In this episode I speak with Tia Tia & Ryan McMahon, who have written songs for Justin Bieber, Walk The Moon, Sabrina Carpenter, The Chainsmokers and more. They’ve managed to get to 700k monthly listeners on Spotify in about 9 months on their artist projects.
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Important Points:
Ryan and Tia Tia recommend seeking collaborative partners who complement your skills. They take inspiration from successful Top 40 song producers, who frequently collaborate with multiple writers. They highlight the value of having a supportive network for growth.
Ryan and Tia stress the need for consistent music production and sharing. They aim to release one song weekly. To generate ideas, they go live on TikTok for an hour, dedicating 15 minutes to create each song, resulting in four new ideas per session, which they develop throughout the week.
Andrew, Ryan, and Tita Tia collectively stress the significance of consistent and well-planned and well-packaged social media content. Andrew emphasizes the importance of a compelling hook that attracts attention and conveys the song’s meaning. Tita Tia offers a valuable tip: telling one story in five different ways. Ryan highlights the value of mirroring and repurposing content for consistency, utilizing the same video on various social platforms. Tia Tia also mentions using Metricool, a social media management tool, to streamline their posting schedule. Once loaded into the tool, posts are automatically scheduled for release.
Podcast Outline:
[00:11] Ryan and Tia Tia urge listeners to seek collaborative partners who inspire growth and improvement. — Ryan and Tia Tia
[00:37]: Tita Tita stresses the importance of regularly sharing your music on all platforms, regardless of length. — Tia Tia
[00:45]: Ryan agrees with Tia Tia that even a brief 20-second daily post, made efficient through automation, can have a significant impact. — Ryan
[04:08]: Ryan and Tia Tia transitioned to full-time music production after successful careers behind the scenes, starting in January. — Ryan and Tia Tia
[07:22]: Ryan and Tia Tia maintain a regular music output by setting a weekly goal of producing at least one song. — Ryan and Tia Tia
[10:04]: Tia Tia emphasizes the significance of pivoting quickly. When an idea doesn’t work, promptly move on to the next. — Tia Tia
[13:50]: Ryan reveals their strategy for consistent posting: Repurposing content across all platforms ensures daily updates. — Ryan
[14:28]: Tia Tia talks about Metricool, a post-scheduling app that posts across tall platforms including TikTok — Tia Tia
[17:11]: Ryan recommends optimizing long-format videos by editing them into shorter, versatile segments for diverse story angles. — Ryan
[21:46]: Andrew advises artists to produce captivating content for enhanced engagement and relatability. — Andrew
[23:41]: Andrew and Ryan agree on the importance of seeking inspiration from other music artists and content creators, while adding a unique touch to your work. — Andrew and Ryan
[24:21] Andrew stresses the need for a distinct hook in every song and content to ensure listeners remember the message. — Andrew
[26:48]: Tia Tia believes you should narrate stories in multiple ways, creating varied perspectives for a single narrative. — Tia Tia
[29:35]: Ryan insists that songs must elicit powerful emotions from the listeners. — Ryan
[32:36]: Andrew emphasizes a valuable lesson from fellow YouTube content creators: plan your video’s title and thumbnail before starting any production work. — Andrew
[34:49]: Tia Tia and Ryan secured collaborations with major artists through the connections they established during their production and writing days. — Ryan and Tia Tia
[37:44]: Andrew highlighted the strategy of releasing songs with multiple primary artists and packaging them under various brands to enhance song visibility. — Andrew
[40:41]: Tia Tia’s hustle? She’s all about grinding, meeting tons of folks, and hitting up music events to build a strong network. — Tia Tia
[45:08]: Ryan’s journey differs significantly from Tia Tia’s. He worked as an investment banker while pursuing music as a hobby for two years before turning it into a full-time profession. — Ryan
[47:02]: Ryan began with publishing deals in which labels paid an upfront fee, recouped from the song royalties he generated. — Ryan
[51:00]: Ryan and Tia Tia both believe that the key to success is persistent improvement and unwavering determination. — Ryan and Tia Tia
[52: 23]: Tia Tia advises staying open to the possibility that someone may excel in an area where you can learn from them. — Tia Tia
Wise Words:
[10:17]: I feel like a lot of times, what holds people up in writing is if they get stuck, they just continue trying to go. Like, just really push for that one thing to happen. And what we’re really good at is, we’re always pivoting [10:20]: if we love something, but then it just gets hard and gets stuck, and we don’t really know what to do, we just, like, “Yeah, move on next idea.” — Tia Tia
[10:54]: You have to put it out within a week. [10:59]: We have a few different ways we’ve been doing it. And we’ve been on TikTok live. We do these hour-long TikTok lives where we’ll basically make four songs in that hour. [11:13]: We’ll set a 15-minute timer, and basically, we have to write an entire song from scratch and [11:19] try to produce it from scratch. And it’s amazing because it’s like after that hour, you’ve got four ideas, and like one of them’s bound to be okay, at least. — Ryan
[24:21]: One thing that stood out to me about both of your catalogs [24:27]: every song you do very similar to a YouTube video or a short-form piece of content; every song has a very clear hook. And I don’t mean hook in terms of melody. I mean hook in terms of that someone could remember what the song is about. — Andrew
[32:36]: One really good strategy that helps a lot of creators is, before you even film your video or do any work on it, think about what the thumbnail is going to be and the title. And basically, how is it going to be packaged? Because if you can’t package it, no one’s going to click on it and watch it. — Andrew
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If you enjoyed this interview you might also like this one I did with Alternate Side about how they get 30 million Spotify streams per week.
