Who: Grammy-nominated artist, producer, and techie, Ryan Leslie
What: Old friends discuss how to be a successful independent artist in 2013
Where: The Engine Room, a music studio in downtown Manhattan
When: A break in a recording session for Leslie’s upcoming album, Black Mozart
Q: Let’s jump right in. How do you do business in 2013?
A:
As crazy as it might sound, I run my entire business off of my iPhone,
meaning that my audience can reach me directly by e-mail, text, and
phone. I believe that that level of direct interaction is far more
valuable than interaction on what I consider to be passive social-media
channels like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Q: When did you come to that realization?
A: Two months ago.
Q: So, up until two months ago, you believed in the power of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to reach your fans?
A:
Up until two months ago, I did not believe in them. I wasn’t getting
the results I wanted from any of them. I was looking at my numbers. I
had 550,000 Twitter followers and eight retweets. Or if I had something
pseudo profound to say, a hundred-plus retweets. And I’m like, There’s
no way that this is engaging. There’s no way that this is effective.
There’s no way that this is a good use of my time. It was valuable to
Twitter.
Q: If you were to
advise someone about how to get value out of Twitter or how to monetize
Twitter for that person and his or her career, would you tell them to
stop tweeting?
A: I would
tell her to pursue a deeper connection with her followers by taking
advantage of the ability to message them directly. That’s what I would
say. And at that point, the conversion rate becomes greater. As opposed
to one blanket tweet going out and reaching 1 percent of your base, you
have a fifty-fifty chance of actually reaching every single person you
directly message. Inside of that direct message, you should have a call
to action that says, “Here’s how you can support me” or “here’s how you
can engage me.”
Q: To what extent are you using Facebook at this point?
A:
Facebook is extremely restrictive to me. I have 373,000 likes on
Facebook. If I want to see who likes my page, I’m only allowed to see
the last two hundred people or so. So how do I reach those people? When I
post my phone number on Facebook, I get hundreds of responses.I was
able to respond to every single person who had the guts or the nerve to
send me a text message or call my phone.
Q: Relatively speaking, you’re not deluged with phone calls?
A:
I’m not getting anywhere near three hundred thousand calls from
Facebook or five hundred thousand calls from Twitter. But different fan
bases react differently. There’s a kid I’m working with. His name is
Charlie Puth.
He has twenty thousand Twitter followers, but his audience is skewed
younger. When he posted his phone number he got nine hundred text
messages. I found another artist,
Jeni Suk,
on SoundCloud. I had no way of actually getting in touch with her on
SoundCloud, so I tweeted and the twittersphere responded. I was able to
have the same conversation with her about engagement. It turned out to
be very beneficial for her, because the amount of money she had made in
three years from trying to monetize her online audience — in twenty-four
hours she reached 50 percent of that same amount using the ideology
that I shared with her.
Q: Is your new stuff on iTunes?
A: Les is More is on iTunes.
Black Mozart will not be available for sale on iTunes, but I’m sure that it will make its way into people’s iTunes playlists.
Q: Why wouldn’t you choose to put your next album on iTunes?
A:
I chose to take myself off of iTunes because there was too much
anonymity happening in my career. Let’s say seven thousand records were
sold digitally in the last three months, and if I want to reach out and
just say, “Hey guys, because you bought my album, I’m actually able to
tour this year,” I can’t even do that. So my goal around the Black Mozart project
is…. First of all, people are going to bootleg this record. The minute
it’s digital, it’s free. Folks that still support it, despite the fact
that they can get it for free, those are the people I’m concerned with,
those are the people who are enabling and empowering me to continue to
create. I think more artists should be thanking the people who support
them. They’d probably have longer careers.
Q: Is that a spiritual thought? Or a business thought?
A:
I think if you look at Apple and the idea of, “Hey, let’s make the
world better”: Is that spiritual, or is that business? I think the
bottom line is that it becomes profitable if you are actually providing
value. What’s money, anyway? I would still thank someone who bootlegged
my album, loved it, told her friends and converted three people into
fans, if I knew who that person was.
Q: So you don’t care about money?
A: If I cared about money, I wouldn’t write a song like “Swiss Francs.”
Q: To what extent do you think of yourself as a thought leader?
A: I don’t think we need those titles, and I don’t think I’ve come up with any original thoughts.
Q:
One might get the impression that you’re not challenging yourself
musically at this point, that you’re just challenging yourself to
connect to your fans. How do you respond to that?
A:
I challenge myself musically, but not by anyone else’s metrics but my
own. So whatever I’m challenging myself to do artistically, creatively,
musically that has to do with what standards I’ve set for myself. A fan
could write me and say I get it all the time, actually “Oh, Ryan, you’ve
gotten away from why I fell in love with you.” Well, whatever emotional
connection you have to an R&B song, like “I Choose You” or “It’s
Love That I Feel,” those moments are immortalized on record, so play
those records and relive those moments. And if you decide that it’s not
valuable to you from an entertainment standpoint or inspirational
standpoint to come with me on the journey I’m having as an individual,
that’s a sacrifice I have to make for the progression artistically that I
want to undertake.
Q: When you interact with your fans, you’re not interacting around their opinions of your music?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: You’re interacting about…?
A:
Most of my interaction has to do with “No way, this isn’t really you,
don’t you have staff doing this?” Once they come to the realization that
it actually is me, then comes a level of gratitude. I don’t engage in
subjective conversations of “Is this music good or is it not?” If people
appreciate it, then great, but the appreciation is implicitly
represented in the fact that they spent money on it. For the people who
spent money on my music and don’t like it, I’ll give them a refund if
they want it, honestly.
Q: Would you ever conceive of doing a classic label deal at this point?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Why not?
A:
I believe that labels are creatively stifling; they are restrictive;
they are exploitative; they are operating in a model that’s antiquated;
they are the opposite of nimble and the opposite of agile in terms of
being able to respond to what’s happening in the market. I believe that
they are controlling…. That’s enough.
Q: What would you say to people who say that you did some of your best music when you were on a label?
A:
I would say that the fact that I was on a label during that time in my
life had very, very little to do with the music that I was creating and
the music that I was creating had everything to do with what
relationship I was in at the time.
Q: Are you in a relationship right now?
A: Yes.
Q: With?
A: With my fans.
Q: So your music right now has everything to do with your relationship with your fans?
A:
No, it does not. My music right now has everything to do with my
relationship with me. Back then, I was writing songs.… I mean, the
entire Transition album was not written for public consumption.
It was all written for one specific person who would come to the studio
all the time, and every night, when she would come to the studio, I
would want to be able to play her something or through some sort of
musical expression convey to her what I was feeling and hopefully
transport her or rearrange her reality so that she felt the same way I
was feeling. It worked for those fleeting moments when we were both
enraptured in the music, so to speak.
Q: When did the shift happen from you making music for the women in your life to you making music for yourself?
A:
I believe that realization really happened when I looked at my sales.
Very clearly my sales reflected that whatever music I was creating was
not connecting with or not reaching the number of people it would take
to have the mainstream success I wanted to have. So, at that point I
said, “Why would I invest time, energy, and money chasing that when,
just as a human being, I would probably be very unhappy and these were
all factors that far exceeded the reach of my control?” I can’t control
if a radio DJ wants to spin my record. I can’t control if five hundred
people show up at my concert. I can’t control if people are going to
like my songs. I couldn’t control any of those factors, so I focused on
the things that I could control, which were: How do I feel when I make
this record? Am I actually reaching as far as I want to be reaching
artistically? Am I actually layering this record with all of the
instruments and arrangements that I want to have included in this
expression? Did I write the best verse?
Q: When was this happening?
Q: When you decided to transition into rap?
A:
I didn’t decide to transition into rap. I just decided I was going to
make whatever records I wanted to make. If I wanted to sing on a record,
or if I wanted to rap on a record, or however I approached the record,
however I felt on the record, I did not want any confines at all to be.…
I mean, famous line [
his own]:
“They try to put me in a box, it’s impossible.” Here I am, actually in
the full glory of that statement. This is not a rap album. Come to my
show. It is not a rap show. There is not a DJ and a hype man saying
every other line in unison with me. There aren’t forty guys onstage. I
am playing on the piano. What rapper plays the piano?
Q: What would you call it?
A: It’s Ryan Leslie.
Q: So it’s in a category totally by itself?
A:
I just call it Ryan Leslie. That’s my expression. If people need to
categorize it so they know where to put it in their iTunes playlist, be
my guest.
Q: When you say
that you’re creating music for yourself and yet you’re more engaged with
your fans than you ever have been, is there a conflict there?
A:
I believe that people’s appreciation of music is subjective. When
people say, “Ryan, can you listen to this?” And I say to myself, “Okay,
if I listen to this, what does it really mean?” And then, “Oh, well, I
really respect your opinion.” And I say, “Okay, once I give you my
opinion, what does it mean for you actually in continuing along your
pathway?” Unless I sign you or take it and promote it to my audience,
what does me saying “Yo, I think this is great” even mean beside just a
pat on the back? So I believe that people’s opinions of music are
subjective, but the way people actually feel when they receive a
thank-you or feel when they feel like they know an artist, that’s not
subjective. That’s a real feeling.
