Boomcast Ep. 1 - Music Collaboration Tips & How to be Successful

Ladies and gentlemen, we are happy to introduce the first episode of our new podcast, Boomcast. We’re dedicating this podcast to exploring music collaboration tips as well as topics, trends and secrets to success in the modern music industry.

In episode 1, we wanted to take a moment to introduce ourselves to you. Our hosts are Fabio Lendrum from Noize London and Lukas Ray from musicbylukas. Fabio and Lukas are both successful producers and musicians in the industry, and more importantly, have followed a unique approach to achieving what they have.

So… Wondering what it takes to be successful in your music career? See what perspective you might be missing in this episode and head into your next music collab with confidence!

Listen:

CREDITS:

Host: Fabio Lendrum (https://www.instagram.com/noize_london)

Host: Lukas Ray (https://www.instagram.com/musicbylukas/)

Filming & Editing: Lauren Z. Ray (https://www.instagram.com/laurenzray/)
Transcription: Jess Adams (https://www.instagram.com/jessadamswrites/)

Transcript: Music Collaboration Tips

Fabio: Welcome to the Boomcast, the official podcast from Boombox.

Lukas: I’m MusicbyLukas.

Fabio: And I’m Fabio from Noize.

Lukas: Boombox is a collaboration tool to provide a connection point for musicians, producers and engineers to be able to share, store and synergize creativity.

Fabio: This is the first episode and we’re going to bring on industry pros advice on marketing and business and how to make better music.

Lukas: Also, one of the first 100 comments is going to get a personal track feedback review from either me MusicByLukas or Fabio from Noize.

Fabio: So the Question of the day and what we’d like you to comment down below is tell us about your best or worst collaborations. We want to hear what you’ve learned from your experiences. Give us your music collaboration tips.

Lukas: And today we are going to discuss the secret to success in the music industry.

Fabio: Lukas, define success. What does that mean? What is success?

Lukas: Yeah, so that is an interesting question because success, I think, has many different meanings, right? For some people, I think they determine success by how much money they make. And for some people they determine success by if they feel happy and if they feel like they have purpose. And I think I lean more towards the if you’re happy and if you have purpose, I don’t necessarily like to see success as something where it’s just purely numbers driven because I feel like that’s not something that is sustainable.

Lukas: What do you think?

Fabio: Agreed. I think sustainable is the key word. I think success is sustainability in doing what you love. It’s not about how much money you make. Obviously we need a bit of money to get to get by. We need money for freedom to create opportunity. But, you know, it’s not it’s not the end goal. It’s definitely not. And I think we start to realize that through working with lots of different people, and every time you do, you’re in that moment, you’re in that feeling, and nothing else truly matters.

Lukas: Absolutely. And what I want to talk about really is that secret to success. And I’m sure that’s probably why a lot of people who are watching clicked on the video. It’s like, what is the secret to success? So we’ve talked about, you know, first off, you got to know what success means to you. But I think pretty much regardless of what it means to you in a way, it’s the tool to get to whatever your goals are, especially in music today, I think is music collaboration because of the fact that, you know, we are in a world now where you have a lot more control over your own destiny as a music artist, whether you are

Lukas: an engineer, whether you’re someone who’s going to be more of like a music influencer or you’re going to be on tour regardless of what genre you make really to that collaboration. And it doesn’t have to be not just collaboration in music, but it could also be collaboration with regards to just working with others. Maybe it’s other industry people, maybe it’s other business people.

Lukas: Maybe it’s people that are going to help you design your website or are going to help you listen to demos for your label or hiring an assistant that’s going to help you be able to. Or like if you’re an engineer to organize your orders or whatever, it’s going to be that collaboration and working with others and basically putting yourself at a place where you’re thinking bigger than just yourself and you’re valuing your time, I think is really important.

Fabio: Absolutely. And there’s so much more opportunity to collaborate now than there ever was, I think before. The music industry had a bit more a little bit more structure, a little bit more hierarchy. But you’d go and you’d work underneath a producer, underneath a songwriter or underneath an engineer, and you’d slowly build your way up. And more and more, we’re seeing artists become independent from all of that and labels too, because that just there are so many tools out there to be able to learn and make these part of your arsenal in order to be able to progress in your career by yourself.

Fabio: But I see by yourself in reality, it’s never by yourself is it? It’s always with the aid or someone you need to – I think music collaboration is such a combination of I don’t want to say dependency, but knowing when to delegate, knowing when to say, hey, you know what, this person is better than me at this, and it shouldn’t mean that should be dependent on them, but there’s the opportunity to learn from them.

Fabio: And then maybe you start doing it yourself. But initially you need to take that leap of faith and music collaboration I think for some people can be quite scary, especially if you’re used to doing things your way.

Lukas: Right and you pointed out something really good there, which is I think you said you were saying that you want to basically collaborate with people who are going to take you to that next level because they’re maybe better than you at or more skilled than you or have more experience than you in a certain area. And I think that is key because if you want to be lifted up to the next level, you have to have someone on that next level that’s going to lift you up there.

Lukas: If you collaborate constantly with people that are lower than you are, like, you know, less don’t have that experience. Why would you do that? Right? Like if you’re really good at something, why would you collaborate with someone else who is also in that area, who is less skilled than you? Because the only thing they can do is you can lift them up to where you are.

Lukas: So it’s one of those things where you have to, like you said, you have to be able to be okay with the fact that you’re – and honestly be inspired by the fact that you’re hanging out or you’re working with people who are at that next level. And I’ve noticed that just with regards like even with speaking with you, like it’s really nice to speak with someone who I feel inspired by.

Lukas: And so that I think is going to be really cool for this podcast too, because we’re both experienced in different areas and I think that’s something that we should get into too.

Fabio: So seeing as this is the first episode, I’m sure some of you know who we are, some of you don’t. But we want to take this moment to present ourselves to those of you who are potentially unfamiliar or have been following us and want a little bit more information about our experience and our history in the industry. So, Lukas, why don’t you start?

Lukas: Well, it’s a good question, because some people might be like, well, they’re talking about success. Are they successful? What’s their you know, what’s going on with them? So maybe he adds, it is exactly. It’s a good time to talk about our backgrounds here a little bit. I Am MusicbyLukas. I’m a music producer. I’ve been signed by, I think, eight record labels now, also done, of course, self-released music and then have my own community.

Lukas: So my own producer community Team MBL which is Team MusicByLukas. We have our website where we have all sorts of tools for music producers, teammbl.com. We host events, we have our discord and all just all kinds of stuff going on. And one thing that I’ve always specialized in from the beginning has been collaboration.

Lukas: And like I said, music marketing and those kind of areas to help artists grow in those areas. So that’s really kind of like my background and you have a different story, a little bit.

Fabio: Similar, but I’m going to go back to front here for a second because I think something that you said that is like I always set out with Noize to build a community, and that’s also the same thing. It was about bringing people together and just making sure that there was a stronger sense of collaboration across the board, from producer to engineer to –

Fabio: And then you, who I consider sort of the the piece of my puzzle that’s missing. Oh, that sounds very romantic, but but.

Lukas: It’s a romantic podcast.

Fabio: Yeah, it’s very… so for me I’ve been working in professional music for must be almost 16 years now. And I started off as a singer songwriter. I was with a major label and then became a sort of producer and engineer full time in my twenties, signed to a bunch of dance labels and then started Noize about three years ago when I decided that I really wanted to encapsulate everything that I had learned over the years, having been through the machine, spat out at the other end and didn’t want to, I think it’s very easy to become bitter about things when they don’t go well.

Fabio: But actually I wanted to transform that and turn it into something useful and be able to share my experience. And of course, I’m still learning. I’m still sharing those experiences. It’s not that I’ve learned it all and I’ve stopped, but Noize London is, for those of you who know it’s a YouTube channel, it’s also an Instagram page, and it’s based around music production, audio engineering, mixing, mastering, and it offers services on mixing and mastering as well as professional feedback and I’m also doing

Fabio: You know, I started doing online courses too, which has been a lot of fun.

Lukas: I think we should also talk about where we are located because we’re in different parts of the world. Well, actually, I’m always traveling, so they might see different backgrounds for me frequently right now in Amsterdam for Amsterdam Dance Event, which you’re coming very excited about that. I think we’re gonna do a podcast from Amsterdam. But you’re in London, right?

Fabio: I’m in London. I have Noize London obviously started in London. And then I moved to Canada for a bit, which was great fun. And I’m back in London for a year and I’m trying to set up shop maybe somewhere else. I’m thinking maybe Barcelona, but umm at the end of the day it’s nice to move around with music, create novelty, I think for me, and maybe it’s the same for you, but that releases a lot of dopamine and that keeps me really productive and excited.

Fabio: Although it’s not always the most efficient way to work, it’s also a great way to meet people. And I think, you know, there is so much opportunity to network these days and set up network opportunities via the Internet, via Instagram, via messaging services, meeting face to face to me is still that little bit more special.

Lukas: Yeah. And another thing too is like what you’re saying is that you should never let where you’re located in the world kind of hold you back from collaboration because for example, actually it’s kind of fun because since we’re here at Amsterdam Dance Event, I’m actually going to meet a lot of these people. But for the last few years that we’ve been doing Team MBL a lot of the people that we brought onto our team are international and I’ve never met them before, but we’ve been working together for years and so that hasn’t like stopped us, you know what I mean?

Lukas: Like, you don’t need to have people that are located in your backyard, because I hear a lot of producers say things like, Well, nobody in my country likes my style of music or nobody in my country understands me or whatever. And that’s, you know, that’s pretty common because when I first started Team MBL we – most of our audience was located in Europe, but we were located in the U.S. and so it’s just one of those things where I’ve realized, like, even though I was in Los Angeles, because that’s where I was originally from, that I didn’t necessarily it wasn’t where I was going to have all the people that were going to that I was going to

Lukas: collaborate with. A lot of them were from other places.

Fabio: For sure but I still meet people to this day that sometimes like who live in London, who live in London. And then I don’t know anyone who – I’m like come on ya got – there are so many tools there. There’s so much opportunity to find those people. It’s just that sometimes we don’t think about and this is why I think what you do is so important, because sometimes we very much think about making the music, finishing the track, exporting it, playing in our car, showing our friends.

Fabio: But we don’t think about phase two right, which is how do I get this music to the people that need to hear it? Or how do I invest myself or become part of a community in which I can get feedback that isn’t like, yeah, great track Dude or you know, people who don’t can’t objectively give advice or feedback.

Lukas: Yeah. And that happens a lot and you know, if you’re just showing your tracks to your friends, especially ones that aren’t producers or, you know, your family or whatever, they’re just going to give you that reaction, which is, yeah, it sounds cool or It sounds great or Wow, that’s so cool or something like that. Not something that necessarily again, we were talking about that like you need people that are going to lift you up, right?

Lukas: So people that are going to lift you up are going to be people that are going to give you that constructive feedback. And that’s why even, you know, feedback that can be I mean, obviously, you don’t want to have feedback that’s necessarily like super negative. And people that do that, you know, it’s not necessarily the most constructive. But you do want constructive feedback.

Lukas: You want feedback that’s going to be and you want to be able to understand that it’s only going to be able to make you better. You know, it’s all that kind of constructive feedback. I mean, obviously there’s differences of opinion you’re still going to have sometimes some people are going to, you know, prefer a certain style of music.

Lukas: so they’re going to want it to sound more like that or they personally prefer a certain type of high hat or mix or, you know, because some people do like that. Some people like bass heavy mixes, some people like high, heavy mixes. I don’t know who those people are, but, you know, but it’s just there’s different opinions. But that’s another thing.

Lukas: I as a feedback suggestion, if you’re looking to talk about collaboration here, getting feedback from multiple people is really helpful because then you can kind of see, for example, if you’re getting let’s say you get feedback from five people, if all five are saying that the kick is too loud, the kick is probably too loud. But if one person’s saying it and no one else mentions it, it could be a personal preference.

Fabio: It could be that they just have their room set up incorrectly. Also, I think we forget that humans are humans and not machines. And listening to a song in one time of the day, maybe unfed after not having had much sleep, might change your perception on the way you listen to or the way you give feedback. I think you know what I want to know, Lukas, is your initial collaborations good and bad?

Fabio: Well, what I think is I think that you learn as much from the bad ones, if not more. If not more.

Lukas: Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t know if I’ve really had, like a bad collaboration. I probably just had some that worked better than others. But I think that’s partially because of the fact that me and my partner Lauren really look into basically like who we’re collaborating with. And we try to figure out like, you know, people that would essentially, like I said, like lift us up, people that would potentially help us reach a new audience or that our audience that we have would really enjoy to see us work with.

Lukas: Like, for example, I’m sure when people hear about this podcast for the first time that we’re doing it together that they’re like, Whoa, that’s a cool collab, you know what I mean? So I think it’s about also with when it comes to collaboration is about setting up a collab that’s going to be something cool, that’s going to add something special or be something that you’re, you know, your current followers or whatever I’ve always wanted to see.

Lukas: But yeah, okay. So talking about exciting collaborations, I think the most exciting collaborations because they were kind of the first ones where back in the day I would say this was in 2018. Yeah, I think that’s what it was. Was it 2017? Lauren says 2017. So 2017 was when we basically I had quit my job just right about then and left school to go to Europe and to film a whole bunch of collaboration videos on – for YouTube with a whole bunch of artists, primarily DJs, bigger DJs who were in Amsterdam and all over Europe, and some YouTubers as well who are producer YouTubers.

Lukas: And we did collaborations and basically it was like we were just dredging through the snow and the winter weather because we went in December, which actually ended up working out really well because everyone was available, because no one was on tour, no one was playing shows. So we faced the weather, people were available. We came to their studios, we came to them with like a mobile studio, and we did these videos.

Lukas: And yes, it was called The Teamwork Tour – Team MBL The Teamwork Tour, and we even got a bunch of brands involved for giveaways and stuff like that. And it’s one of those things where it started kind of as this is something that anyone can do because of the fact that we really didn’t have that big of a following at the time.

Lukas: It’s all about the mission statement and the journey behind it, because we just started messaging and emailing. We didn’t really expect much of it, and at first not really many deejays and these artists replied. But after a while, and as soon as we started getting one to say yes, we would email the other ones and say, Hey, they’re involved and get another one to say yes.

Lukas: And it kind of just started snowballing to a point that by the time it got so big that I had to leave school, I had to you know, it’s like one of those things where I was like, we’re doing this because this is just such an exciting opportunity. And it was – got so exciting that we actually started getting the record labels and the managers of the artists calling us and being like, Hey, you know, a whole bunch of our artists are saying that they’re booked with you today for interviews.

Lukas: Who are you? What are you doing? And it was just became this whole exciting thing that I think also our fan base at the time got really pumped about. They wanted to see who we were meeting with next. They wanted to know more about it. And this all just happened through cold call – I call it cold call because it’s just basically like we just sent out emails.

Lukas: We didn’t really know the people, but that’s how it kind of began. And we built like lifelong relationship ups with a lot of really cool artists.

Fabio: I think that’s the main thing you want isn’t it? Is for them to be as excited as you are. And I think when people see the opportunity about sharing their skill set, I mean, even if they’re not that experienced, you know, some people not that experience, but they still have a lot to share. Yeah. You know, you were talking earlier about, you know, basically making sure that you’re the smartest – sorry – you’re not the smartest person in the room.

Fabio: I like to flip that a little bit because I think that’s actually like more of a mindset where it’s like you have to realize that you never will be the smartest in the room because someone will always know more than you on a particular subject. I think for me the most exciting collaborations have –

Lukas: This one obviously.

Fabio: I was actually going to say this one, I know it’s so cheesy. I know it’s so cheesy, but it is. It is (Lukas: You were not not.) No, I am dead serious. I am dead serious. I think there’s been my collaborations have all been, you know, in when I think about collaborations in my past, I think about writing sessions that I’ve done with people and that’s why I said good and bad, because I’ve had some particularly bad writing sessions, you know, with people who I shall not name.

Fabio: But I learned so much from them.

Lukas: Right?

Fabio: As in – as in

Lukas: Can you share one of the bad writing sessions without mentioning a name?

Fabio: Yeah, I think I could( Lukas: They’ll know. They’re listening.) I think I could. I worked with a producer who’s had some you know, he’s had some hits ummm not Kanye, okay. But not maybe not not Kanye though – No, not Kanye

Lukas: You can’t say.

Fabio: I can’t say could be Kanye and it was just like we were there to write for my project. I walk into the studio, awesome studio, and he pulls out a barstool and he says, Sit on the barstool, has a microphone. And I was okay. And his assistant was playing the beats on CDs and he started playing The piano is okay, play that beat starts playing the piano.

Fabio: And then he points to me, he goes, Sing, (Lukas: woah) And I thought, okay, like, this is cool. This is different, you know? It’s like but again, all artists work differently, right? He might work one way, but all artists what different so okay so I’m singing I’m singing I’m singing it’s about an hour and a half in- now if you’re a vocalist and you’re listening to this podcast, you’ll know that singing for an hour and a half.

Lukas: Yeah.

Fabio: Is a long time is a really, really long time and is pretty exhausting. And after about an hour and a half, I used to smoke at the time and I said, Can I go outside and take a break? And he slams the table or his piano and he’s like, You will take a break when I tell you to take a break,

Fabio: no way.

Fabio: Yeah, I and I just walked out. I just walked straight out. I didn’t even take a break. I was like, this is just not I’m not comfortable. I can’t express myself. So what I learned from that.

Lukas: I can’t believe Jay-Z did that to you. That’s crazy.

Fabio: You would have come up with before the break, surely. So I what I learned from that was I worked with a lot of vocalists, I record a lot of vocalists, and I very much recognize that every single vocalist has a different way of falling into that comfort zone. Sometimes I do the barstool thing, sometimes not. I think some vocalists get really self-conscious recording with a condenser microphone, so I give them a dynamic microphone as if they’re performing on stage.

Fabio: And I think it was about, for me, taking those collaborations in which maybe I was in an uncomfortable situation as the artist and making sure that that is never the case for people who I work with in the future.

Lukas: Love that. Yeah. You decided that that’s not going to be you. That’s awesome. We want to give a special thanks to Boombox Star IO for making this collaboration between me and Fabio from Noize possible and to be able to bring you the best advice from industry pros, marketing and business, and how to make better music.

Fabio: Boombox IO is the home of collaboration, and that’s why we’re doing this together, isn’t it?

Lukas: Yeah. And it’s honestly what brought us together, which is really cool because actually we didn’t know each other before we worked with Boombox, (Fabio: I knew who you were) well so that’s something really exciting. Well, I had no idea who you were. I did. I did too, actually. That’s really funny, too, because when when they said who was going to be on, because we had an initial for those of you who are listening or watching the video, we had an initial like call on Zoom and I knew I’d seen the videos, you know, the websites that you recommend and what your DA says about you and your different Instagram reels.

Fabio: So I was, I was excited. I was excited cuz I was like, I never heard you speak before.

Lukas: Because I’m mainly just doing videos where I don’t speak, right?

Fabio: You’re doing a lot of dancing, but I hadn’t heard you speak. And then and then I’ll say, Oh, okay. So that energy in your dance is very much matches the energy in the the way you speak and I was like, This is great.

Lukas: That’s really funny because for people that have never maybe heard of me who are listening to this podcast are prolly like dancing? What are you talking about this was music production?

Fabio: Yeah. Go check out Music By Lukas, everybody. You gotta see it for yourself.

Lukas: Lukas. Lukas, with a K. That’s this. That’s the secret.

Fabio: So, Lukas, what, what keeps you going? I mean, obviously, we’ve both reached a point of success in our careers. It I don’t think there’s no point in moving the goalposts. There’s no point in saying, oh, when I get that, I’ll be happy. But there is always the motivation to want to do better.

Lukas: Yeah, I think the success for me is as always been actually since I was even a lot younger, has just been freedom because like for example, having the resources to be able to kind of do what I want to do has always been something that excites me. So now that I’ve built that, I’ve been able to kind of reassess what are those things that I really want to do and kind of think about that and one of them is this podcast.

Lukas: One of them is to be able to work on fun new things, to be able to take my community team and be able to another level. So being able to potentially, you know, do things like launch a record label, host events. Now we’re doing a lot of these things like we’re, we’re hosting an event in Amsterdam this week for Amsterdam Dance Event, and we’re doing that for free and that’s something really exciting too, something that we were able to do and do it with all of our friends.

Lukas: And so having those fun experiences, making more opportunities for the community, being able to start fun ventures, those are all things that excite me. But you know, what about you? What’s on your future goals list? Where are you manifesting?

Fabio: I think I’m not such and this sounds going to going to sound weird. I’m not such a future goals kind of guy. I’m very much like, I never know what’s going to happen next. Obviously, there are things that I’d like to do, but in reality I’m very focused on how can I do the best that I can do now?

Fabio: And that’s something that I’ve always tried to, uh, to this is, it’s not something I’ve always tried to do, actually, admittedly, but it’s the way I try and run things now, things that make me happier. And sometimes I take it for granted when I mix someone’s record and it, and I send it to them and they’re like, Oh my, this is amazing. 00:22:56:20 –

Fabio: hahaha you make someone’s day, right? You’re helping someone out. And that’s what I want to do with Noize. Noize. I want to provide free education for people. And, you know, and with all the videos that we’re making for Boombox, including this podcast, it’s about finding other avenues to share this information and bring people closer together.

Fabio: Because, like you said, it doesn’t matter. Does it matter where you come from? It doesn’t matter if the people in your country aren’t doing the same genre or you can’t find people in your city. We’re trying to create a home for that. We’re trying to create a base where people can feel really included in the community. And just because we want to as well, we’re no different from everyone else.

Lukas: Absolutely. I think we should probably also ask the question of the day one more time, which is what is your best or worst collab story? Comment below someone is going to get a free feedback from either me or from Fabio. From Noize. Excited to hear what your guys stories are in the comments. Also excited just to hear what you guys think of the podcast and who you think we should invite on because we’re definitely going to bring on some special guests from all around the world.

Lukas: We want to get people from all different backgrounds. It could be big artist industry pros, music influencers, vocalists, whoever you you guys think we should have on, we want to bring them on, so let us know. Also, Fabio, where can people find you if they want to follow you and they don’t already follow you, which would be crazy.

Lukas: But you know.

Fabio: The best place to the best place to hit me up is through my Instagram, which is Noize spelled with a Z. Underscore London. So Noize underscore London. I also have a private discussion board on Telegram, but you can find that through the Instagram and there’s also YouTube and TikTok. But IG is yeah, it’s my main source of news.

Lukas: Same thing for me. Instagram MusicByLukas with a K that would be the best place and then of course TeamMBL.com, the TeamMBL Discord you just search TeamMLB it’s all one word T.E.A.M.M.B.L. but yeah that’s where you can find us. And then I think next week yeah, we’re going to be doing a podcast together in person.

Lukas: That’s going to be really exciting from Amsterdam or not next week I guess it’ll be in like two weeks, but yeah.

Fabio: But yes, it will be in two weeks. You’ll be seeing it all in two weeks, but we will be together in a few days.

Lukas: And if you’re listening to this on Spotify or on a platform where it’s just audio, there is a video version of the podcast as well on YouTube and that’s where you can comment the first time hundred comments and do all that fun stuff and see our faces, which is, you know, Paramount. That’s paramount. Absolutely.

Fabio: We are so excited for everyone to be a part of this podcast. So we really want to thank you for tuning in. You know, this is the start of a new journey for us and a new community and a really, really important one. So thank you for being here. And please, you know, feel free to hit us up at any point if there are any subjects or topics you want covered and a thing that you think is particularly poignant at the moment in the industry, we want to hear from you because your input means a lot to us.

Lukas: We’ll see you next week for another amazing video. Make sure to subscribe and have a great rest of your week.

Fabio: Have a great week, everybody. Take care.

Lukas: Bye bye.

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The Secret to Success in Today’s Music Industry (Music Collaboration Tips) – Boomcast Ep. 1

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Transcript: Music Collaboration Tips