music shop. I recently found out one of them sits on the board of NAMM, which is a major music industry association. So sometimes your network is closer than you think.

I worked very hard to get a swimming scholarship to Northeastern University in Boston. They had a strong music industry program and a fantastic co op and internship structure. That combo was irresistible.

I dove into the Boston music scene. I got my first internships through the school’s database, at places like radio station WBCN and a local music magazine. Each opportunity led to the next.

The pivotal moment was meeting a local band called The Dresden Dolls. They played on campus. I was nervous, but I introduced myself, said I was studying music business and interning, and offered to help with anything. They said, “Can you come over tomorrow?”

From there I grew up professionally with that band. I tour managed them, then did day to day management. Eventually they signed with a great manager named Mike Luba who hired me right out of college. I worked for him, learned management deeply, and we experimented with some very ambitious projects, including a short lived half billion dollar division of Live Nation based in Miami.

I was still young and treated that like grad school. It collapsed after seven months, but out of the rubble came Jay Z’s Roc Nation. Out of it for me came my first company. I took everything I had learned and started my own management business.

Life on the road

Kevin:
I hated the road as a comedian. Early mornings, strange towns, radio promotions. How did you survive touring?

Emily:
Age helped. I started tour managing when I was around 20 and retired from it at 23. Those are good years to be sleeping on floors and living on venues’ schedules.

I loved it at the time. I got paid to travel the world. But I am also grateful I stopped when I did. Now I have that institutional knowledge of how touring really works, and I can empathize with artists when we schedule 7 a.m. radio after a show that ends at 2 a.m.

That road experience is one of the reasons we could build #iVoted. Understanding venues, promoters, and routing from the inside made it possible to tie concerts to elections in a real way.

Turning concerts into voter turnout

Kevin:
Tell us the origin story of #iVoted.

Emily:
We launched for the 2018 midterm elections.

After 2016 I learned that my home state of Wisconsin was decided by about 22,000 votes. That is basically the capacity of the arena where the Milwaukee Bucks play. Voter turnout in Milwaukee had been down, and I thought, what if we filled that arena with people and connected it to voting?

We started in 2017 with just me and an intern. We reached out to promoters to get ahead of the calendar. We did not care who was playing. Promoters know who sells tickets. We simply offered them a promotion: on election night, let fans in if they show a selfie from outside their polling place.

A big booking agent told me promoters would love it because we were driving people into the building on a Tuesday, historically one of the slowest nights. He was right.

In 2018 we activated more than 150 concert venues in 37 states. Artists included Playboi Carti, Maggie Rogers, Living Colour, and many more. We have since moved into digital concerts and back into in person events.

We are very data driven. We focus on places where elections are decided by margins the size of a venue and book the top trending artists in those locations. The goal is not registration in the abstract. It is turnout.

From “intern manifesto” to two best selling books

Kevin:
You did not set out to be an author. How did that happen?

Emily:
At my management company I kept teaching the same basic things to interns. I wrote what I called an “intern manifesto” so they could read it and we could spend our time on higher level work.

Two NYU interns told me it would be incredibly helpful if that existed as a book. That became Interning 101. It is now used as a course book at several schools.

Later, musicians kept asking me to grab coffee and “pick my brain.” I was having the same in depth conversation over and over. So I wrote How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams partly to save time. I wanted something I could hand to artists for free and then answer follow up questions.

The funny thing is that once people read it, they rarely have questions. The information they needed is there in order.

I self released the book. I took my own advice and launched a pre order when I was only halfway done writing. That paid for editing and printing before the book was out. It hit number one on Amazon in its category almost immediately. Because I had spent years speaking at conferences and building a reputation, there was already an audience.

The most rewarding part has been hearing from artists who tell other artists, “I wish I had this ten years ago.” The book has now been licensed to Hal Leonard, the largest music book publisher in the world, who will distribute the second edition widely.

Self publishing or traditional deals?

Kevin:
For someone with a manuscript today, is self publishing the way to go or should they chase a traditional publisher?

Emily:
It depends entirely on your goals.

Because I have managed talent, I have seen a wide range of book deals. Some major deals give authors a modest advance, then require them to buy their own books for 18 dollars each while earning a 10 percent royalty. I have seen smaller independent deals where authors buy books for eight or nine dollars and split royalties 50–50.

By self publishing, I buy my books for about two dollars and own everything. That put me in a strong position to license the book later on my terms.

Traditional publishers can be useful if they truly have access to audiences you cannot reach. But in many cases they still expect the author to do most of the marketing. I encourage people to join organizations like the Authors Guild. There are great forums where authors share honest advice.

The literary world is facing a reckoning similar to what music went through when MP3s arrived. Creators have more options. That is good, but it means you need to be clear about why you are writing and what you expect from a deal.

College, co ops, and real world learning

Kevin:
You had both a formal degree and intense on the job learning. Which mattered more?

Emily:
The boots on the ground experience is what shaped me the most, but my education enabled that experience.

Northeastern’s co op program was huge. I got my first internships through the school’s database. The university helped fund an internship in London. My swimming scholarship made a private university possible in the first place.

At the same time, every major break in my career came from work, not a résumé. My first job out of college happened because a band’s manager looked at me in the control room at KCRW and said, “When you graduate, you will come work for me in New York.” There was no job posting. I had made myself indispensable.

For young people I usually say: do both if you can. Get the bachelor’s degree, even online or part time, and throw yourself into internships and co ops. The degree can matter later for teaching, visas, or career pivots you cannot yet imagine. But do not stay inside the classroom waiting for someone to discover you. Get out into the field and learn what you like, and just as importantly, what you do not like.

The non negotiable: taking care of yourself

Kevin:
You have given a lot of technical advice. What is the deeper “secret sauce” for people at the start of their creative or professional journey?

Emily:
If you are not taking care of yourself, you cannot take care of anyone else and you cannot do any of this.

I will write a book about this someday. For now my answer is that self care is not optional, it is infrastructure.

I have a largely non negotiable routine no matter where I am in the world. I get a full night’s sleep. I drink a green smoothie in the morning. I move my body first thing. I seek out real local food. Before I sit down to work I meditate for a few minutes.

That did not appear overnight. I am forty. It took decades for these habits to stick. I often recommend that students start with one thing, usually sleep. I am obsessed with the book Why We Sleep and have assigned it in classes.

When my students actually read it and pay attention to their sleep, they often come back and say, “I am working fewer hours, my grades are better, and I am happier.” That is not magic. It is biology.

So my core advice is: build your career, build your art, chase opportunities, but treat your body and mind as your primary asset. Everything else flows from that.

Kevin:
Emily, thank you. Your journey and your clarity are impressive, and I know our mentees will learn a lot from you.

Emily White:
Thank you. This was such a pleasure. I love what The City Tutors is doing, and I would be honored to mentor through the program.