This is Industry Insider: a weekly 5-minute brief with key news, interviews, advice, smart picks & follows, built for artists and industry folks alike.
WHAT'S INSIDE
👆 ONE BIG THING
I've been running V13 for three years now. Working with clients, managing releases, building multiple divisions from the ground up. All that while raising two young boys, supporting my wife’s career, and keeping a household running.
And that whole time, I've been building this.
The V13 Single Release Playbook.
It's been pending for years. A major milestone that kept getting pushed because there was always another client deadline, another fire to put out, another week where system optimization consumed the time I'd set aside for everything else.
But I kept working on it. Late nights. Obsessive documentation. Every revenue stream, every registration, every operational task, every legal requirement, every distribution quirk, every publishing society; every single checkbox that could make or break a release.
Not just because I'm a completionist (though I absolutely am). But because I had to.
Because without this system, without knowing exactly what needs to happen, when it needs to happen, and why, I drop balls. And its my team, and ultimately our clients, who pay the price. And I just can’t Live, Laugh, Love with that, gang.
So, this playbook is what I built to keep that from happening.
It's the full operational system. Baseline through R+60. Distribution, publishing, legal, royalties, marketing, content. Everything.
Not just the promotional stuff everyone else covers, but all the unsexy infrastructure that quietly determines whether artists actually get paid for their work.
I'm putting it out now because I'm done watching artists scramble. Done watching people work for six months on a song and watch it sink in 48 hours because nobody told them about the 47 operational tasks that actually matter.
If you've ever finished a release feeling like you missed something important (and then found out months later you actually did) this is what I built to prevent that.
Let's get into it.
🗞 INDUSTRY NEWS
The fourth annual Women In Music Canada Honours has announced its list of 2026 nominees for the honours taking place March 5th in Toronto.
FiXT, the independent record label founded by Celldweller, has announced the promotion of Michelle Steer to E-Commerce & Merchandise Director.
💯 INDUSTRY INTERVIEW
Brody Miller of the rock band Yote joins us to discuss his day job, working at FiXT Music and how that experience benefits him as a musician.
💬 INDUSTRY ADVICE
You don’t need another “content strategy.” You need your songs to stop disappearing the second they hit Spotify. A waterfall release doesn’t fix everything, but it does bend the game a little in your favour: same tracks, smarter order, more chances for people to actually find you instead of scrolling past and never knowing you existed.
🎧 INDUSTRY PODCASTS
Kelsey Maree Dower is a symphonic metal vocalist/composer behind “Rage” and the upcoming Rebirth project. On MAKE // BREAK with Lance Marwood, she talks orchestral writing, mixing challenges, creative control, and navigating the music business as an autistic artist.
Discover exactly what’s missing in your promo strategy and which lever will move the needle the most…
🎵 ADD YOUR MUSIC TO OUR PLAYLIST
New single? We’re happy to consider adding your track to one of our obsessively curated Spotify playlists → Just reply to this email with the link…
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