Untytled: The Brian Zisook Interview
The Brian Zisook Interview — Volume 08.
This interview was released in March 2024.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Elaborate on your entry point into the music industry when the internet and music consumption were in itsformative years.
In 2002, I was hired as an overnight DJ at WZND, the student-run radio station at Illinois State University. Immediately, record labels began mailing me vinyl to play on my show. I was hooked! Fast forward four years, and after graduating from college, I worked as a morning show producer for a Chicago radio station. But I was miserable. The hours were awful; my hair was falling out of my head from the stress, and I could feel the passion for radio exiting my soul. At the time, DJBooth was just a passion project — side hustle. But I decided to make it my full-time job. And lo and behold, through 80-hour work weeks, it came to be.
Through the creation of DJBooth, what were some early technological adaptations you decided to embrace to create a better user experience?
Initially, I viewed DJBooth as a platform to showcase and amplify the interviews I was conducting from my radio days. I spent so much time researching guests, writing questions, along with conducting and editing these interviews, so I wanted to find a way for more people to hear the final products. We made them available for streaming and free download, and for those who couldn’t play the audio, we published a full transcription of the conversations on the page. We embraced the digital streaming space early (2003–2005) and we were way ahead of the current podcast rush.
Recently, you’ve been candid about the sobering reality of major labels making significant cuts and taking precautionary actions to stay afloat currently. What does this look like for an eager artist who either wants to be signed or do business with a label from a distribution standpoint?
Young artists should be focused on two things and two things only: creating great music and finding an audience. This advice might sound too simple, but without great music and an audience for that music, there is nothing a label can do for you. Labels are well-positioned to throw gasoline on an already-burning fire. But the artist must chop the wood, create the tinder bed, supply the match, and create the spark.
As the Co-Founder, and SVP of Operations at Audiomack, what are various trends and metrics that you and your team are noticing as we continue to navigate this ever-changing social media space?
Artists are increasingly releasing derivative versions of their songs — sped up, slowed and reverb, daycore, nightcore, etc. The purpose of this practice is to provide a variety of entry points for potential fans who might first come into contact with the non-original version on social media. However, multiple derivative versions spawn mostly unmonetized UGC and spread total consumption and engagements across the various versions. At Audiomack, we recently launched Audiomod, an innovative new feature allowing users to modify any song on the platform and save it as a pre-set. Think of it as a modern-age EQ. This consolidates total consumption and monetization to the original version. Win-win!!
