How to Build a Music Career on Real Fans, with Cassandra Kubinski

CYBER PR MUSIC PODCAST Season 3 Episode 6: Cassandra Kubinski 

ARIEL: Welcome to the Cyber PR Music Podcast. I am Ariel Hyatt, and this is Cassandra Kubinski, one of my favorite musicians in the world. This woman gets it done. You are one of the rare artists who has both the left brain and the right brain fully connected. What I admire so much about you is that you are here, you are not going anywhere, you have had a long career, and you have a long career ahead of you. I love the way you think.

CASSANDRA: Thank you. It’s an absolute joy to be here.

ARIEL: Cassandra is partaking in my current Buzz to Bond Mastermind, which is a seven-week intensive where we really dig in.

CASSANDRA: What’s so interesting about it is that the way it’s broken down gives you, as an artist, an opportunity to not get overwhelmed. As an artist, a songwriter, and a human, one of the reasons we don’t do a lot of things is because we look at the entirety of the process and say, “That’s too much, I can’t.” You break it down so that the pieces feel manageable. That’s golden, especially for music marketing with capital M’s. It can feel like a lot.

ARIEL: Thank you. Before we go further, can you give us an introduction?

CASSANDRA: Sure. I grew up in Enfield, Connecticut, and got into musical theater as a preteen. I ended up in a professional production of Annie, and the course was set. I was in the entertainment business.

When I went to college, I had this vision of myself on a stage playing a grand piano with lights coming through the fog, and I decided I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. The people who were really big at the time were Nora Jones, Vanessa Carlton, John Mayer, and Gavin DeGraw. I felt drawn to that community because they were writing their own music and saying things about life in interesting ways.

Everything since then has come out of having the boldness to move to New York City as a singer-songwriter. I’ve had exciting moments along the way, like working with the Goo Goo Dolls at my very first concert. Then at some point, I got to collaborate with them on an autism advocacy song I wrote. I got to meet my hero, Billy Joel, who was probably my biggest inspiration as a songwriter, and create some things with him. It’s been a whole mix of singer-songwriter work, voice acting, stage acting, artist advocacy, and working as an artist coach helping artists level up. It’s been a good ride so far.

ARIEL: One thing that has really struck me about the way you speak about yourself as an artist is that you have an overarching vision of what your music stands for. Can you share that?

CASSANDRA: It took some time to get here. What I say now, what I see and what I feel, is that the reason I write songs and make music is to move from fear to freedom. That’s what I hope my songs are tools for. We’re all in whatever space we’re in, maybe holding ourselves back, maybe a little stuck. If I can give someone even one millisecond of that sensation of openness and freedom, that’s really what music and songwriting has given me and what I hope people get from listening.

ARIEL: I love that as your true north. Now I’d like to talk about wasted energy. I see a lot of it happening now, partly because social media tools are so addictive. You go to simply post about a new show and an hour and a half later you’re somehow watching cat videos or doom scrolling into some very unpleasant place. You said something powerful before we started recording. You said artists waste energy trying to do what everyone else is doing. What does that look like in real life?

CASSANDRA: I’ll call myself out on this as much as I see it in the artist community. Number one: comparison. You get on social media or the internet and you sit there thinking, “Oh my God, I’m not doing that and I should be doing that.” Looking at stats is a killer, because half of them aren’t even real. Within our human psychology, we look and we go, “How am I doing compared to how they’re doing?” Likes, follows, comments, all of it.

The other way this shows up is chasing trends or doing what other people are doing. You see someone played a certain venue and think, “I’ve got to get a gig there.” The antidote, what I’ve learned, is that before you create a to-do list, you create the why. You create your own vision of what would actually light you up.

Let’s take performance as an example. How many venues are there around the world? A lot. You are not going to, nor should you, play all of them. The ones you personally should play derive from asking: what are your outcomes? Who are the people you want to reach? How do you want to feel when you’re performing? How do you want your audience to feel? Maybe that narrows the field down so that when you see a colleague playing that hot club downtown, you realize, “Actually, that’s not a match for my energy or the community I want to build.”

ARIEL: So how do you personally filter out the crazy-making instead of getting caught up in it?

CASSANDRA: The main thing is building the ability to listen to what other people are getting wrapped up in without making it my drama. And sometimes it means having the self-respect to build some boundaries. Complaining is just such draining energy. If you’re trying to be creative and expansive, complaining about anything is going to drain that. Take the AI discussion. A lot of artists have anxiety, fear, and anger in that space right now. It’s a real balance, being compassionate and mindful of people’s emotions while not allowing myself to get wrapped up in their energy.

The answer is: you choose to intentionally create a conversation for what’s right instead of for what’s wrong. Getting whipped up into what’s wrong will stop your creativity. For sure.

ARIEL: When we were preparing to talk, you mentioned something I know about you but was glad you acknowledged, which is that you had a shift moment in your career where you realized partnerships changed everything. What was that moment and how did it come about?

CASSANDRA: Phase one of my career: I was in New York for five years, then I moved to Nashville, there was drama, and then I moved back to New York City six years after the first time. It was a whole new ball game. The things I had thought were going to happen for me had happened in various ways, but not in the ways I envisioned.

At a certain point, I took a step back and realized: I’ve created a lot, I’ve accomplished a lot, but why am I not having any fun? Why is this so stressful all the time? So I started to consider what if I took my creative ideas and started actively looking to invest energy in partnering. That meant partnerships with artists, brands, nonprofits, and causes.

What I discovered was that it became more fun. There was a positive feedback loop from working with someone else or a whole team. And all of that to-do list stuff you have to do as an independent artist, it just didn’t feel as heavy. I was doing the same work. The feeling around it was different. I didn’t feel like I was doing it just for me. I felt like I was doing it for an “us.”

And one of the keys to a great partnership is that you have a partner on the other side who is truly just as excited as you, just as invested. It doesn’t have to be for the same reasons, but they really see something in this for themselves, so they’re motivated. You don’t have to drag them.

ARIEL: I find that so many times in band situations, there’s one person doing all the work and they’re exhausted.

CASSANDRA: It may also be that they’ve never had a conversation about: if this works, if we succeed at this, what is in it for you? You have to inquire about that for yourself and for your partners. You have to discover that so you’re motivated by the why.

ARIEL: If you’re an independent artist, how do you build a team, especially when you feel like you don’t have an endless supply of money to pay people?

CASSANDRA: For me, inside of partnerships, teams are sometimes more per project. I end up with the people I’m working with on this release with this artist, and then a different team for the next release with the next brand or personality.

You build with courage and with compassion for yourself as much as for other people. You build focused on the value that you bring, as well as what you want to get out of it. What do you have to offer? I’m super motivated, I’m driven, I bring a lot of organization. How do I make this an easy win for them? People don’t always say yes, but I started getting more yeses once I started approaching it that way.

ARIEL: Let’s talk about identity and brand, which is an area we’ve worked on together. A few weeks ago, you said something that surprised me. I was talking about the Buzz to Bond course, specifically about the foundation of the Bond Marketing Funnel, which starts with fan personas, and before that, brand identity. Brand pillars. You looked at me and said, “I have always struggled with brand pillars,” which shocked me, because I always think of you as an artist with a really clear sense of your brand. Why do you struggle with that specifically?

CASSANDRA: One reason is that coming from the acting world and theater world, you play a lot of roles. I’ve never had to be one character. The other reason, and you actually reflected this to me which was super valuable, is that you said, “I think you do know and you’re just way overthinking it.” As much as I wanted to brush that off, I realized: why does everybody tell me that? Maybe there’s real truth in it. I really am overthinking it.

For me, my brand pillars, the space I occupy and the way I present myself, may be so automatic that I just never put language around it. And yet I’ve shown up in these ways over time, and people outside of me could say, “Oh, her brand pillars are music for causes, fiery power, collaboration, and partnerships.” And I’d be like, “Oh, I guess they really are.”

The process you offer in Buzz to Bond helps clarify and simplify it. You walk right through it and think, “Okay, I’m getting out of my own head. I don’t have to figure this out myself.”

ARIEL: I think something important to note is that once you verbalize a brand pillar or decide “this is what I am right now,” you can always change your mind. And that’s something I really love about releasing music now. When I started 30 years ago, you had to be extremely narrow. I had a band I loved in Boulder, Colorado with three lead singers, epically talented, each one a different vibe. And I could see the confusion the minute they switched lead singers. The A&R guys from New York or LA would always say, “It’s not all the same, so we can’t possibly sign this because we don’t know how to package it.” I’m so grateful for today’s music industry, where you can be flexible. People only listen to singles anyway, so you can move between styles and still be the same artist.

CASSANDRA: Perfect example is what I’m doing right now. About a year ago I did a collaboration with an Americana artist named Sawyer Fredericks, a version of my song “Burn It Down,” which was very Americana, piano and guitar. The project I’m working on now is acoustic versions of songs I had on the Lifetime TV show Dance Moms. Most of those songs were fully produced, but I’ve never rerecorded them acoustically, so I just did that. One of my partners for that is Abby Lee, who was the star of that show. Abby Lee and Sawyer Fredericks as personalities could not be further apart, but the emotional core of the music connects all of it. Is it reinvention, or is it just a twist of the kaleidoscope? I’m taking my music and positioning it in different environments, and the music can still move people, inspire people, connect people.

ARIEL: One of the key elements in the Bond Marketing Funnel is repeatable strategies. As I was writing From Buzz to Bond, I kept thinking about what makes a successful indie artist. An indie artist has to form repeatable strategies around not only what works in the studio and how to create and distribute music, but repeatable strategies around how you attract and multiply your fan base. This is critical and not really discussed. Have you uncovered some repeatable strategies for yourself?

CASSANDRA: I could identify some, and there are probably others I’m not even recognizing as repeatable. There’s a workflow that covers everything from registering music with all the right places to smart linking. I use Foundry, but there are lots of options for creating trackable links for your music.

And then: repetition and having it in the calendar. That’s tip number one. If it’s not in my calendar, it’s not real. If you want repeatable strategies, and let’s say you have a mailing list, a Patreon, or you just want people to pay attention to you and your music, and you show up once or twice or even three times and then disappear, people are going to forget about you. You are not going to remain relevant, and you are not going to build the deeper relationship you’re hoping to build with your fans.

I literally have it in my calendar, every single Tuesday: “Add value to your Patreons.” Do I get to it every single Tuesday? I actually don’t, but what I’ve promised them is that I will be in the Patreon one to two times a month. All of our phones have repeat calendar functions. You can set it to repeat and never end. That’s very helpful.

The other repeatable strategy I’ve employed is collaborations again. I want to do an even better job at it, specifically creating collabs in the online space that are entertaining, inspiring, and educational.

ARIEL: In closing, if there’s an artist listening today who feels overwhelmed and distracted, what should they stop doing immediately?

CASSANDRA: Stop reading or watching the news and looking out into the culture or the community to figure out what you should be doing. Creating internal practices for grounding and hearing your own internal guide, your own compass, makes a profound difference on a body, mind, and creativity level. Disconnecting from the cultural crazy-making is powerful.

I’d also recommend doing this radical, insane thing, which is trusting your impulse for what you want to make. Especially when the impulse is something you’ve never made before, or it involves a vision that feels too big or too expensive or too unknown. Nurture that flame. See what happens if you let that live instead of immediately crushing it.

And trust the dreams that come to you. They’re for you. They’re yours, not somebody else’s. It took me too long to get that. The dreams I have, I thought everybody had them. I thought we all wanted the same things, and therefore I felt competitive. One day I realized: they don’t all want what I want. I want what I want because I’m forced to learn something in pursuing it, and maybe even getting it.

ARIEL: How does buzz marketing distract us from going toward our true north?

CASSANDRA: In a lot of ways. The first is that it feeds the antithesis of everything we just talked about. The antithesis to your inner voice, to the space that trusts and says yes to the crazy dream, is the ego. Buzz marketing fans the ego. You can buy Facebook ads, you can see how many likes and follows you got, and you can wake up every day like an addict and check your phone for signals.

Another major drawback to focusing too heavily on buzz marketing is that everybody sees it. They can tell. If I’m looking at someone as a possible collaboration and I see they have 10,000 YouTube views and two comments, I know those aren’t real views. I don’t judge. Maybe it’s part of a bigger strategy for momentum. But I’m definitely not looking at them as a partner who can drive 10,000 real streams.

If you’re going to do the buzzy marketing stuff, I’m not going to say don’t do it. Just don’t stop there, because you are the one who suffers. You wake up every day knowing you don’t have real connections. The feeling of having three real fans versus 300 likes from bots or inactive accounts, it’s not fulfilling on a human level. Nothing replaces real human connection.

ARIEL: Cassandra, thank you so much.

CASSANDRA: Thank you, Ariel. Thank you so much for having me.

This is not about more followers or more streams. It’s about real fans who actually support you. If you want to go deeper, check out the free Buzz to Bond webinar in the show notes, or visit Cyber PR Music for over 300 articles and strategies for today’s music business. Less buzz, more bond.