Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your
host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance
marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth,
marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and
have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.
Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing
podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I'm super excited to talk to Amber Osborne today.
Sup, Amber? Hi. Hi, Ty. Nice to see you. Yeah. Nice to see
you too. It's been a while. It's been a minute. Back in
the old days of Seattle, I think it was at a UX conference or
a Yeah. Seattle interactive maybe. Yeah. That's it. Twenty eighteen,
maybe? Yeah. I remember you bought me a coffee. There you go.
There you go. Amazing. And the coffee capital
of the US maybe. Yeah. The coffee capital of the US, but I believe it was
conference coffee. So Mhmm. You know, maybe not the best quality
coffee, but it still still got me caffeinated. It made that connection happen.
Made the connection happen. Maimi didn't technically buy you one. It might have been on the conference.
So, you know, being honest. Oh, the secrets come out.
I'm just thinking in hindsight. I want to be honest with the audience and you, but
I'll take the win. So good to see you. It's warm in Seattle. It's warm in your area.
What's going on? You tell me. It is very warm
here. It was about a hundred degrees yesterday. I'll get into
this more in the podcast, but I'm originally from Florida. So people are like, you should
be used to this. I'm like, we have air conditioning in Florida.
Seattle has older buildings, so not a lot of AC going around and it
is hot. It is hot. And I'm wearing long sleeves because that's what I
do. It's the music, you know, it's a little punk rock of
you, I think. I'm just gonna throw it out there. It's like yeah. It's it's
punk rock to be sweaty. I love
it. I love it. Well, I'm super excited to jump into all things Amber.
Amber Osborne has an amazing background. She's doing some really interesting things consulting.
She's done some very impressive things with a variety of clients in marketing, in
emerging tech world, in the music world. And so it's gonna be a fun conversation for everybody,
and, we're grateful to have her on today. Maybe kick us off. Like, how did
you get into the fun filled world of marketing? How did I get into the fun filled world of
marketing? I think I got into probably the most fun filled world of marketing, which
was in music. So how I first got into marketing, it was, you know,
just stapling band flyers to telephone poles, when I was in high school
and sneaking into venues that I was not old enough to be in, essentially to work
march booths for folks that I knew, that had bands. I started off,
doing a lot of event promotions and marketing for for local bands outside of Tampa, Florida,
which grew into working with various artists and labels.
Essentially, if a band was coming through Tampa or Orlando playing a lot of the larger
venues, I would get assignments to go out and do promotional work. Vast
majority of that consisted of a lot of very unglamorous work,
in Florida heat, essentially. You know, I mostly just, like, lived at Kinko's
printing flyers, you know, doing a lot of the promotional material distribution to
stores, just running around everywhere, running around backstage, making sure that
artists have their Sharpie markers for, like, their meet and greets. And I usually
always had a a silver Sharpie marker on me at all times just in case. Love
it. I kinda still do. I still keep a Sharpie in in my purse just in case. I
don't know. I guess it's just habit over the years. But That's cool. It
was quite an experience. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, that sounds a lot like the movie Almost Famous.
And I was like, yeah. It kinda was. You know, I was, I was pretty young. And I
just, you know, I learned a lot of things about life, about people during this
time about marketing, you know, how artists market themselves, you know, they create those
personas and those visual identities, you know, either with themselves
or their art and their performances, you know, how much storytelling
is important. So creating that allure and mythology and that
lore. Also, you know, I I learned quite a bit about the industry and
the other side of things, you know, how the industry market artists and how much of a business
it truly is, you know, the good and the bad. So it was a bit
of pretty big experience to have in my, you know, teenage formative
years, you know, going into college. And then my more formal core marketing
experience is mostly in, around product marketing and technology. I've been That's
amazing. It's been a lot of things. You know, I've I've marketed even sweet potatoes at one
time. So multiple industries, tech, music, gaming, sweet
potatoes. That'll be the title of the podcast, I think. It would be a
whole other podcast. There's it's a whole other lifetime, whole other podcast
there just around the sweet potatoes. Okay. Part two will be sweet potatoes. Got
it. No. What, are there any bands
that we might know of that you you were involved in in terms of the marketing
in the early days? Yeah. So, again, it was it was a lot of bands that would come through
Tampa. So it was a lot of bigger artists. So I gotta see and just, you know,
meet and work with a lot of really great people, either the artists
or their management or their production folks. So Pearl Jam,
Sentable Pilots, Velvet Revolver, Queens of the Stone Age. It was
early two thousands. So, like, a lot of the pop punk bands that were out then worked
quite a few very, very hot, bands, work tours. Just, you
know, I gotta see I gotta see a lot of artists also that, you know, were just starting off that
became bigger. That was really like, wow. Like, I I kinda maybe
helped helped them out a little bit with, like, promoting those albums and those shows.
So You're a part of it. It's just cool. It's it's cool to be, a part of the
the big machine, I would say. Absolutely. In some cases, some of the smaller smaller
machines perhaps too. Yeah. And and that's what I'm doing now. Smaller machines.
That's awesome. Still promoting some artists and doing some consulting? Yeah.
So I'm still doing consulting, and music. Very light touch,
but I do work with some local bands. Walking Papers is one of them out of
Seattle. I really love connecting artists with kind of more the
marketing side of things because a lot of them either have had labels before, and are
now going independent. So it's just like, okay. What do I do now? Yeah. It's a
lot. Yeah. It sounds like you can bring a wealth of experience to help them out. What what kind
of kept you coming back into the marketing world even beyond music? What were
some of those things that you found that you were good at or you really enjoyed with it? What what kind of
made it stick for you and made you realize, like, this thing this marketing thing made sense for you? I think
the really the the point that made everything click for me is,
you know, I really love helping people build that yellow brick road to success,
you know, whether it be a product or a business. You know, I really love laying the foundations
for people to connect with what they love on the consumer side of things. I love helping
the businesses connect with their communities or build their communities.
Just making those those dots be connected is
just it's kind of a turning point for me when someone comes to me and is like, hey,
like, I really love your product or I love the band that you're working with. Like, here's
my story and how much it's changed my life. Or hey
your, your product helped me connect with a community of people.
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
so fantastic. I've had people at previous companies,
customers, they would send us, like, it's like thank you notes. And one time
we got, like, a Lucite plaque actually with a poem on it. It was really beautiful
of, like, how much the product helped them in their life. And,
yeah. It's just it's I just love connecting people, you know. I'm a connector. I like making
magic magic happen. There you go. And it that's what you do. Right? It's like
it just kind of you can kind of get a sense of it when people when you speak to certain people
and they have a passion to you see it and it shows and it comes out, which
is fantastic. You have the music experience. You're still involved. That's that's fantastic.
I'm sure that informed a lot of things. When you think about, like, tech and start ups and
emerging tech, like, how did that come about? You know, I've always I've always been in the
entrepreneurial spirit. I love that word. I always feel like I'm going to mess it up.
Entrepreneurial, you know, I've always definitely been kind of a misfit. You know, someone says, no, you can't do
that. So I go and do it. I, I co founded
a social media agency in Tampa back in the day and went from
Tampa to Seattle via a conversation that happened over Twitter DMs with my
former business partner, Eli. He lived in Seattle and I lived in Florida. And he's
like, hey. I'm working on this machine learning startup that has to do with social
media. You know, I need somebody who knows a little bit more about marketing and social media, be a subject
matter expert, and really help us build this business and do business development. And I just went,
you know, I never thought about living in Seattle, but I like the music and I like coffee.
So let's let's talk. So thirteen, fourteen years later,
I'm still here. So I guess I liked it. Yep. I
love it. It's a continuous adventure. Cause like, I, I always
come back to the startup world. You know, I've been an advisor for multiple companies or a board
member, CMO of a few multiple startups, over time. And it's
it's all really taught me a lot of lessons, about business and marketing and people,
and that's why I have great here now. You and me you and me both. I think I have quite a bit more.
It definitely the misfit thing is interesting because I feel like that's definitely aligned
with the entrepreneurial thing, which is aligned with the startup thing. And I've
I've been involved myself quite a lot as an entrepreneur now,
but then also previously at at a lot of start ups in a lot of start ups and and
helping a lot of start ups when we were evolving and building the business, still working with startups
myself. So I can absolutely very much identify with where you're coming from there.
And it sounds like there's been a ton of learnings. In my observation, the learnings at startups are just,
like, compounded because you're everything's kind of on steroids for lack of a
better term. Right? There's the stakes are higher, perhaps. There's speed.
Yeah. What are your thoughts there? I think, you know, as a marketer, sometimes when you're at a
company, you kinda get siloed. Like, you're the marketer. You only talk to marketing and
you're only working on marketing things. What's really amazing about startups and it really just on
an education level is that you work with all
different types of departments. And, you know, it's very it's very
cross silos, I would say. So I've worked a lot with engineering, worked a
lot with design and executive level and business
development and just everybody, you know? And I've learned, I'm not a
technical person, but I've learned a lot about the technical side of
things and how, how it plays into marketing and that
engineering and that CTOs should work with the CMOs and that
we should communicate and, talk about, you know, customer
feedback and, like, how things work and how things might change the marketing
strategy. And I just I I I get I get so jazzed when I get to work
with other departments because I'm just like, oh, what are you doing over here? Like, and how Totally.
How can that help me on the marketing side of things? Or how can what I've learned from
marketing the product help you? So it's exciting. Like, yeah, I
think that spirit of, like, community and connecting people and, like, empathy and, like,
thinking about the challenges of a product person or an engineer and, like, I think those are some of the more
highlights. I also that resonates with me a ton because I I got to be in the trenches.
And Yeah. I love talking to the developers and and nerding out and being
really tech being close to the technology. It just it's kinda what the heartbeat
of most startups in this era and and will continue to be. And so it's cool to
hear that you kind of really tapped into that and and collaborated closely with people
on that. Always. And, you know, if somebody tries to force me to just kinda stay in
my silo, like, I secretly sneak out and start
talking to, like, the developers or the community just to find out, you
know, what's going on, you know, and how how can I help? How can we help each other? Yeah. And
I think the best marketers, performance marketers, growth people, whoever you wanna
define them or I think they share that mindset. Certainly has to be focused and prioritized.
But especially at a start up, you're really absorbing everything from a lot of different
teams, especially technically or product based. Yeah. You're wearing a lot of hats. And I think if
everybody can help each other wear each other's hats, you know, as
much as possible, like, seriously, like, everybody Yeah. In a start up
can help out should help out where they they excel and and where they
can. Yeah. Where there's you know, that's a big learning and takeaway from the startup
experience. Were there other, maybe, like, learnings or moments or from from your
perspective about this your startup experience in the past or perhaps now? Yeah.
Absolutely. You know, I think everybody, when they get into a startup, you know, they see the dollar
signs and they see they see the big exits. And, you know, while big exits
are always super nice, right, You never really let it
consume you too much if things end. I've never considered things to be
a failure. Because again, like what we just spoke about is that you learn a
lot. You learn a lot. You take those lessons with you. And also, you
know, what you worked on, even if it was for a short amount of time, you know, you
put these sparks out into the world, either through your product or through your customers or the
people that you have worked with. And, also, what I mean by that is, like, your efforts
may have connected people or made their lives better even if, you know, your
company's life was not as long as you wanted it to be. You know, if if you
make a difference in one person's life or made an impact, you know, you also
gotta think about how you may have paved the way for other companies as
as well. And, you know, you still succeed in in that way. You know, never
think something's a failure because you didn't you didn't make it.
Yeah. I love that. I think something could be a commercial failure by
definition, but you could still have had a great experience, helped a bunch of people,
bring value to the world, inspired other people. What a great what a great call out. I
think that's that's awesome. You had you dealt with emerging tech, you dealt with all
the different verticals. ARVR, you've been able to have some experience in.
Obviously, that world has a lot of, I think, hot takes from
folks. Yeah. A lot. What
what's your perspective on that industry of ARVR? What do you think
people get wrong about it? Yeah. So I like what you said about hot takes, especially
about the ARVR industry because it seems like everybody has an opinion. And, you
know, some of those are opinions that, you know, it's expensive. It's just a fad. There's
really no good use or yeah. It's just the list goes on. I've worked in it long enough
to kind of see enough changes even in the last 02:10 years or
so that it's like, okay. Like, some things didn't work out, but some
things really did work. You know, I use a workout in virtual reality called
Supernatural, and I've been using it since, like, twenty twenty. And it's it's incredibly
useful. It's so much fun and then you realize like you just spent
thirty minutes and you burnt five hundred calories having a blast.
So you basically, like, swing these bats around to hit these
targets and it's set to music And they have an amazing music licensing,
so you can just rock out to your favorite bands while working out. And, like,
you see these beautiful landscapes that they have from all over the
world. So, like, you're rocking out in Turkey. Like, you're rocking, Like, you you
get to do all of these amazing exercises in just these beautiful
these beautiful worlds. So it's Love that. You know, the community even in
Supernatural, I just love to hear the stories of how, you know, these these
folks never wanted to work out before and, like, just haven't been able to stick to
working out. They just put on their headset, and it's transformed a lot.
That's amazing. It's It's been life changing for a lot of folks. So if anybody ever comes at me saying
like, oh, VR is useless. Like, it's just, you know, it's just and I'm like, it's really
you have to find what works for you. Yeah. With anything, you have to find
what works for you. And if VR isn't for you, then either for
someone else. Exactly. Yeah. And it's obviously gonna improve time.
There's so many specific use cases. It's obviously had a lot of positive impact.
There absolutely is. There's are so many use cases. A lot of the products that I worked in
VR were virtual spaces. So
places that you could go in and have interactive social like, you'd
have avatars, you go in and meet people kinda like VR chat. And, you know, for brands and
marketers, like, everybody jumped on, you know, hey. How can we have these immersive
experiences in VR? And every it seems like everybody was just throwing a bunch of money into
this. Right? And then they're like, why isn't this working for us? Or like
and I'm just like, because you're building you're building these grand experiences
and the consumers are still like, hey. This might be our first time in VR. Like,
make it easy for us. Make it easy for us to move around in the environment. Make it not
so technically top heavy where it crashes on us. So, you know, there
are just so many great ways to use VR, but I think a lot
of people try to jump on the the trends and they
really go all full force. And then the consumers are like, hey. Wait. We're still
we're still new to this. So Yeah. There's a lot of a lot of
great use. I mean, we had a band during the pandemic because during the
pandemic, a lot of folks came out with with albums and they weren't able to tour. They weren't able
to promote their material like they used to. So a
band named Saint Motel came to us when we, when I was over at Mozilla,
working on Mozilla hubs And they're like, hey, we wanna build this interactive immersive
experience in Hubs. We're gonna build it's gonna be like our album
cover of this motel, like the circular motel. And
each motel room had like different, a different theme for, like, a
song on the album. And we're like, this is really cool. And they did it right.
So when you entered the space as a fan,
it was easy to navigate. They made it graphically. It was still graphically
beautiful, but it wasn't too overwhelming, and it didn't, like, crash people's devices and
stuff. But it was it was one of those things where I was just like, okay. Like,
this is this is awesome. This is this is how to do it. There's a lot of use for it. I think
people are just still trying to figure out the best way to use
it. Yeah. That's amazing. That makes sense. You know, you've had,
obviously, theme of the pod, always be testing. You've run experiments. You've
had various marketing campaigns deployed, product learnings, you know, talking to
the the technology and and the engineering team. Now what are some of those, like, key
learnings or maybe experiment learnings or marketing or performance learnings that kind
of stuck with you or you might recall or that you've maybe seen recently that are
notable that you wanna share with the audience? Yeah. So a lot of people are just very
eager, of course, to show the world what they've created. But user testing, no matter
if you are a product or a band releasing the album, you know, have the the
MVP do that listening party is so key
in those those beginning stages. A lot of people just are like, hey. Let's just put it out
there. And I'm like, no. No. No. You need to get your feedback. You need to start growing your community. You start
listening to, like, a community. You know, really fostering the product, fostering your community,
you know, throw things out that aren't working, create new things, you know, this is when you wanna do
it. And a lot of people just will just throw out whatever and and
just you know, like, oh, we just wanna get it to market. Sometimes it's just like, okay, let's see
how this goes. But Yeah. You know, and again, you know, over the lifetime
of the product, you should always be testing, of course. But in those beginning
stages, like, user user testing is so important
for Yeah. Many different reasons. I think, like, you you bring such a core thing.
Right? Like, being close to the customer, staying close to the customer, asking the right
questions, thinking about usability, thinking about just putting yourself
in their shoes in a way that's somewhat measured and objective is
just so valuable across all the all the things no matter what you're marketing
or selling. It's I think it's really cool to hear you validate that and and kind of
share that from from your perspective because it's such a unique one. Yeah. Being people first.
People first. You know? Product can come second. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. The product's not serving an individual and and addressing the people's needs,
then it's not really, really gonna make it. Right? We've talked a little bit about
the world of affiliate marketing and influencer marketing and create this rise of the
creator that we're starting to see from great comm market
forces are really coming up a lot and talking about it. Obviously, it's a big focus for for me and our
team. But you've had some exposure to that, and you talk about it a little bit with community
earlier in the pod. What are you kinda seeing in that world, you know, as it relates to
music and other verticals that you're closer to? Yeah. So I always go
more in influence marketing and towards the more
independent folks. So micro influencers, people with five hundred
followers sometimes could be a heck of a lot more powerful than
someone with a million followers. Sometimes also they're easier to work
with. You have a following too that is is very engaged.
It can be that way with someone who's a micro influencer. I have a
lot of companies or or folks that I'm advising that are like, hey. You
know, we don't really have a lot of budget, and we have a product
that is only a certain community would really understand anyway. So I'm like, okay. Well, let's
go into the community and and find those folks that already have communities
maybe under them. And they're just like, oh, yeah. Actually, we know some
folks. And I'm like, there there you go. There's your Yes. There's your micro influencers.
Like, those people that, you know, that are already really active in the community and maybe have somewhat of
a following. Back in the day, I would have loved it if the if bigger companies, you know,
came to me as a micro influencer. You know? Yeah. And these are the people
that are gonna be ride or die for you, and they have people that are ride and die for them. There's this
image that I always like to, like, show people
of what a stage with five hundred engaged people in
the audience looks like. It's pretty powerful because you're like, wow. That is a lot of people. You
know? Yeah. And if all of those people signed on, so, you
know, I I guess this really applies either to marketing a product
or music artist that, you know, their value should never be how
many followers they have. It should be how many people truly value them.
Yeah. I love that. It's a great it's a great line to kinda succinctly describe it,
and you see it in a lot of cases. You see the importance of engagement. You see the
importance of quality. You see the emphasis on authenticity. You see, okay, how much
revenue are they driving? All of these things kind of point to that in different ways. You know, Tim
Ferriss has hit that drum so many times with this whole thousand fan thing.
And I think that as you're building something new, it's like, how do we get to that first just five
hundred or a thousand fans? It's it's really spot on. I think it kind of then you have
something, especially if it's on the consumer side. It's smaller, it's really
tangible. We're seeing it a lot too. I mean, a lot of we were in a pitch recently where it
was like a very quite large brand, very influencer focused.
And the most exciting, interesting conversations we were having were around micro
influencers to be really positioned as, you know, this is real. This
isn't some huge big production with a professional. This is
Yeah. I like what you just said about it being a production because sometimes when
you do work with the bigger influencers, it is a production. You know? You've got managers.
You've got people. It's just like working with a a bigger artist. You know.
You have a lot of different cooks in the kitchen. And it it can be a longer process
too to get, you know, this contract signed. And and it's just I've really have also
found that you have longer relationships with micro
influencers than you generally get with, the
larger the larger, influencers. So it's always a win win for
everyone when you Yeah. I really feel that way is that, you know,
it's like y'all gotta start somewhere and you might as well start with the people that love you.
Yeah. Those those die hard fans. And I think anything we can do to be long term is is
all oftentimes our objective, and it's, that's the aim. Right? And I think thinking
that way and trying to find partners that that feed that for your your
business is is huge. So Yeah. I love your call out, but they can be more longer term
sustainable. That's awesome. Are we doing sliding doors?
Or are we gonna pass? I think we'll pass on the sliding doors because I've had so many moments
that like that, and I'm just like, it's so hard for me to pick just one
that's really impactful. We can talk a little bit more about, I guess, the
music, and kind of like maybe what I'm doing now. Yeah. Maybe, like, the almost like
the return to the roots of music and all that excitement around what you're doing now. Like,
yeah, drop some knowledge on us about that. Yeah. So, you know, I've kind of
always had a foot in the music industry somehow even
through, you know, working with working with companies, some of our clients have been in
the music space especially around immersive technology, you know. Musicians
and a lot of musicians are always like, what's new? You know, what's new out there that we
can either connect, with our fans or have them connect with us
or, get our music out there. A lot of it's around music discovery
and those types of products. So, you know, what I'm doing right now is really
exciting because I'm helping advise a company called Encantio and they work in sync
licensing. So sync licensing is how you get placed
in, movies, TV shows, video games as an artist. That's
how you get your music there is through sync licensing and through sync licensing
placements. So Encanto is a music marketplace that is two
sided. So you have artists putting their music into the
music marketplace so that they can be discovered by music supervisors
that need music for a project or content creators like YouTubers that are looking
for for a certain kind of sound for their project or, yeah, a good
example more recently is that there's also a lot of artists that have
catalogs from back in the day that need to be rediscovered
or they wanna get their music back out there. You know, they might have been really big back in the
sixties in Albuquerque, but they have music that needs to be rediscovered.
That's amazing. And, you know, like, with with the whole Stranger Things phenomenon where we
got reintroduced to Kate Bush and Metallica,
and a whole new generation is now listening to their music.
So it's really exciting because it helps out more independent artists be discovered
because there's so much that they have to fight through to just
get out there. And it's it's lucrative too. You know, some of these placement deals can be
quite income improving, for an independent artist. And it's a
lot of it's a lot of fun. It's it's an amazing product, and I'm excited to be helping them
on their journey, because it's going back to my roots, you know, essentially of
of I love it. It's so funny. I when I was community total nerd
sometimes in college, I think I I did in in one of my communications classes, I was kind
of tracking how, like, popular music usage in in commercial seems to
be really taking off. This is, like, in the late nineties to date me because I'm old. So
fascinating. What got me into marketing was the draw of like how
just storytelling, TV was the medium, internet was really nothing.
In high school, it was like Netscape and AltaVista. Vista. Yeah.
Stuff like that for me. And so, obviously, it's evolved and it's much more immersive, blah, blah, blah.
But TV was the thing. And so, a commercial, a TV show, a movie, a commercial
was like, what drew people in, what people paid attention to. And those commercial spots were
were kind of everything. Right? Yeah. And so that kinda drew me in of all all the
things I could work on and do. And so that got me into communication. Long story short, I thought that
was fascinating. So the fact that you're you're working on that now, tapping
into this explosion of, like, how do artists kind of weave
into social, which is almost like inverted, almost like the new TV
to many is really interesting. Yeah. It's been that's okay. We have
need to have a side conversation about what you learned from that study to
to, because it is really fascinating on how artists are being
discovered nowadays either through ad, you know, advertising
or TV or music or video games. Yeah. And it's just like they
have to go through so much. There's so much noise out there. Right?
And also, they have to do it themselves like they have
to distribute themselves they have to Do everything. Yep, if there
could be a way to help folks Yeah. Gotta be the
middle man. And it's also, Encantio is AI powered too. So
we have a little assistance back there essentially helping
connect the dots on projects, which is really cool. Like Love. I love showing people
that, and they're like, oh, this is amazing. I'm super into it. That's amazing. Yeah. I
I think, wow, there's a lot to talk about there. Is there anything trend wise that you've
maybe picked up that's that's shareable from the Encanto experience
and and maybe some of those learnings? Like, is there an artist that you're like, oh my gosh. They
saw, like, this outsized gain. From what you can share, just curious to know.
Or is there a medium that you were didn't realize was such a great one
for distribution? Yeah. So in CompTIA is prelaunch right now. So we haven't
Okay. We don't really have that type of information, just yet. But, you know, what I've seen a
lot in the industry and the music industry itself is
that a lot of artists, you know, they rely on distribution
channels, like, like Spotify and a lot of the other streaming channels,
but they keep on coming back to there's gotta be a better way. You know, there's gotta be a better way for
us to just get discovered and and make a livable wage.
And I think the biggest trend is, like, how do we do that? And Yeah. That is
that I would say it shouldn't be a trend. You know? It should be it should be the way
things are. Right? Yeah. And, another thing outside
of music discovery is going back to the influencers is super
fans. Like, how do we find a band's core
fans that, you know, will buy the merch, will buy the albums as soon as they come
out or preorder them? You know? Like, we'll travel ridiculous distances
for the band. Like, how do we find those folks, for a certain artist?
And there's a lot of companies out there working on that, trying to identify superfans.
And, again, that crosses over just so, like, a So cool. Product or anything.
Like, how do you find your core folks that, again,
are, like, for ride or die? You know? They're gonna they're gonna go travel to Argentina to go see
Taylor Swift. Yeah. Yeah. I I know a few of those
people. Come on. You are are are you one? I got my
tickets right now. No. I appreciate I appreciate aspects of it for sure.
But nope. So speaking of paying thousands of dollars
for a concert ticket, what is a recent purchase that you made that you just rave
about that you wanna share with the audience? So I haven't spent thousands of dollars on
concert tickets, but I may have spent a couple thousand dollars on
records. So I bought a record player. Well, it was gifted to me
for my my wonderful mother-in-law for Christmas. And I got this record
player after many years of going, you know, I love music, but I
knew as soon as I started getting into music collecting that it was gonna be a
hobby. You know? It was gonna be a way of life. So it has really
changed my life, you know, coming out of the pandemic and being more
socially isolated. I needed a kind of a good way also to just get
out there and have, like, have a mission. Right? So I've been doing a lot of
traveling around to record stores. And That's amazing. It's excite it's
exciting. Yes. The thrill of the hunt too. You know, just going out and seeing what you discover
and and Yes. Like the coolest people with the most interesting stories, either in the
record stores that work at the record stores. I started an
Instagram around, my record collecting. So I met, I met a lot of the
vinyl collecting community through there and just, like, it's been a whole
thing. They have record store day, twice a year or once a year
for, like, the big record store day where everybody waits in line sometimes at, like, two
in the more I don't I don't do that. But they wait in line at two in the morning to get their
exclusives. You know? It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. So it's kinda Yes. Changed my life.
It's actually got me out the door to go collect me. And I love I
love sitting there. You know? I love sitting there with the physical media and
looking at the album artwork, sitting on the floor, listening into the music. It's
literally art. Yeah. It's an it's more of an experience, you know. I get
to actually read the liner notes, learn a bit of history about the, about the
album, listen to the whole album instead of just skipping tracks.
It's much more of an experience than just clicking on things. So Yes. It's not good for
my bank account, but I love it. So it resonates so much. We've had some really
awesome guests in various worlds. Obviously, heavy performance marketing, heavy
affiliate influencer marketing, but we've gone on total tangents talking about music on this
pod. And it's obviously an interest and a passion for me in a different way.
I also got into the record thing when I got to Austin during the pandemic and
got my little record player. Oh. Got my little record stack. And I I'm
not probably as immersed in it as you, but I really enjoy it. Like, on weekends when
it's, like, mellow time with the kids, I'll just, like, put it on and get some off the TV and get us
doing something else. And, that's the thing. It's, like, it gets me up and moving. Like, I
just the energy in the place in the morning, you know, it gets us up and moving. And I
love seeing families or folks with their kids introduced, like, out to record
stores with their kids, and the kids are like, oh, what's this? Or like, hey.
Yeah. And then they, like, they they're talking. They're conversing about the music. And it's just
like, oh, you're introducing a whole new generation to Yeah. Physical
media. Right? So it's just it's exciting. It's exciting. It's coming back. I
think there's just there's a demand for live events, which is a whole another concept.
We've done a lot in that world for our team and and different great technology
ticketing platforms, and, we'd love that space and enjoy it as well. And,
yeah, I'm I'm so thrilled to hear you're you're in that and and diving in and doing it. Had
some awesome experiences since we we last chatted and, in marketing and in
life. That's what this is all about. I I couldn't be more grateful to to see you and hang and chat
and and excited to do it again. Where can folks, you know, find you that wanna
learn more about what you're working on and connect with you? Yeah. So, I can be
found at my website, amber osborne dot com. If you just wanna, like, check out
the just general stuff. And then, Instagram at amber osporn and
osporn's with a zero instead of a, an o. And then my Instagram for my
record, collecting is moving in stereo with underscores
in between each. So it's moving underscore in underscore stereo. And
then I it can be found on LinkedIn as well in various other channels that I probably
forgot to update. Like Yeah.
Ditto. Ditto there. Amber, you you rock literally and figuratively.
It's been a pleasure. I love chatting with you, and have an awesome rest of your day.
Yeah. You too. Thank you.