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Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your 

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host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance 

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marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. 

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We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, 

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marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and 

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have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned. 

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Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing 

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podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I'm super excited to talk to Amber Osborne today. 

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Sup, Amber? Hi. Hi, Ty. Nice to see you. Yeah. Nice to see 

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you too. It's been a while. It's been a minute. Back in 

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the old days of Seattle, I think it was at a UX conference or 

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a Yeah. Seattle interactive maybe. Yeah. That's it. Twenty eighteen, 

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maybe? Yeah. I remember you bought me a coffee. There you go. 

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There you go. Amazing. And the coffee capital 

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of the US maybe. Yeah. The coffee capital of the US, but I believe it was 

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conference coffee. So Mhmm. You know, maybe not the best quality 

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coffee, but it still still got me caffeinated. It made that connection happen. 

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Made the connection happen. Maimi didn't technically buy you one. It might have been on the conference. 

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So, you know, being honest. Oh, the secrets come out. 

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I'm just thinking in hindsight. I want to be honest with the audience and you, but 

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I'll take the win. So good to see you. It's warm in Seattle. It's warm in your area. 

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What's going on? You tell me. It is very warm 

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here. It was about a hundred degrees yesterday. I'll get into 

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this more in the podcast, but I'm originally from Florida. So people are like, you should 

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be used to this. I'm like, we have air conditioning in Florida. 

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Seattle has older buildings, so not a lot of AC going around and it 

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is hot. It is hot. And I'm wearing long sleeves because that's what I 

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do. It's the music, you know, it's a little punk rock of 

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you, I think. I'm just gonna throw it out there. It's like yeah. It's it's 

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punk rock to be sweaty. I love 

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it. I love it. Well, I'm super excited to jump into all things Amber. 

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Amber Osborne has an amazing background. She's doing some really interesting things consulting. 

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She's done some very impressive things with a variety of clients in marketing, in 

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emerging tech world, in the music world. And so it's gonna be a fun conversation for everybody, 

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and, we're grateful to have her on today. Maybe kick us off. Like, how did 

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you get into the fun filled world of marketing? How did I get into the fun filled world of 

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marketing? I think I got into probably the most fun filled world of marketing, which 

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was in music. So how I first got into marketing, it was, you know, 

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just stapling band flyers to telephone poles, when I was in high school 

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and sneaking into venues that I was not old enough to be in, essentially to work 

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march booths for folks that I knew, that had bands. I started off, 

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doing a lot of event promotions and marketing for for local bands outside of Tampa, Florida, 

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which grew into working with various artists and labels. 

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Essentially, if a band was coming through Tampa or Orlando playing a lot of the larger 

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venues, I would get assignments to go out and do promotional work. Vast 

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majority of that consisted of a lot of very unglamorous work, 

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in Florida heat, essentially. You know, I mostly just, like, lived at Kinko's 

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printing flyers, you know, doing a lot of the promotional material distribution to 

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stores, just running around everywhere, running around backstage, making sure that 

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artists have their Sharpie markers for, like, their meet and greets. And I usually 

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always had a a silver Sharpie marker on me at all times just in case. Love 

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it. I kinda still do. I still keep a Sharpie in in my purse just in case. I 

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don't know. I guess it's just habit over the years. But That's cool. It 

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was quite an experience. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, that sounds a lot like the movie Almost Famous. 

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And I was like, yeah. It kinda was. You know, I was, I was pretty young. And I 

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just, you know, I learned a lot of things about life, about people during this 

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time about marketing, you know, how artists market themselves, you know, they create those 

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personas and those visual identities, you know, either with themselves 

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or their art and their performances, you know, how much storytelling 

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is important. So creating that allure and mythology and that 

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lore. Also, you know, I I learned quite a bit about the industry and 

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the other side of things, you know, how the industry market artists and how much of a business 

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it truly is, you know, the good and the bad. So it was a bit 

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of pretty big experience to have in my, you know, teenage formative 

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years, you know, going into college. And then my more formal core marketing 

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experience is mostly in, around product marketing and technology. I've been That's 

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amazing. It's been a lot of things. You know, I've I've marketed even sweet potatoes at one 

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time. So multiple industries, tech, music, gaming, sweet 

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potatoes. That'll be the title of the podcast, I think. It would be a 

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whole other podcast. There's it's a whole other lifetime, whole other podcast 

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there just around the sweet potatoes. Okay. Part two will be sweet potatoes. Got 

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it. No. What, are there any bands 

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that we might know of that you you were involved in in terms of the marketing 

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in the early days? Yeah. So, again, it was it was a lot of bands that would come through 

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Tampa. So it was a lot of bigger artists. So I gotta see and just, you know, 

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meet and work with a lot of really great people, either the artists 

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or their management or their production folks. So Pearl Jam, 

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Sentable Pilots, Velvet Revolver, Queens of the Stone Age. It was 

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early two thousands. So, like, a lot of the pop punk bands that were out then worked 

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quite a few very, very hot, bands, work tours. Just, you 

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know, I gotta see I gotta see a lot of artists also that, you know, were just starting off that 

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became bigger. That was really like, wow. Like, I I kinda maybe 

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helped helped them out a little bit with, like, promoting those albums and those shows. 

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So You're a part of it. It's just cool. It's it's cool to be, a part of the 

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the big machine, I would say. Absolutely. In some cases, some of the smaller smaller 

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machines perhaps too. Yeah. And and that's what I'm doing now. Smaller machines. 

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That's awesome. Still promoting some artists and doing some consulting? Yeah. 

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So I'm still doing consulting, and music. Very light touch, 

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but I do work with some local bands. Walking Papers is one of them out of 

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Seattle. I really love connecting artists with kind of more the 

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marketing side of things because a lot of them either have had labels before, and are 

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now going independent. So it's just like, okay. What do I do now? Yeah. It's a 

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lot. Yeah. It sounds like you can bring a wealth of experience to help them out. What what kind 

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of kept you coming back into the marketing world even beyond music? What were 

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some of those things that you found that you were good at or you really enjoyed with it? What what kind of 

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made it stick for you and made you realize, like, this thing this marketing thing made sense for you? I think 

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the really the the point that made everything click for me is, 

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you know, I really love helping people build that yellow brick road to success, 

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you know, whether it be a product or a business. You know, I really love laying the foundations 

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for people to connect with what they love on the consumer side of things. I love helping 

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the businesses connect with their communities or build their communities. 

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Just making those those dots be connected is 

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just it's kind of a turning point for me when someone comes to me and is like, hey, 

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like, I really love your product or I love the band that you're working with. Like, here's 

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my story and how much it's changed my life. Or hey 

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your, your product helped me connect with a community of people. 

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Now I'm really active and I'm doing I'm doing this, this, and this. And I'm just like, oh my god. That's 

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so fantastic. I've had people at previous companies, 

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customers, they would send us, like, it's like thank you notes. And one time 

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we got, like, a Lucite plaque actually with a poem on it. It was really beautiful 

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of, like, how much the product helped them in their life. And, 

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yeah. It's just it's I just love connecting people, you know. I'm a connector. I like making 

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magic magic happen. There you go. And it that's what you do. Right? It's like 

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it just kind of you can kind of get a sense of it when people when you speak to certain people 

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and they have a passion to you see it and it shows and it comes out, which 

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is fantastic. You have the music experience. You're still involved. That's that's fantastic. 

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I'm sure that informed a lot of things. When you think about, like, tech and start ups and 

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emerging tech, like, how did that come about? You know, I've always I've always been in the 

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entrepreneurial spirit. I love that word. I always feel like I'm going to mess it up. 

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Entrepreneurial, you know, I've always definitely been kind of a misfit. You know, someone says, no, you can't do 

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that. So I go and do it. I, I co founded 

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a social media agency in Tampa back in the day and went from 

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Tampa to Seattle via a conversation that happened over Twitter DMs with my 

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former business partner, Eli. He lived in Seattle and I lived in Florida. And he's 

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like, hey. I'm working on this machine learning startup that has to do with social 

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media. You know, I need somebody who knows a little bit more about marketing and social media, be a subject 

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matter expert, and really help us build this business and do business development. And I just went, 

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you know, I never thought about living in Seattle, but I like the music and I like coffee. 

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So let's let's talk. So thirteen, fourteen years later, 

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I'm still here. So I guess I liked it. Yep. I 

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love it. It's a continuous adventure. Cause like, I, I always 

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come back to the startup world. You know, I've been an advisor for multiple companies or a board 

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member, CMO of a few multiple startups, over time. And it's 

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it's all really taught me a lot of lessons, about business and marketing and people, 

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and that's why I have great here now. You and me you and me both. I think I have quite a bit more. 

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It definitely the misfit thing is interesting because I feel like that's definitely aligned 

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with the entrepreneurial thing, which is aligned with the startup thing. And I've 

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I've been involved myself quite a lot as an entrepreneur now, 

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but then also previously at at a lot of start ups in a lot of start ups and and 

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helping a lot of start ups when we were evolving and building the business, still working with startups 

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myself. So I can absolutely very much identify with where you're coming from there. 

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And it sounds like there's been a ton of learnings. In my observation, the learnings at startups are just, 

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like, compounded because you're everything's kind of on steroids for lack of a 

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better term. Right? There's the stakes are higher, perhaps. There's speed. 

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Yeah. What are your thoughts there? I think, you know, as a marketer, sometimes when you're at a 

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company, you kinda get siloed. Like, you're the marketer. You only talk to marketing and 

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you're only working on marketing things. What's really amazing about startups and it really just on 

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an education level is that you work with all 

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different types of departments. And, you know, it's very it's very 

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cross silos, I would say. So I've worked a lot with engineering, worked a 

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lot with design and executive level and business 

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development and just everybody, you know? And I've learned, I'm not a 

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technical person, but I've learned a lot about the technical side of 

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things and how, how it plays into marketing and that 

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engineering and that CTOs should work with the CMOs and that 

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we should communicate and, talk about, you know, customer 

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feedback and, like, how things work and how things might change the marketing 

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strategy. And I just I I I get I get so jazzed when I get to work 

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with other departments because I'm just like, oh, what are you doing over here? Like, and how Totally. 

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How can that help me on the marketing side of things? Or how can what I've learned from 

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marketing the product help you? So it's exciting. Like, yeah, I 

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think that spirit of, like, community and connecting people and, like, empathy and, like, 

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thinking about the challenges of a product person or an engineer and, like, I think those are some of the more 

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highlights. I also that resonates with me a ton because I I got to be in the trenches. 

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And Yeah. I love talking to the developers and and nerding out and being 

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really tech being close to the technology. It just it's kinda what the heartbeat 

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of most startups in this era and and will continue to be. And so it's cool to 

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hear that you kind of really tapped into that and and collaborated closely with people 

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on that. Always. And, you know, if somebody tries to force me to just kinda stay in 

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my silo, like, I secretly sneak out and start 

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talking to, like, the developers or the community just to find out, you 

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know, what's going on, you know, and how how can I help? How can we help each other? Yeah. And 

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I think the best marketers, performance marketers, growth people, whoever you wanna 

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define them or I think they share that mindset. Certainly has to be focused and prioritized. 

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But especially at a start up, you're really absorbing everything from a lot of different 

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teams, especially technically or product based. Yeah. You're wearing a lot of hats. And I think if 

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everybody can help each other wear each other's hats, you know, as 

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much as possible, like, seriously, like, everybody Yeah. In a start up 

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can help out should help out where they they excel and and where they 

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can. Yeah. Where there's you know, that's a big learning and takeaway from the startup 

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experience. Were there other, maybe, like, learnings or moments or from from your 

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perspective about this your startup experience in the past or perhaps now? Yeah. 

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Absolutely. You know, I think everybody, when they get into a startup, you know, they see the dollar 

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signs and they see they see the big exits. And, you know, while big exits 

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are always super nice, right, You never really let it 

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consume you too much if things end. I've never considered things to be 

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a failure. Because again, like what we just spoke about is that you learn a 

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lot. You learn a lot. You take those lessons with you. And also, you 

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know, what you worked on, even if it was for a short amount of time, you know, you 

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put these sparks out into the world, either through your product or through your customers or the 

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people that you have worked with. And, also, what I mean by that is, like, your efforts 

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may have connected people or made their lives better even if, you know, your 

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company's life was not as long as you wanted it to be. You know, if if you 

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make a difference in one person's life or made an impact, you know, you also 

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gotta think about how you may have paved the way for other companies as 

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as well. And, you know, you still succeed in in that way. You know, never 

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think something's a failure because you didn't you didn't make it. 

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Yeah. I love that. I think something could be a commercial failure by 

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definition, but you could still have had a great experience, helped a bunch of people, 

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bring value to the world, inspired other people. What a great what a great call out. I 

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think that's that's awesome. You had you dealt with emerging tech, you dealt with all 

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the different verticals. ARVR, you've been able to have some experience in. 

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Obviously, that world has a lot of, I think, hot takes from 

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folks. Yeah. A lot. What 

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what's your perspective on that industry of ARVR? What do you think 

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people get wrong about it? Yeah. So I like what you said about hot takes, especially 

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about the ARVR industry because it seems like everybody has an opinion. And, you 

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know, some of those are opinions that, you know, it's expensive. It's just a fad. There's 

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really no good use or yeah. It's just the list goes on. I've worked in it long enough 

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to kind of see enough changes even in the last 02:10 years or 

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so that it's like, okay. Like, some things didn't work out, but some 

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things really did work. You know, I use a workout in virtual reality called 

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Supernatural, and I've been using it since, like, twenty twenty. And it's it's incredibly 

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useful. It's so much fun and then you realize like you just spent 

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thirty minutes and you burnt five hundred calories having a blast. 

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So you basically, like, swing these bats around to hit these 

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targets and it's set to music And they have an amazing music licensing, 

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so you can just rock out to your favorite bands while working out. And, like, 

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you see these beautiful landscapes that they have from all over the 

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world. So, like, you're rocking out in Turkey. Like, you're rocking, Like, you you 

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get to do all of these amazing exercises in just these beautiful 

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these beautiful worlds. So it's Love that. You know, the community even in 

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Supernatural, I just love to hear the stories of how, you know, these these 

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folks never wanted to work out before and, like, just haven't been able to stick to 

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working out. They just put on their headset, and it's transformed a lot. 

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That's amazing. It's It's been life changing for a lot of folks. So if anybody ever comes at me saying 

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like, oh, VR is useless. Like, it's just, you know, it's just and I'm like, it's really 

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you have to find what works for you. Yeah. With anything, you have to find 

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what works for you. And if VR isn't for you, then either for 

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someone else. Exactly. Yeah. And it's obviously gonna improve time. 

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There's so many specific use cases. It's obviously had a lot of positive impact. 

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There absolutely is. There's are so many use cases. A lot of the products that I worked in 

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VR were virtual spaces. So 

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places that you could go in and have interactive social like, you'd 

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have avatars, you go in and meet people kinda like VR chat. And, you know, for brands and 

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marketers, like, everybody jumped on, you know, hey. How can we have these immersive 

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experiences in VR? And every it seems like everybody was just throwing a bunch of money into 

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this. Right? And then they're like, why isn't this working for us? Or like 

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and I'm just like, because you're building you're building these grand experiences 

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and the consumers are still like, hey. This might be our first time in VR. Like, 

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make it easy for us. Make it easy for us to move around in the environment. Make it not 

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so technically top heavy where it crashes on us. So, you know, there 

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are just so many great ways to use VR, but I think a lot 

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of people try to jump on the the trends and they 

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really go all full force. And then the consumers are like, hey. Wait. We're still 

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we're still new to this. So Yeah. There's a lot of a lot of 

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great use. I mean, we had a band during the pandemic because during the 

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pandemic, a lot of folks came out with with albums and they weren't able to tour. They weren't able 

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to promote their material like they used to. So a 

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band named Saint Motel came to us when we, when I was over at Mozilla, 

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working on Mozilla hubs And they're like, hey, we wanna build this interactive immersive 

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experience in Hubs. We're gonna build it's gonna be like our album 

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cover of this motel, like the circular motel. And 

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each motel room had like different, a different theme for, like, a 

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song on the album. And we're like, this is really cool. And they did it right. 

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So when you entered the space as a fan, 

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it was easy to navigate. They made it graphically. It was still graphically 

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beautiful, but it wasn't too overwhelming, and it didn't, like, crash people's devices and 

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stuff. But it was it was one of those things where I was just like, okay. Like, 

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this is this is awesome. This is this is how to do it. There's a lot of use for it. I think 

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people are just still trying to figure out the best way to use 

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it. Yeah. That's amazing. That makes sense. You know, you've had, 

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obviously, theme of the pod, always be testing. You've run experiments. You've 

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had various marketing campaigns deployed, product learnings, you know, talking to 

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the the technology and and the engineering team. Now what are some of those, like, key 

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learnings or maybe experiment learnings or marketing or performance learnings that kind 

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of stuck with you or you might recall or that you've maybe seen recently that are 

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notable that you wanna share with the audience? Yeah. So a lot of people are just very 

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eager, of course, to show the world what they've created. But user testing, no matter 

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if you are a product or a band releasing the album, you know, have the the 

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MVP do that listening party is so key 

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in those those beginning stages. A lot of people just are like, hey. Let's just put it out 

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there. And I'm like, no. No. No. You need to get your feedback. You need to start growing your community. You start 

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listening to, like, a community. You know, really fostering the product, fostering your community, 

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you know, throw things out that aren't working, create new things, you know, this is when you wanna do 

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it. And a lot of people just will just throw out whatever and and 

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just you know, like, oh, we just wanna get it to market. Sometimes it's just like, okay, let's see 

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how this goes. But Yeah. You know, and again, you know, over the lifetime 

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of the product, you should always be testing, of course. But in those beginning 

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stages, like, user user testing is so important 

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for Yeah. Many different reasons. I think, like, you you bring such a core thing. 

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Right? Like, being close to the customer, staying close to the customer, asking the right 

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questions, thinking about usability, thinking about just putting yourself 

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in their shoes in a way that's somewhat measured and objective is 

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just so valuable across all the all the things no matter what you're marketing 

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or selling. It's I think it's really cool to hear you validate that and and kind of 

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share that from from your perspective because it's such a unique one. Yeah. Being people first. 

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People first. You know? Product can come second. Yeah. Yeah. 

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Exactly. The product's not serving an individual and and addressing the people's needs, 

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then it's not really, really gonna make it. Right? We've talked a little bit about 

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the world of affiliate marketing and influencer marketing and create this rise of the 

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creator that we're starting to see from great comm market 

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forces are really coming up a lot and talking about it. Obviously, it's a big focus for for me and our 

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team. But you've had some exposure to that, and you talk about it a little bit with community 

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earlier in the pod. What are you kinda seeing in that world, you know, as it relates to 

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music and other verticals that you're closer to? Yeah. So I always go 

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more in influence marketing and towards the more 

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independent folks. So micro influencers, people with five hundred 

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followers sometimes could be a heck of a lot more powerful than 

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someone with a million followers. Sometimes also they're easier to work 

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with. You have a following too that is is very engaged. 

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It can be that way with someone who's a micro influencer. I have a 

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lot of companies or or folks that I'm advising that are like, hey. You 

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know, we don't really have a lot of budget, and we have a product 

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that is only a certain community would really understand anyway. So I'm like, okay. Well, let's 

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go into the community and and find those folks that already have communities 

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maybe under them. And they're just like, oh, yeah. Actually, we know some 

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folks. And I'm like, there there you go. There's your Yes. There's your micro influencers. 

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Like, those people that, you know, that are already really active in the community and maybe have somewhat of 

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a following. Back in the day, I would have loved it if the if bigger companies, you know, 

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came to me as a micro influencer. You know? Yeah. And these are the people 

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that are gonna be ride or die for you, and they have people that are ride and die for them. There's this 

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image that I always like to, like, show people 

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of what a stage with five hundred engaged people in 

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the audience looks like. It's pretty powerful because you're like, wow. That is a lot of people. You 

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know? Yeah. And if all of those people signed on, so, you 

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know, I I guess this really applies either to marketing a product 

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or music artist that, you know, their value should never be how 

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many followers they have. It should be how many people truly value them. 

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Yeah. I love that. It's a great it's a great line to kinda succinctly describe it, 

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and you see it in a lot of cases. You see the importance of engagement. You see the 

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importance of quality. You see the emphasis on authenticity. You see, okay, how much 

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revenue are they driving? All of these things kind of point to that in different ways. You know, Tim 

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Ferriss has hit that drum so many times with this whole thousand fan thing. 

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And I think that as you're building something new, it's like, how do we get to that first just five 

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hundred or a thousand fans? It's it's really spot on. I think it kind of then you have 

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something, especially if it's on the consumer side. It's smaller, it's really 

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tangible. We're seeing it a lot too. I mean, a lot of we were in a pitch recently where it 

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was like a very quite large brand, very influencer focused. 

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And the most exciting, interesting conversations we were having were around micro 

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influencers to be really positioned as, you know, this is real. This 

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isn't some huge big production with a professional. This is 

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Yeah. I like what you just said about it being a production because sometimes when 

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you do work with the bigger influencers, it is a production. You know? You've got managers. 

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You've got people. It's just like working with a a bigger artist. You know. 

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You have a lot of different cooks in the kitchen. And it it can be a longer process 

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too to get, you know, this contract signed. And and it's just I've really have also 

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found that you have longer relationships with micro 

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influencers than you generally get with, the 

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larger the larger, influencers. So it's always a win win for 

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everyone when you Yeah. I really feel that way is that, you know, 

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it's like y'all gotta start somewhere and you might as well start with the people that love you. 

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Yeah. Those those die hard fans. And I think anything we can do to be long term is is 

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all oftentimes our objective, and it's, that's the aim. Right? And I think thinking 

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that way and trying to find partners that that feed that for your your 

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business is is huge. So Yeah. I love your call out, but they can be more longer term 

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sustainable. That's awesome. Are we doing sliding doors? 

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Or are we gonna pass? I think we'll pass on the sliding doors because I've had so many moments 

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that like that, and I'm just like, it's so hard for me to pick just one 

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that's really impactful. We can talk a little bit more about, I guess, the 

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music, and kind of like maybe what I'm doing now. Yeah. Maybe, like, the almost like 

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the return to the roots of music and all that excitement around what you're doing now. Like, 

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yeah, drop some knowledge on us about that. Yeah. So, you know, I've kind of 

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always had a foot in the music industry somehow even 

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through, you know, working with working with companies, some of our clients have been in 

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the music space especially around immersive technology, you know. Musicians 

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and a lot of musicians are always like, what's new? You know, what's new out there that we 

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can either connect, with our fans or have them connect with us 

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or, get our music out there. A lot of it's around music discovery 

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and those types of products. So, you know, what I'm doing right now is really 

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exciting because I'm helping advise a company called Encantio and they work in sync 

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licensing. So sync licensing is how you get placed 

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in, movies, TV shows, video games as an artist. That's 

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how you get your music there is through sync licensing and through sync licensing 

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placements. So Encanto is a music marketplace that is two 

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sided. So you have artists putting their music into the 

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music marketplace so that they can be discovered by music supervisors 

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that need music for a project or content creators like YouTubers that are looking 

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for for a certain kind of sound for their project or, yeah, a good 

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example more recently is that there's also a lot of artists that have 

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catalogs from back in the day that need to be rediscovered 

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or they wanna get their music back out there. You know, they might have been really big back in the 

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sixties in Albuquerque, but they have music that needs to be rediscovered. 

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That's amazing. And, you know, like, with with the whole Stranger Things phenomenon where we 

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got reintroduced to Kate Bush and Metallica, 

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and a whole new generation is now listening to their music. 

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So it's really exciting because it helps out more independent artists be discovered 

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because there's so much that they have to fight through to just 

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get out there. And it's it's lucrative too. You know, some of these placement deals can be 

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quite income improving, for an independent artist. And it's a 

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lot of it's a lot of fun. It's it's an amazing product, and I'm excited to be helping them 

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on their journey, because it's going back to my roots, you know, essentially of 

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of I love it. It's so funny. I when I was community total nerd 

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sometimes in college, I think I I did in in one of my communications classes, I was kind 

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of tracking how, like, popular music usage in in commercial seems to 

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be really taking off. This is, like, in the late nineties to date me because I'm old. So 

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fascinating. What got me into marketing was the draw of like how 

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just storytelling, TV was the medium, internet was really nothing. 

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In high school, it was like Netscape and AltaVista. Vista. Yeah. 

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Stuff like that for me. And so, obviously, it's evolved and it's much more immersive, blah, blah, blah. 

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But TV was the thing. And so, a commercial, a TV show, a movie, a commercial 

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was like, what drew people in, what people paid attention to. And those commercial spots were 

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were kind of everything. Right? Yeah. And so that kinda drew me in of all all the 

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things I could work on and do. And so that got me into communication. Long story short, I thought that 

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was fascinating. So the fact that you're you're working on that now, tapping 

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into this explosion of, like, how do artists kind of weave 

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into social, which is almost like inverted, almost like the new TV 

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to many is really interesting. Yeah. It's been that's okay. We have 

399
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need to have a side conversation about what you learned from that study to 

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to, because it is really fascinating on how artists are being 

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discovered nowadays either through ad, you know, advertising 

402
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or TV or music or video games. Yeah. And it's just like they 

403
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have to go through so much. There's so much noise out there. Right? 

404
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And also, they have to do it themselves like they have 

405
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to distribute themselves they have to Do everything. Yep, if there 

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could be a way to help folks Yeah. Gotta be the 

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middle man. And it's also, Encantio is AI powered too. So 

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we have a little assistance back there essentially helping 

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connect the dots on projects, which is really cool. Like Love. I love showing people 

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that, and they're like, oh, this is amazing. I'm super into it. That's amazing. Yeah. I 

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I think, wow, there's a lot to talk about there. Is there anything trend wise that you've 

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maybe picked up that's that's shareable from the Encanto experience 

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and and maybe some of those learnings? Like, is there an artist that you're like, oh my gosh. They 

414
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saw, like, this outsized gain. From what you can share, just curious to know. 

415
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Or is there a medium that you were didn't realize was such a great one 

416
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:20,000
for distribution? Yeah. So in CompTIA is prelaunch right now. So we haven't 

417
00:34:20,300 --> 00:34:25,200
Okay. We don't really have that type of information, just yet. But, you know, what I've seen a 

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00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:30,200
lot in the industry and the music industry itself is 

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that a lot of artists, you know, they rely on distribution 

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channels, like, like Spotify and a lot of the other streaming channels, 

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but they keep on coming back to there's gotta be a better way. You know, there's gotta be a better way for 

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us to just get discovered and and make a livable wage. 

423
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And I think the biggest trend is, like, how do we do that? And Yeah. That is 

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that I would say it shouldn't be a trend. You know? It should be it should be the way 

425
00:35:00,500 --> 00:35:05,200
things are. Right? Yeah. And, another thing outside 

426
00:35:05,500 --> 00:35:10,200
of music discovery is going back to the influencers is super 

427
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:14,600
fans. Like, how do we find a band's core 

428
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fans that, you know, will buy the merch, will buy the albums as soon as they come 

429
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:25,000
out or preorder them? You know? Like, we'll travel ridiculous distances 

430
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:30,400
for the band. Like, how do we find those folks, for a certain artist? 

431
00:35:30,500 --> 00:35:35,200
And there's a lot of companies out there working on that, trying to identify superfans. 

432
00:35:35,700 --> 00:35:40,400
And, again, that crosses over just so, like, a So cool. Product or anything. 

433
00:35:40,500 --> 00:35:45,500
Like, how do you find your core folks that, again, 

434
00:35:45,500 --> 00:35:50,300
are, like, for ride or die? You know? They're gonna they're gonna go travel to Argentina to go see 

435
00:35:50,300 --> 00:35:55,200
Taylor Swift. Yeah. Yeah. I I know a few of those 

436
00:35:55,200 --> 00:36:00,100
people. Come on. You are are are you one? I got my 

437
00:36:00,100 --> 00:36:04,500
tickets right now. No. I appreciate I appreciate aspects of it for sure. 

438
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:10,200
But nope. So speaking of paying thousands of dollars 

439
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:15,100
for a concert ticket, what is a recent purchase that you made that you just rave 

440
00:36:15,100 --> 00:36:20,000
about that you wanna share with the audience? So I haven't spent thousands of dollars on 

441
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concert tickets, but I may have spent a couple thousand dollars on 

442
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:29,600
records. So I bought a record player. Well, it was gifted to me 

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for my my wonderful mother-in-law for Christmas. And I got this record 

444
00:36:34,300 --> 00:36:39,100
player after many years of going, you know, I love music, but I 

445
00:36:39,100 --> 00:36:44,000
knew as soon as I started getting into music collecting that it was gonna be a 

446
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:48,800
hobby. You know? It was gonna be a way of life. So it has really 

447
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:53,400
changed my life, you know, coming out of the pandemic and being more 

448
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:58,400
socially isolated. I needed a kind of a good way also to just get 

449
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:03,300
out there and have, like, have a mission. Right? So I've been doing a lot of 

450
00:37:03,300 --> 00:37:07,900
traveling around to record stores. And That's amazing. It's excite it's 

451
00:37:07,900 --> 00:37:12,800
exciting. Yes. The thrill of the hunt too. You know, just going out and seeing what you discover 

452
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:17,800
and and Yes. Like the coolest people with the most interesting stories, either in the 

453
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:22,400
record stores that work at the record stores. I started an 

454
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:27,000
Instagram around, my record collecting. So I met, I met a lot of the 

455
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:32,000
vinyl collecting community through there and just, like, it's been a whole 

456
00:37:32,100 --> 00:37:37,100
thing. They have record store day, twice a year or once a year 

457
00:37:37,100 --> 00:37:42,100
for, like, the big record store day where everybody waits in line sometimes at, like, two 

458
00:37:42,100 --> 00:37:47,000
in the more I don't I don't do that. But they wait in line at two in the morning to get their 

459
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:52,000
exclusives. You know? It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. So it's kinda Yes. Changed my life. 

460
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:57,000
It's actually got me out the door to go collect me. And I love I 

461
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:01,800
love sitting there. You know? I love sitting there with the physical media and 

462
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:07,100
looking at the album artwork, sitting on the floor, listening into the music. It's 

463
00:38:07,100 --> 00:38:12,100
literally art. Yeah. It's an it's more of an experience, you know. I get 

464
00:38:12,100 --> 00:38:16,800
to actually read the liner notes, learn a bit of history about the, about the 

465
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:20,500
album, listen to the whole album instead of just skipping tracks. 

466
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:26,800
It's much more of an experience than just clicking on things. So Yes. It's not good for 

467
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:31,600
my bank account, but I love it. So it resonates so much. We've had some really 

468
00:38:31,700 --> 00:38:36,100
awesome guests in various worlds. Obviously, heavy performance marketing, heavy 

469
00:38:36,300 --> 00:38:41,200
affiliate influencer marketing, but we've gone on total tangents talking about music on this 

470
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:45,800
pod. And it's obviously an interest and a passion for me in a different way. 

471
00:38:46,100 --> 00:38:50,900
I also got into the record thing when I got to Austin during the pandemic and 

472
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:56,100
got my little record player. Oh. Got my little record stack. And I I'm 

473
00:38:56,100 --> 00:39:00,900
not probably as immersed in it as you, but I really enjoy it. Like, on weekends when 

474
00:39:00,900 --> 00:39:05,900
it's, like, mellow time with the kids, I'll just, like, put it on and get some off the TV and get us 

475
00:39:05,900 --> 00:39:10,800
doing something else. And, that's the thing. It's, like, it gets me up and moving. Like, I 

476
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:16,000
just the energy in the place in the morning, you know, it gets us up and moving. And I 

477
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:20,700
love seeing families or folks with their kids introduced, like, out to record 

478
00:39:20,700 --> 00:39:25,500
stores with their kids, and the kids are like, oh, what's this? Or like, hey. 

479
00:39:25,500 --> 00:39:30,300
Yeah. And then they, like, they they're talking. They're conversing about the music. And it's just 

480
00:39:30,300 --> 00:39:35,300
like, oh, you're introducing a whole new generation to Yeah. Physical 

481
00:39:35,900 --> 00:39:40,800
media. Right? So it's just it's exciting. It's exciting. It's coming back. I 

482
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:45,600
think there's just there's a demand for live events, which is a whole another concept. 

483
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:50,400
We've done a lot in that world for our team and and different great technology 

484
00:39:50,900 --> 00:39:55,300
ticketing platforms, and, we'd love that space and enjoy it as well. And, 

485
00:39:55,800 --> 00:40:00,800
yeah, I'm I'm so thrilled to hear you're you're in that and and diving in and doing it. Had 

486
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:05,500
some awesome experiences since we we last chatted and, in marketing and in 

487
00:40:05,500 --> 00:40:10,400
life. That's what this is all about. I I couldn't be more grateful to to see you and hang and chat 

488
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:15,300
and and excited to do it again. Where can folks, you know, find you that wanna 

489
00:40:15,300 --> 00:40:20,300
learn more about what you're working on and connect with you? Yeah. So, I can be 

490
00:40:20,300 --> 00:40:25,200
found at my website, amber osborne dot com. If you just wanna, like, check out 

491
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:29,900
the just general stuff. And then, Instagram at amber osporn and 

492
00:40:29,900 --> 00:40:34,900
osporn's with a zero instead of a, an o. And then my Instagram for my 

493
00:40:34,900 --> 00:40:39,900
record, collecting is moving in stereo with underscores 

494
00:40:40,100 --> 00:40:45,000
in between each. So it's moving underscore in underscore stereo. And 

495
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,000
then I it can be found on LinkedIn as well in various other channels that I probably 

496
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:53,900
forgot to update. Like Yeah. 

497
00:40:55,100 --> 00:40:59,700
Ditto. Ditto there. Amber, you you rock literally and figuratively. 

498
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:04,600
It's been a pleasure. I love chatting with you, and have an awesome rest of your day. 

499
00:41:04,700 --> 00:41:06,700
Yeah. You too. Thank you.