Lennon: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of When Life Hands You Lennons. I am very, very excited and honored for this week's episode. Miss Camille Barbone is an industry veteran. And by that I mean she was Madonna's first manager and kickstarted her career into what it is today.

In this episode, Miss Camille talks about all of her industry experience about running a studio, working on productions, working with label executives, and being mentored and moving out to San Francisco and working with her family to learn and kind of solidify in her career. We also talk about how we're both kind of on the no bullshit train where we mean business and we don't want any misinformation out there. And all we want to do is spread factual, correct information on the music business because there are a lot of talking heads in the music business. And there are a lot of people that are out there that are taking advantage of independent artists and artists in general. And it's unfortunate because it ruins the music business for those who are very credible, like myself and Miss Camille, and it also ruins it for those who are aspiring to be in the business because they hear about these scams and cruel people who are taking advantage of these people. It discourages them from even advancing their careers and makes it very difficult for them to trust anybody.

So we talked about different kinds of deals and we talked about being an artist manager and we talk about Camille's experience in the field as well, and all that fun stuff. And Camille is a wealth of information. She is a music industry veteran. So she has stories upon stories to share for her expertise, and all kinds of great information. So I'm very excited for this episode.

And before we dive in, I want to remind you to sign up to my email list, which is in the show notes below. Or you can also head to my newly developed website, lennoncihak.com and sign up there as well. It helps me notify you when new episodes like this are live. I would also appreciate a five-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts because it greatly helps the podcast grow. And I love hearing your reviews and how I can make the show better as well. There is a guest request form in the show notes below as well. So if you or somebody you know would be a good guest for the show, I'd appreciate it if you'd fill it out and I will reach out for you to be a guest for the show. Lastly, I want to plug my Instagram which is just @lennoncihak, which will also be in the show notes below. I post updates and kind of things I'm working on as well there. So without further ado, let's dive into my conversation with Camille Barbone.

Camille, thank you so much for being on the show and taking the time out of your busy schedule to be on the show. I really appreciate that. So why don't you just tell us who you are and how you got into music and kind of give us a little bit of a backstory as a foundation.

Camille: No problem. No problem. Lennon, first thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I just am such a huge fan of yours and also all the people that come out of Full Sail. What a bunch of great individuals and assets to the entertainment business, music business, specifically. Really an honor to be involved.

I've been in the music business for pretty much all of my adult life, that's about 35 years. I started out in the early 70s. And I've just dated myself, but that's okay, too. I didn't know anything about the music business when I was growing up. All I knew was I loved music. And I was a bit of an audiophile even before it was it was fashionable. I would check the charts. I would buy albums. I would try and pick what the single would be. I was in love with the idea of music; and The Beatles were big; and all my girlfriend's and I would hang around and we'd listen to The Beatles and we'd read a lot notes on the backs of albums. They all talked about being John Lennon's girlfriend or Ringo Starr's girlfriend. I wanted to be George Martin's kid because I figured I would be on the inside track and I would know what the hell was going on in the music business. And I could be close to The Beatles and I can watch them record and create. To me the creation was the most, I think, inspiring thing and the most amazing thing to me that some people just have these brains that enabled them to write songs that means something to masses of people. It was pretty astounding.

So here I am 18 years old, and I decided I'm going to visit my cousins in California because I know they're in the music business. They're both big engineers, and I'm talking about one worked for A&M Records. The other one worked for Columbia. And they did every major album as engineers, from the Osmonds to Carlos Santana to Barbra Streisand. I mean, they were involved in the thick of it. So I arrived, my cousin said, 'Do you want to come to work with me?' And I said, 'I would love that.' And he got dressed, he put jeans on, and he had a great shirt on, and he had sunglasses and it was 7pm at night. We were going to work. And it was like, wow, this is the job of a dream, right?

So we show up there and he parked me on this beautiful leather couch in this cool air conditioned space. And I don't know what he's gonna do. And I see this small guy come in and they shake hands, and then he goes into the booth. And it turns out that it's Carlos Santana. And that he's about to lay down some of his lead tracks and solos and the track is 'Oye Como Va.' And I am sitting there in San Francisco. I'm sitting there and and I am in awe. I am just watching and dealing with the process and my cousin is behind me on this gigantic console, and I am absolutely transported into what turned out to be a fantasy land that I wanted to be a part of. And we hung out with Carlos afterwards. He went back in the studio. He was a delightful guy. It was all fabulous. And when I left California, I knew I wanted to be in the music business beyond anything else. I didn't want to go to college. I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to be in the music business.

So Columbia Records is where my cousin worked. So I figured that would be the place to go. And I applied to Columbia Records. There were no opening. So I took a job at CBS Radio, in the hopes that a slot would come available at Columbia. And I would get it you know, and sure enough, a slot came available as manager of new release coordination for Colombian Epic and associated labels. And I applied and I got the job. Unbeknownst to me, it was probably the grad school of record business jobs because what I learned were how the 28 different departments got together to make a recording, and release a recording, and market a recording, and get it out to the radio stations, and promote it. My job was to keep every one of these departments on schedule. So I learned how each department worked. I worked with the A&R. So that means I worked with the artists. I worked with the radio promotion men because sometimes they needed advance copies to get to the radio stations and DJs. It was the most amazing education and experience anyone who wanted be in the music business could have. I was lucky enough to get it.

So I stayed at Columbia for a few years, and I learned everything that I could possibly learn. I held a similar job at PolyGram. And then I held an A&R position at Buddha Records. And then I went on my own. Buddha Records at that point in time was owned by Arista Records. So I had a lot of dealings with Arista as well.

But throughout this entire learning process, the thing that was most important to me was the job I wanted. I was exposed to a lot of them. And there's a lot of kids today don't know all the different jobs you can get in the music business. Of course, they're the heavy ones. You know, everybody wants to be an A&R. Everybody wants to be in promotion, and all those things are the ones with the sizzle. But there's so many incredible jobs like the one I had, that you could get that would give you such an insider's view of the industry. And you would know how it works. And you would understand how artists are involved in their own careers and managers work with promotion people and how everybody kind of gets together to make superstars and in some instances, icons.

So I was pretty well prepared when I decided I wanted to go out on my own. And the thing that always attracted me was the way that managers interacted with the record labels. It seemed like they had all the juice. It seemed like they had all the power because they represented the artists. They were closest to the artists and in some instances, they do have probably the most power and sometimes too much power when we all know managers sometimes go wild and do some pretty bad things. But generally speaking, you know, managers are responsible for everything working in an artist's career and they're also responsible for everything that goes wrong. And then the artist, of course, gets the the juice for when everything goes right, but that's what being a behind the scenes kind of entity is all about. And management for me was was that I loved being close to the to the power. The power is the artist. I love doing whatever I had to do to make that artist career grow. And each time I would see an action take hold and my artist would increase in popularity, it was probably the best feeling I've ever experienced in my life. So I was very much hooked really early on.

So knowing that I absorbed all I could possibly absorb at labels, and then I was finally ready to go off on my own and the idea was to become a manager and have a studio. Now I have to tell you flying by the seat of my pants, okay. No backers, no money, just this mad desire to be in the music business and be an artist manager. My years that the labels gave me a lot of good contacts. And I knew that if I put up a small studio, people would come, and sure enough, I scrimped I scraped it saved, I borrowed, I pled, I begged, I did everything I possibly can do, to get enough money to put a very basic studio together. I did it. And immediately Blue Sky Records. Johnny and Edgar Winter started coming. David Johansen at that time it was the New York Dolls. And then later on Buster Poindexter people of that era of Melba Moore. I was in this, this building on the west side of Manhattan in the garment district, probably one of the most dangerous areas of New York at that point in time, right next to Port Authority. And there was a building called the music building. And it was 12 floors of rehearsal and small recording studios. But no one in that building was involved with mainstream music business people. I was the only one. So I took a small studio in there. And it was my first studio, and it's how I launched Gotham Sound. I eventually was able to get an entire floor on the building. It's thanks to the support I got from all the record label people that I knew. I started Gotham Sound, which was my first state of the art studio.

Why did I want a studio? Because as a manager, I was mentored by someone who said, 'you have to own as much as you can to cut down on your overhead because artists cost money. You have to record with them, they have to rehearse, they have to have a place to hang their hat creatively.' And that stayed with me. I was very fortunate to be mentored by a very successful comedy manager, Jack Rollins, and he managed Billy Crystal, Robert Cohen, Lenny Bruce. He had, who's the woman? I can't even think of her name right now.

Anyway, lots of people, all in mainstream comedy. It was pretty exciting. Joan Rivers was one of his people. And he started to talk to me about how to manage artists and what to do with artists and how he had to deal with artists. And I learned a lot from him. I sat in his office, he smoked a big, gigantic cigar behind this gigantic desk. And he just taught me how to become a manager. I took everything I learned from him. And I earned a lot of credit for sitting there for hours and hours, and he just beat the crap out of me, pretended he was the A&R guy, pretended he was the artist. He showed me how to pitch things. He really gave me a lot of experience before I even hit the street. And so I was ready to pick up artists and I started to do that.

And in that studio is, is where I discovered, developed, and managed Madonna. And that was the early 80s. And it launched my career, it launched her career, it launched everyone's career. I think I've probably held every possible position I could in the music business, all legal I might add. I have managed, of course. I have produced music. I have promoted huge concerts. I was responsible for the entire gospel segment of Woodstock '94. It was fabulous. We had amazing people with Chaka Khan, Thelma Houston, CeCe Penniston, and Phoebe Snow. Mike Lang who had Woodstock '94 wanted the gospel segment to be the Sunday morning religious moment for the crowd, you know.

I've had experiences that I consider myself so lucky to have had through my life as a manager. Management for me is probably the most exciting aspect of the music industry. Artists' development is I think paramount to the business, and it used to be a time when the record labels did it, but now it's really left to the managers and no one else. Depending upon the type of artist, it's pretty costly too. If you're starting from scratch, you have to get a band. If the artist isn't a writer, you have to find the material you have to do the staging, you have to do the costuming, you have to work with production people. If you're going to make a recording, and of course you're going to have to, you have to work with staging people in order to put a live performance together. And management is at the core of all this.

So for me, you have to know a lot about a lot of different businesses in order to be a manager. And I have spent my entire career learning and I continue to learn now with digital and the way music is delivered online. It's another learning curve for me. It's pretty exciting. And, you know, I really am one of the lucky ones in terms of having the experiences that I've had in the past because it enables me to understand a little bit more the application, how you take digital music now, and you warm it up. You still have to make it personable. You still have to make it be a one-on-one experience. And I mean, there's not a lot of live performance anymore. There are major concerts, and in smaller towns, they're still the venues. But the major cities like New York, LA, it's really hard to go to clubs and see new talent. It's mostly online now. I troll YouTube, and I look for new talent all the time. And it's it's pretty exciting.

Another thing that I think is different now than when I first started out in the music business, is the fact that the industry was more of a filter when I began my career. In other words, record labels were the gatekeepers. They told the radio stations, 'hey, these are the songs and the artists you get to pick from in order to put them on the air.' Now because of the internet, everything is out there. I read an article recently that 40,000 new tracks are uploaded daily onto the internet. It's a gigantic amount of data; of music. Sadly, a gigantic percentage of that it's not commercial, not viable, whatever you want to call it. A lot of people have dreams. I wish everybody's dreams could come true, but a small amount of people have the amount of talent that you need in order to cut through and become a big star.

So the music business now is a very--it's kind of a free for all--and we've got to find the talent as opposed to the talent finding us; that push thing that we all hear about in marketing. You had artists pushing their talent towards you. When you were an A&R; when you were at a record company; and now you have to pull it off of the internet, you have to look for it. It's podcasts like yours and other people's that help a great deal because you help us sort through all of the talent, or lack thereof, that's out there. So, I mean, I love the business now. I miss the old business.

I think what's most important now is that the talent that we're hearing and we're seeing, get supported, especially in this time with COVID-19. You know, I know everybody's jumping online. Everybody's trying to do concerts. We have to support the arts community because the arts community keeps us sane in times like this. If you go back all the way in time and I've read about this what what entertainers did during World War II; what entertainment did for us in terms of protesting the Vietnam War;what it did during 9/11. We have a very important role in in the fabric of the United States and the fabric of the world in terms of entertaining in terms of giving people moments of peace, when they really needed a chance to escape.

So an honor to be involved in and right now, you know, as a coach, and as a consultant in the music industry, I'm working very hard to find ways to continue to give artists a chance to grow even during this, and it's very challenging, and it's very exciting. And you know, we're we're putting think tanks together for people to come up with ideas and new ways of doing things. I think the Elton John performance with Alicia Keys and Backstreet Boys. I think they did a great job in showing that we can deliver entertainment, even in a pandemic, you know. So it's pretty exciting times for everyone to be as resourceful as they possibly can.

Lennon: It's definitely an interesting time with the pandemic going on. And it's kind of unprecedented in all of our lives. Nobody living currently has seen such a crisis like this, where everything is kind of shutting down, and especially in the entertainment industry. It's just come to a complete halt. I spoke with somebody last week on the podcast, and he was telling us about how it's really impacted the live entertainment industry. And he was a manager for a comedy group and all kinds of other musical acts around the country.

I'm so glad that you're on the show because you remind me a lot of me. You want to learn a little bit about everything. That's exactly how I am. Since I went to Full Sail, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I graduated and got my degree in music production. And ultimately, that's what I want to do. But I know and knew when I was in school that there are so many other things that keep the music business rolling, such as artist management, music publishing, songwriting, live events, and you know, all the moving parts that are going on, and studio management, and all kinds of other things. So those types of things keep me going. I'm learning a little bit about everything. I've worked as a publicist. I'm currently a journalist. I'm doing the podcast to keep up on my audio production chops and connect and chat with people like you who are considered industry veterans and have learned and contribute so much every day to the music industry. I've learned so much over the years, and that's going to help me in the coming years to when I start developing myself as an artist and continue to work as a musician. I've been one for 14-15 years now. I'm going to know everything about the business; I'm going to know as much as I possibly can, rather than just going into the music business as an artist and not knowing anything about songwriting, copyrights, music licensing, sync licensing, what types of things you can do with the master rights and the songwriting rights and all those types of things. So you remind me a lot of me because you want to learn a little bit about everything.

Camille: Well, you know, you don't have a choice, in terms of the entertainment industry, you know, we're dealing with the land of 360 deals. When I first started out--I'm sorry taking you down trips Memory Lane--but it's good comparative, you know. Record labels used to just make their money off of music sales, pre-recorded music sales, whether it be a vinyl, whether it be a single, whether it be an eight track, a CD, whatever it is, they make money by selling it. All well and good. Now we have the 360 deal and the 360 deal is, as you will know, entitles the record label to a piece of all the income streams that might possibly exist for an artist. So it's publishing. If they're doing film and television, if they get endorsements, if they do live performance, there's all pieces of the pie.

Now, the record industry/music industry is basically saying, 'we're going to give you a longer deals now, because we've got a lot more we're going to do and we're going to work very closely with you in terms of artist development.' Sadly, that isn't the case. Sadly, it's still falls on the personal manager. But at least you have a compatriot; you have a counterpart at the label that maybe is handling film and TV or sync licensing, or any of the things that might possibly transpire in a 360 deal.

So you have to know what's going on if you want to be in this business, school like Full Sail or the MIRA program at St. Petersburg College. They they can do so much. In that period of time. They can do just so much. Really, when you get out on the street, when you start interacting and you learn as you're doing. So you're publicist, you said you were music production. We learn by doing and we take what we learn in formal education like Full Sail, and then we have to kind of decipher it, and we have to apply it in real time and in the real world. And that sometimes becomes very shocking for young people that are getting into the business. They don't know how to make the transition, you know, but there are certain positions in the music industry that require such an extraordinary amount of information.

I know I have to be able to read the contract. I'm not a lawyer and I don't give legal advice, but I want to sit down with a lawyer and I want to understand exactly what's going on. I also want to educate my clients. I don't believe in clients being in the dark. I don't think artists are given enough credit, or given enough latitude to learn more about the business and sometimes it puts them at a serious disadvantage. There's that single frantic thing that goes on sometimes when the industry wants to strip an artist of any of their abilities. They basically want to make them helpless, because you're controlling power. I believe that artists need to be educated as much as everyone else about how this business works. They need to know what happens when someone licenses their song for a film. Maybe some artists don't want that information. But most do or need it on down the line. Sometimes they're just too damn busy as well. And we get that too. But there are those moments in time and I've spent many moments 12 o'clock midnight, four o'clock in the morning, just shooting things shooting the shit with artists and talking about how the business works and I was always shocked about what they didn't know. I've been on the road with bands. I was on the road with with Sevendust for a while. I've gone on tours. There's a lot of time to talk and there's a lot of time to educate artists about how this business works. They too need to know as much as they possibly can about what's going on in their career. They maybe don't need to know how a publishing deal works, but they sure need to know who their publisher is, what their publisher is doing to help them, how their publisher is developing their careers as songwriters or recording artists. So I'm always on a quest to educate. How about you?

Lennon: Same. that's exactly why I started the podcast and exactly why I do a lot of the articles that I do for journalism aside from the music reviews that I love doing and listening and finding new music. That's one of the big reasons why I started the podcast. I see so many artists who are pitching me for music. And they just don't understand what exactly all these things that happen, like how to formulate a good email pitch to a publicist or a journalist. They don't understand the kind of the moving parts in the music industry.

There was a metaphor that I often quote and say that the music industry is like a football field, and a lot of people only look at the first 10 yards. There's 90 yards after that. There's so many other things to look at outside of those 10 yards, and a lot of artists and songwriters that I come into contact with just don't understand how big the music industry is. And if you don't understand a lot of these moving parts, you can get completely swallowed up and taken advantage of.

Camille: Yeah, that's true. And, you know, there were instances in the past where artists have been severely damaged financially because they didn't understand what was going on or they trusted in the wrong individual. I mean, you liken it to a football field. Sometimes I liken it to the Wild West. You know, there's a lot of marauding going on and raiding going on sometimes. It's hard, you know, there's a lot of money to be made, there's a lot of power to be had. And it's very difficult. Sometimes people get swayed by it. So you know, when I coach and consult, I make sure that when artists are signing long term agreements, they know who they're working with, they understand exactly what the dynamic is going to be between them what that individual is responsible for, you know. I believe firmly in the need for an artist development team. I don't think a manager can do it himself or herself. I think we need a publicist, we need a great record producer, you need a good business manager that is primarily nothing more than an accountant that knows tax law and knows how to protect the money and assets of the artist. You need a good booking agent. You need a good entertainment attorney. You need these people. That's your panel as an artist, and with that panel and back to your football field, that's your line of defense. You know, they're going to protect you and they're going to get you across the goalpost to your smash hit record; your smash career. I think it's really important that artists understand they're not expected to do this alone.

Your podcast: perfect example of an opportunity for young people, maybe in Wisconsin, or not in any of the music centers to get a big dose of what the real music business is all about. It's a lot of dreams, you know, and they usually these kids usually have to move to the big city in order to start to make some connections and get some traction in their business.

But the business now is so multifaceted. The business now requires a real deep understanding of crossover. And you know, multifaceted careers. I think, just the fact that we're dealing with so much content for the Netflix's and the Hulu's and all those platforms, dictates that there needs to be more songs written; there needs to be better songs written. Somebody has to wade through all of the the garbage to find the gems. I have a few music supervisors as friends, and they are inundated constantly with material. And sadly, only a small percentage is even worth their time to listen to.

And I think that's probably the one downfall of the internet. Somebody is going to have to be quality control here. And I use my staff and I we all get together and we listen to as much as we have to listen to. And we do it together or some of us take 10 and then come back with with the ones we think we should all listen to. But we have a process that enables us to get through more material to find those gems to find the people that really deserve to be on the best playlists or on terrestrial radio or maybe being given an opening act slot for one of the big players. It's that that I think is most important. I think what a Billie Eilish comes to the surface, I'm so relieved, you know. I'm so happy. She's effortlessly talented. And I believe that the way she handled her career. She has two parents that were in the music industry. So she's not naive about this business. But I think that was a sweetheart rollout for a new artist. I'd be hard pressed to think about anybody else. If you go back a few years, I could maybe liken it to how Norah Jones came to be. It was so organic and so beautifully within the pocket of that musical genre. People just took to it effortlessly. And and I think that's pretty spectacular. You know?

Lennon: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned you have a few friends who are music supervisors. And that's something that I ultimately would like to get into. The job that I currently am at we just launched a music licensing course. It's called Hip-Hop in Sync, where we enlisted one of the most successful, if not the most successful person in independent hip-hop music to do sync licensing. And he completely lives 100% on his sync licensing income, and I believe it, I mean, you can make a lot of money. He has over 1,000 sync placements. So he is just doing incredibly well. And he shared some of his tactics on how to get into contact with music supervisors, and what they do, and sync agents, and all those kinds of things. But what do you see, in your experience and from your friends, depending on what shows they work on and genres of music they tend to work with, what do you see? How do artists get in front of sync agents and music supervisors to get their music placed in TV shows?

Camille: You have to start out with a mantra that rejection gives you energy. That's the first thing.

Lennon: Absolutely.

Camille: It's not an an easy pitch. You got to get yourself into a place where you can start to get a few of them on the phone. But I will tell you this, that if you just get traction, a little bit of traction, word gets out. I think the most important part about sync licensing and working with music supervisors is to not waste their time. And that was my rule. Whenever I pitch to A&R people too. I didn't pitch things that I knew they wouldn't want. I would find out what they would want. When I talked to my friends that are music supervisors, time is the most valuable component for them. They just don't have enough time and they know they're missing great songs. But there's just no way that they can get around it.

So what I try to do when I work with people that get involved with music supervision and pitch for TV and film is I say, 'you have to have a pointed pitch.' Meaning you have to know what entity is in production, what TV show, what film, what specifically are they looking for? Who the director is, who the music supervisor is, is there a back door you can go to? I think this is the crucial part. You've got to find backdoors. Going through the same door everyone else goes through. We all know what happens when a crowd tries to get out of one door, right? There's a big jam, and it doesn't work. So what you have to do is and they talk about this, my friends talk about this all the time. It's going in a backdoor. It's finding someone else in the company that knows the music supervisor or the editor that's working on the film or the production assistant that's working on the TV show. It's somehow kind of manipulating your way in so you get an opportunity to talk, but you have one chance, and you better make sure you use that time wisely. You better make sure what you're pitching is absolutely relevant to what they're looking for. And that it's good quality and it's a great master and it's ready to go. I know some people that work to a point where they actually have the sync license ready to go.

Lennon: Wow.

Camille: So if the music supervisor says 'yes,' it's pushed the button, the sync license is on its way, sign it, happy, next. It really requires A-type personalities, music supervisors, as well as the people that pitch to them. I think it takes a little bit of time for you to get a reputation of reliability, meaning okay, if Camille's calling me I know she's not going to waste my time. If Lennon's calling me, I know he's not going to waste my time. I know he's going to come with a piece of music that will either be relevant for what I'm doing, or for something that I might want to be doing because he knows my taste, you know?

So it's a very personal business. I think it's relationships. I think it's understanding who the music supervisors are, what they do, what they've done in the past, Where do they live? You know, I'm a firm believer of researching whoever you're going to have a meeting with. I don't go into a meeting cold. I don't do a meeting understand where they live in 1.2 children. Do they have animals? I want to know all of it, because I want to be able to interact with these people in such a way where I shorten the time for them to trust and the trust is well founded, as well, because all of this research should be done from a sincere point of view, not a manipulative point of view.

Sync licensing is an extraordinary way to make what I call passive income. Okay? It's passive, you do your pitch, you get your license, and it's done. Now, what's going on online with with the royalties that are applied to sync licensing is interesting now. People are not understanding how to get paid online. Are you finding that? Are you finding that people are putting their music up there and not finding it? Even though their music's being played? Are they seeing royalties? Not finding any royalties? What's the feedback you're getting on the street?

Lennon: I think it comes down to the promotion. I released an album. I'm not making any money. Well, that's because you didn't push it. You have, like, 50 streams on Spotify. you have maybe one or two on Apple Music, you have maybe 300 followers on Instagram, and 150 of them are family, you know. They don't really have true fans so they don't have anybody to really engage with their music, which then listen to it and then up their streaming revenue. There's really no promotion behind it. They just release music and expect it to be picked up by the algorithms and Spotify and Apple Music and that's just not the case. Because there's so many other artists that are doing so much more to, you know, get engaged with their fans and grow their streaming. A lot of them are just a lack of understanding of what a copyright is. Some people don't even know how to copyright a song. A lot of people don't understand like, what a royalty is. What kind of royalties are you making? How do you collect these royalties? Who's your publisher? BMI. BMI is not a publisher.

Camille: Right. That's a big one.

Lennon: It's just those types of very small misconceptions that people just don't understand. And that's why I've done some big articles on EDM.com with an entertainment lawyer to kind of break down the top five reasons why you need to copyright your music.

Camille: Many of my consulting gigs are people wanting to start publishing companies that don't really get a grasp of what publishing is all about. So when we're talking about sync licenses, and we're talking about mechanical licenses, and now neighboring rights, royalties. There's so many different ways to earn and there's also so many different organizations that are taking a piece of your royalties now because of the way the internet is laid out and the way certain DSPs (digital service providers) are collecting and others aren't. It's a big mystery.

And too often I think what happened is when it becomes very convoluted is they just walk away from it in the hopes that it will go away. But it won't. And your point about promotion, how do you cut through? It's what we're talking about here. How do you differentiate yourself online? How do you make sure your social media presence is positioned in such a way where when you drop a new track, people are actually listening to it and moving it along and getting other people to hear it. You know, we need grassroots marketing on the digital level. Someone like Billie Eilish did it. That was from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds and it was beautifully, beautifully executed. I think also what goes on is many of these in quotes 'digital marketing companies' come up and they don't do anything except take people's money. So there's that too. I'm going to put your music on here. I'm going to put your music on there. Yeah, you're gonna put your music on there, but will anybody hear it?

So, you know, we have to be very careful with who we work with. We have to be very careful with our assets. I mean they cost money to promote it's a very, very costly thing for these young artists. Fortunately, so many of them are so gifted in social media, they grew up with it, you know, and it's easier for them than someone in their 30s that's trying to get some traction. They may be great songwriters, and I'm not an ageist but you know, the truth of the matter is, you have to learn about social media and you have to understand how to work it. Or do you have to find people that do.

Lennon: I just had somebody on the podcast a couple weeks ago, about a month ago, Heather Bright. She was telling me how she is very focused on producing her own music. And she started her own independent record label. She has her own music that she's releasing through her label. She spent a lot of money to promote her first couple of releases. One of them she hired one of those promotion companies for playlisting. And this recommendation actually came through a friend, so she's like, okay, one of my friends recommended this company to me, I'm going to you know, trust them because why would a friend of mine recommend a scammy company?

Well, she spent thousands of dollars on promotion through this and nothing happened, like, nothing. She got no playlist placements, and he knew that when they jumped on a phone call with him like, 'What's going on?' He just flat out took the money and didn't do anything. I see that so often. And that's why I'm always very hesitant. And when people are so focused on playlists on Spotify, they get it in their head that Spotify is the only way that they're gonna earn revenue. And that's the only way they're going to make a living, and then they get caught up into this. They jump on the first opportunity. 'Oh, I can get you on people's New Music Friday, or I can get you on this Rap Caviar playlist' and they just 'oh I'm down.' Where do I sign? That's dangerous and can cost artists thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Camille: Yeah, in the old days, it was the same scam existed. It only existed with indie radio promotion people and when terrestrial radio before there was some policing of it, you know. It was really easy to put a song in a slot for a couple of days and then pull it right off. The independent promotion people, along with the DJ, would split some money and that would be the end of it.

Well, we've got that same kind of thing going on with playlists curation. Generally, I gotta say, as a coach and a consultant, I spent so much time vetting people, before my clients get involved. My job is to save them heartache, and to save the money, and to save them time. What I try and do is I try and make sure that they're involved with reputable people. The problem that exists sometimes is there are too few reputable people for the need, you know. I continually try to develop a list of resources that I know I can trust. And I think that that's the most valuable asset that I have is a list of people that I know if I call them up they're going to listen to me. I'm just saying, 'There's this young kid. She really needs you. I think it would be a good match. Take a meeting with her. See what you can do.' And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But I know if it does go down and they do work together, that it's going to be fair, it's going to be reputable. And the most important thing, they're going to get proportionally what they're paying for.

Now, and let me tell you, these are the same people that would say, 'No, I really can't pick up this artist Camille, I just don't hear it. They'd be that honest to say that, you know. That's very important. It's the money that kind of twists people's brains a little bit to say, 'Oh, you're hit your smash. I'm gonna make you a star.' Then nothing can possibly happen except that person is enriched by the money this poor individual is paying. A lot of people lose a lot of money that way. I'm not cool with get a day job, but there are just some people that are more talented than others. As you well know, Lennon, you've got to be pretty much a triple, if not quadruple, threat. You've got to be able to perform. You've got to be able to vocalize. You've got to be able to write songs or have access to songs that are viable. You have to be able to step on a stage and be magical. When that's all there, everybody says, 'Oh, my God, he was an overnight success.' No, that's all there and it just expedited the process. But the attributes need to be there. And I think there needs to be honesty within the industry. I am not going to take your money if you don't have talent. I am not going to take your money if you don't have a viable song that I can get on playlists. Maybe that's altruistic. Maybe that's completely out there and everybody out there is saying the music business that's bullshit all that kind of stuff.

I've lived my life 30 years in this business and I have to tell you, I have worked on artists that I didn't believe in. It never worked. It never works. And that's why I have never done in it years and years after I learned my lesson. Every word that comes out of your mouth is basically a lie. You know, it's sad for the artist, it's sad for my soul. I want to be as excited about an artist as I possibly can be. When I sit down and I consult; when I sit down and I coach, I A&R my clients. I don't just take anyone on. And I'm fortunate and blessed that I have the ability to do that now in my career. But I know I earned that, you know, in the 30 years that I've been here, but when I find someone that's magical; when I find somebody that I think is going to happen, I pull out all the stops because I believe the industry needs that individual and I believe that individual needs the industry. It's totally, you know, wag the dog. You're either the flea or you're the dog and you take terms, you know. That's an important part of moving this industry forward and bringing more quality.

The very fact that a podcast like this exists. I had to learn everything by mistakes. Okay? There's so many more resources now than ever before. You don't really have an excuse to be ignorant. If you want to learn about publishing, you can go online and you can see 20 really, really good articles on publishing. I'm doing a masterclass in a little while just on where your money goes when your music is online, all the different codes, the ISRC code, the ISRW codes, the IPI codes, all those codes that are necessary for you to track your music and get paid. People don't know about an ISRC code.

Lennon: You'll have to send that over. I would love to check it out and take it.

Camille: I'll make sure that you know about it. It's a new business. And I'm really on the soapbox for this one. Because there's about four or five layers between the creator making that song and ultimately getting paid. Each of those layers are taking cut. Now right now it's essential, because that's the way the internet and music rolled out. It was totally an inexact science when it first started. The music industry had no idea that the internet was going to be so powerful. And copyrights came in. And the Music Modernization Act has helped an awful lot. But there is still, how do we deal with Sound Exchange, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and then Songtrust, as you know. What's an administrator in a publishing company? People don't have a clue what's going on here, and I'm on a quest to make sure that they do and I see just by looking at all the different episodes of your podcast that you're on that quest too and I'm so happy to hear that.

I think knowledge is power. And I think artists become more powerful when they learn. That's what I'm dedicated to, you know, at this stage in my career as a consultant. I'm about to launch a really big publishing company that has a new model performing rights organization attached to it. I wish I was at liberty to give the name. I will let you know the minute I can. But basically it will collect all the royalties. It will give you a dashboard for you to check it. But here's the beauty, you'll get paid in 60 days. It's all computerized. It's all algorithms. It's amazing. I mean, we have to look at 'black box' royalties. That's billions of dollars. Those are royalties that have been earned and the DSPs don't know who they belong to.

Lennon: Yeah, there's a lot of money out there for that.

Camille: Oh, my lord. The interesting thing also, Lennon, is that even though the United States is responsible for 20% of those royalties, it's 60% of the total value. And you can look at that that statistic in a very interesting way. It means that 80%, which is the rest of the world, is playing music for free most of the time.

Lennon: That's astounding.

Camille: Now we're not talking about the UK. We're not talking about Australia. We're not talking about I use the term industrialized countries loosely. We're not talking about that. Think about this world and think about music. I can be in Ethiopia or I can be in Japan, or I can be in Malawi or I can be in Bonaire. And I'm still listening to music. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC. Are they there? I don't think so. How are you getting paid if your music is being played there? This is even a problem with big stars, so you can imagine what the smaller peeps are doing. And when you're growing to, you know, when you start to pick up steam, you need to know what's going on out there. And unless your music is coded properly, you're never gonna know.

So I've been really devoting myself to a lot of educational efforts in that area, especially in the publishing area, actually, because, as you pointed out with your reference to sync licensing, I think music publishing is probably the least obvious and exposed method of income.

Lennon: I think it's also one of the most confusing. I know a lot about like the master royalties and how those are collected. But when it comes down to publishing royalties in music publishing, it's a little more complex because it's not as talked about, as, you know, the artists royalties.

Camille: Right. Right. And you know the difference between streaming and downloads in terms of how they are counted by the RIAA. And I usually use that as a quiz. When I do keynotes and other addresses. No one realizes that it takes 10 downloads to equal one album sale, or 1,500 streams to equal one album sale. And that's how the RIAA calculates. Not many people even realize that.

Lennon: It comes down to the question of: has music been devalued? Because 1,500 streams? There's only 15 songs on the album or 10 songs on an album.

Camille: It's right. It's right. That scale is skewed. I totally agree with you. We go back to the ASCAP lawsuit. I think it was against Spotify. It may go back even further than Spotify. But they used as the test case of the track 'Royals' by Lorde. She had roughly 10 million spins on terrestrial radio and made approximately $900,000 in performance royalties. Those same 10 million spins or streams, whatever you want to call it, would have yielded about eight or $9,000, maybe $12,000. It was a landmark case that kind of led to the Music Modernization Act on down the line, but still, because we're dealing online in a TV broadcast model, meaning the labels supply content, and the DSPs sell advertising. It's the TV model. It's very different than a spin, which is in and of itself, an entertainment entity. It's not just content, you know.

So now music is turned into content on these DSPs. The labels are in good position because the labels are supplying the content. Okay? They're basically the equivalent to the TV company or the film company that's making that show, so they're okay. But the artists have, over the course of the last several years, been getting less and less of the piece of the pie. Now, I think that's changing in that entertainment lawyers are starting to understand the dynamic, and they're setting up better royalty structures and compensation structures within the contracts. So I think we're going to see more equality there, more equity there. If we're dealing with 1,500 streams and dealing with 10 downloads, I mean your is so little taken and there's rarely more than 15 songs on an 'album.'

So, we've got we've got to get involved on on on a more logical basis now. Don't get me wrong, okay? Sometimes what artists make is astronomically out there. I mean, some of the millions and millions of dollars that I've seen artists make is pretty extraordinary. I'm not saying Lorde didn't make great money on on 'Royals.' She did beautifully. But we still need to be able to allow our musicians to make a living. They have to make a living at least and if their content with $100,000, that's good. If they're not content with $100,000, and they're interested in a million or beyond, then you got to step up your game, you know? What about the working musician that just, you know, wants the gig? Wants to just have their own music and just have, you know, small fan base? They're not looking for the national stage. Maybe they're looking for a local or regional stage. They need to be able to do it too. It's almost impossible the way the system is set up.

Lennon: I concur with a lot of the the artists because a lot of them they start learning. They start digging in, like, I want to learn the business and they start getting inundated with all there is to learn about music publishing, copyrights, the two different types of copyrights, sync licensing, artist management, A&R, and what each one does. They just get so inundated. It's confusing. How to collect all of your royalties. I think there should be one simple method where you can log on to one dashboard and see all of your revenue: performing rights, your mechanical royalties, artist royalties, sync licensing royalties, all that stuff.

Camille: The technology to make that happen is incredibly, incredibly expensive. Okay. I think it's long overdue and I think it's going to be even received wildly, from a successful point of view. But until then, I do feel that artists and songwriters need to know the basics, and we are we are their conduit to that information, and we have an obligation to get it right, as well. There's a lot of misinformation in the music business. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet. People do a search and the first thing that comes up they think it's telling the truth, you know, and not necessarily the case. You have to vet this. There's a wonderful book called 'The Death of Why.' And it's about that. It's about how kids are doing their homework online. They're using facts that aren't real facts. The teach asks, 'where'd you get this?' I got it at the A-Jack fan scene, you know, it's like what? Or an opinion piece they get, they think it's fact.

It's the same with the music business. We have to make sure that there's fact. That was the reason why I decided to write a book, which is coming out in the fall. I've been asked to write a lot of tell all books on the music industry, on Madonna, just the behind the scenes, and I've always passed on it. The book that I'm, I'm just finishing up, uses stories to explain principles within the music business, like a simple phrase, like 'catch and kill.' It's not just a scandalous book that's now in all of the bookstores. Catch and kill is what labels used to do. It started kind of in the disco era, when certain labels would just sign people so that they didn't have to release them and they cut down on the amount of competition they had.

So I give stories to explain what catch and kill is. I give stories about a pay or play, plause. I'm using people like Linda Perry, Karrie Keyes, Leslie Ann Jones, a lot of really good music. There more to come Gary Katz who produced all of the Steely Dan stuff. I'll be talking to people like Sylvia Rhone. These are the people that are going to bring a voice to the facts that up and coming artists need to know. How does this music business work is a very, very important aspect of my quest while I'm here, and while I'm still actively involved in the entertainment industry.

Lennon: Absolutely. Me on behalf of I'm sure all of the people listening thank you for putting out credible, factual information on the music business. Like I said, I see a lot of myself in you. I want to learn a lot about everything. And I only want to put out the correct and factual information because I know what it's like to be naive in the music industry. There's so much to learn. And I don't want to be able to search for something on Google and have to use the first thing that comes up because it may not be factual. I want to know, get to a point, where I can point out like, no, that's not correct. That's not how you collect your royalties, or playlisting. That's not correct. If you're placed a Spotify playlist that has 10 million followers, you're going to make a living for the rest of your life. That's obviously not true.

I used to work at a PR firm. And they were taking anything and everything because it was bringing in a paycheck. And I got sent over a blog campaign. I had to get like six different blog, seven different blogs, which I had a lot of connections at blogs at the time. And I'm like, 'okay, I can do that.' When I listen to the track, it was very, very bad. And I thought, I can't pitch this. This is not a good song. It would ruin my integrity to the people that I have connections with. And it's giving these people false hope. You're going to charge them $500 or whatever it was for me to pitch them and then not see results. I just couldn't do it morally. I just wasn't able to do it because the song was mixed very poorly. It was mastered very poorly. The production was not good. Things were out of key. I just can't pitch this. So I had to decline. I can't work on this. If you have another campaign, I can take that one. But you need to tell this artists that we can't take this campaign because the song is just not good.

Camille: Good for you. I think that's commendable and admirable and I think it's very important. You know, there was a time in the business. I think it's less now, but do you know what it go-see is?

Lennon: Go-see? I feel like I've heard the term but I don't know.

Camille: It's basically a middle man or woman who sees a young artist and says, 'You know, I have an in with so and so in A&R. And for $3,000, I can get in.' And basically, sometimes the person at the label and the middle person are working together. And they usually split the money and there's not gonna be a deal. But that young artist thinks, oh my god. This is my big break. That's cruel. It's cruel and inhumane and all those things and in my wildest dreams. I've had mentors and people in my life that have thought like 'Camille, you're too soft.'

I'm still in this business, I'm still viable. I'm respected. I have a great rep. All these things are very much more important to me than then I'm splitting $3,000 with somebody for 15-minutes of work, where I sit there and I blow smoke up somebody's butt and tell them they're fabulous and they're not, and then they walk out the door and I don't even remember their name. Various genres of music use that a lot more than others. A knowledgeable young artists wouldn't fall prey to that. But you see the problem, Lennon, and you know it as well as I do. And I have moments in my career, and I'm sure you did, too. If you want that dream so much, you're willing to do anything for it. And you're willing to believe anything for it. You know, and, and people fall prey to that. And what I try and do is I just try and keep people safe with the business. They say, 'so and so called, they want me to do this, this, and this.' I check it out for them. I make sure that it's real, that it's legitimate. Thankfully, a lot of the times it is, but on the moments when it isn't, it still shocks me like it's the first time I ever uncovered it, because I can't believe somebody would do that. I know artists, successful artists, when they first started out, they did things like their mother and father mortgaged the house to get them into the studio. That's to be commended and protected.

This generation of music executives have some soul. They have wonderful moral and ethical fiber. It makes me smile, and I want to make certain that the next generation understands we're dealing with living, breathing commodities here. We're dealing not with products. Too often the industry de-humanizes people. They're product. I'm dropping you tomorrow. Wait a minute, I have three kids and a mortgage. What do you mean you're dropping me? These are living, breathing commodities, and they have feelings, and they have families, and we know how closely your brain and your soul and your heart is to the creative process. They require some care and feeding. They require an infrastructure of people that respect them and protect them or give them opportunities to not need protection at all. Meaning that they give a safe environment. That's why I like some of the smaller labels. Now, the deals are nice, they're straightforward. They're easy to understand. They're five or six pages. It's not 56 pages of legalese. It's all very clean and easy. I work with a series of lawyers. We always have some very nice, straight, understandable contracts to give to people so that it's not a mystery. I think that's so important right now that everybody get a fair shake, especially what's going on here. A lot of people are looking at this pandemic as a reset. A chance to look review and look at ways that you've been doing things. Maybe there's a better way. Maybe there's a more humane way. Maybe my altruism is just off the charts and I'm completely unrealistic. I don't know, but I seem to have done okay with those attributes. So I'm not about to change them now after being here and surviving the music industry for 30 years.

Lennon: When I rejected that that campaign, I felt good because I knew in the bottom of my heart. I went to school for music production. I am a musician. I know what a good track sounds like. And when I'm reviewing something, I know what it takes to get featured on one of these big publications and with independent artists these days, $500 is a lot of money. That's money they could spend on new piece of gear. That's money they could spend on studio time. That's money they could spend on their families. To just be able to take that money and get them a blog posts or not get any blog posts for that campaign, it would morally ruin me. I just couldn't do it. For people to be able to take advantage of artists like that. It's sickening to me. It's heartbreaking because they don't think of those things that they have a family or they could put that money into studio time or investing more into their craft. I would much rather them invest that time and money that they're spending on that blog campaign into studio time to get a better recording, to learn. Maybe purchase a course on how to learn how to record something. Or invest it back into their craft.

Camille: Right, right. I mean, I don't manage anymore. I haven't managed for years. But I consult to a lot of managers and I coach a lot of people who aspire to manage, but primarily I also work with a lot of young artists and my primary objective is to make sure that they understand how the business works. Saving time money and your heart. It's a very emotional business. You don't get on that stage and sing your heart out. It's not void of emotion. This is this is a business where people are your music when you're an artist.

When when I say your music sucks, I'm basically saying you suck. For me there's the care and feeding of the artists that I still believe so staunchly, and it was the reason why I loved the managers when I was at Columbia and Epic Records because I saw how they fought for their artists. Some of them don't get me wrong. Some of them were absolute champions and others weren't. That holds true in every business sector, not just ours. Some people are better at what they do than others. Some people are more honest than others, some people are more understanding. That's the business, and what you do is you find the right fit, but artist management to me and artists managers are the heartbeat of this business. If you look at some of the greatest heads of record companies, they usually were managers. You see some of the most successful people in the music business. They were managers. Why? Because they had to know a lot about a lot of different businesses. That's what we're dealing with now. I know we're coming full circle here, but that's what we're dealing with now. We're dealing with blurred boundaries between businesses, okay? The arts/entertainment is now one big sector. And all of the different types of entertainment entities are intertwined now. Whether it be film, whether it be TV, whether it be endorsements for products, advertising, gaming, all of this. They all need music.

Lennon: When you're an artist manager, you're a business manager. An artist is a business. And business managers have to know everything about their business. They have to know about the product that they're selling. They have to know about what the product can do. They have to know the finances. They have to know how those finances are coming in. They have to know the budget. They have to know customer support. Everything has to come in full circle. So when you're an artist manager, you have to know everything about that artist and what is going to be best for the artist.

Camille: Absolutely. I liken it to being the CEO. When you're a manager, you're the CEO and the product is the artist. The way a CEO runs a company is the way you have to run that artist's career. You have to understand the finances. That's why you have that business manager there. This harkens back to the artist development team. That's your executive branch. That's the C-suite for an artist manager. I don't profess to know accounting. I don't ever want to know accounting. We talk debit and credit and all the saliva in my mouth dries up. I have somebody that I could sit down and say, 'Let me ask you this question.' And that individual will give me specific information, relevant to what I'm trying to do with my artists', with my client, my coaching client, or my consulting client. That's a gift.

To know as much as you know is a gift and to know when you don't know something is a gift too, and you can find somebody that has the correct answer. I think that that's very important. And I see artist management the spearhead now of the music business. You see a Billie Eilish and you move her forward, or you see what happens when there isn't good and strong management. We waste a talent like Amy Winehouse. There's an obligation of the people around these artists to make sure that they stay safe. If they self destruct, they self destruct. There's not much we can do about that. But on my watch, I'm going to do whatever the hell I have to do to try and make that work and fix the situation. We've lost too much talent.

Lennon: Yeah, especially recently. I mean, Avicii and Chester Bennington. It's just too much that we have lost to mental health issues. I talk a lot about mental health. In fact, one of the first episodes on the podcast was with a mental health counselor. And I want to get more into that because I find that mental health specific to the music industry is very difficult to find.

Camille: I agree.

Lennon: And it's so important because this industry, especially for artists who are touring, 160 to 200 days a year is absolutely taxing on their mental health.

Camille: I agree completely. I believe so strongly in what you just said in 2003, I went back to school and I got a degree in psychology.

Lennon: Wow.

Camille: I wanted to understand more. I wanted to understand that self destruct mechanism that happens sometimes, or that desire to perform. I think I'd like to step on stage in front of 20,000 people sing and have them judge me. You got to think about that a little bit. You got to think about the psyche, and they have to do it. They have to sing. They have to perform. They have to express their creativity. I commend them for their their fearlessness, and I would protect them with my life. It's very important. I am so pro-artist and will be until I close my eyes for the last time because there is no business without the talent. Sadly they are sometimes the most abused.

Lennon: Absolutely. You look at artists like Justin Bieber and Britney Spears. Justin Bieber just went through like a two-year hiatus where he had kind of a come to Jesus moment and he was struggling with with drugs and alcohol and he came back and now he's back and releasing music again. But I can imagine somebody at his age becoming so successful and so huge so quickly, that the fame and fortune just got to him and he's being pulled in 50 different directions and he's still a kid trying to enjoy his youth and his younger years and that was basically stripped away from him. Because he had people that needed to make some money and were trying to build a career and you're a musician and he's this multi talented artist. I just can't imagine what that does to somebody's mental health.

Camille: It's speaking truth to power. This artist is responsible to report for everyone's paycheck that's around them. So it's really easy to become a yes person. And sometimes no is what they need to hear. Now, could you lose your job? Sure, I've lost my job saying no. But back to what you said earlier. I slept better that night. I've always spoke the truth. Always. I continue to do that. It's important, and when you get an artist that wants to hear the truth, that's what a really good working relationship starts to take place. The fame and the fortune. It's there. It exists. There's power in that person. Why not make that person completely helpless? Because whoever is surrounding that person then inherits the power. It's an unhealthy situation to start, but this is the star mechanism. This is the star machine that the United States of America has absolutely perfected.

I think one of the best managers out there is Irving Azoff. And you want to know why I'm sure of it? It's because his clients love him. His clients trust and love him. And they stay with him and years go by and it's still if you see them and they converge, it's a hug. It's because he was honest with them. It's because he protected them. There are many artists managers out there like that. I'm honored to be counted among them. But we have an obligation to take care of this natural resource that we call talent.

Lennon: And if an artist tells their manager that, 'Hey, this touring schedule is too much. I need a break.' The manager should not come back, 'Oh, come on, you've only got two weeks left.' No, if the artist is saying, 'I need a break.' Give them a damn break. They are at their breaking point. And who knows what can happen from there. They need to take time to themselves, whether that be getting some rest, whether that's seeking a therapist, or spending time with their loved ones, their kids, their families, whatever that may be. And I've seen that quite a few times where the manager just pushes them and pushes them. I want to say it was Avicii. His manager was not taking care of him and just pushed him, and pushed him, and pushed him, and pushed him. His family came out and said that he was always a very fragile person. He was never one for the spotlight. His manager just pushed him and pushed him and continued to push him. Look what happened and ultimately ended up to him ending his life. And we lost one of the most talented electronic artists in the modern history of electronic music.

Camille: And we don't get that chance back. It's not only just the manager. It's the agent in booker. It's the label. There's always a fiscal reason for all this. Sometimes it's the manager looking the artists dead in the eye and saying, 'Look, your lifestyle is so expensive. If you don't continue on this tour, you're not going to be able to afford to live the way you live.' And it's about right sizing. It's about being being logical, but it's tough in this business, Lennon. It's hard for artists to stay to keep things in perspective to right size everything. Again, I don't know how anyone could fall asleep after going into a stadium and then having 65,000 people chanting your name and applauding and screaming and yelling. How do you go asleep after that? How does the adrenaline come out of your body? How do you not believe your press?

Lennon: Then you have people sending you messages on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. You got the press is reviewing you and judging you. You've got local news stations talking about you, and you're getting all these different things coming in. And then in two days or the day after, you got to do it all over again, to get a whole new round of people tweeting and messaging you and press covering you and all that stuff. It's just like a never ending cycle of constantly being judged.

Camille: It's tough life. I always say to myself, if my kid came to me and said, 'Mom, I want to be in the music business.' I don't know what I'd do. As an artist, the business side, I'd be fine. But the artist's side it was like, 'Ooh, that's scary.'

Lennon: It's scary. Coming back a little bit. I want to touch on you managing Madonna because you started managing her right before she kind of really exploded when she released like, 'Like A Virgin' and ‘True Blue.' How did you get into managing her? What's it kind of like and how long did you manage her for?

Camille: It was over 3-4 years. She was living illegally in the music building where my studio was. She knew I was the only person in there that had music industry contacts. So she went on a little campaign and pursued her interactions with me. And I went to see her live and I signed her on the spot. On the spot. I knew.

Lennon: When you stopped developing her, what did she accomplish? How did you kind of pass her on? What happened there?

Camille: She had absolutely nothing. She was living illegally. She didn't even have an apartment. She was living in one of those studios, one of the guys' studios. She was kind of with a band called The Breakfast Club, but they were terrible. Basically, I brought her into the mainstream music business, hooked her up with a killer band, and I'm talking about a killer band, like David Bowie's bass player and Susanna Vega's guitarist and David Frank from 'Sussudio' writer as the keyboard player. I just surrounded her with mainstream music industry, and they reacted.

I've been in the business for 10 years. So I took all of my contacts and I just laid them at her feet. And they went, ha, this is going to be something very special.

Lennon: It absolutely was.

Camille: I was 32 years old. I had a little bit of experience as a manager, I owned a great studio and I had record company experience. So the powers that be in the music business. Well, we're gonna have to give it to one of the good old boys. And so it was embroiled in a lawsuit and craziness.

And the book explains the backstory of that. It gives the facts because there's a lot of urban legends surrounding the whole thing. I spent four years at Columbia and Epic Records, and twice a week I would sit in meetings to pick singles. I honed my ears. I honed my eyes, and when that girl walked into my life, I knew what was there. Now I gotta tell you the music business needed some convincing, but I knew that if they saw her on stage that they would go after her. I knew the weakest link in the Madonna chain was going to be the music of it. She's probably one of the greatest performers to ever exist on the planet. And that's what people get. Tthere's a lot of great inside stories that the book shares that kind of adds flesh onto the bone and people will understand that part of my career. Yeah. And there's the learning aspect of it as well, as I said early on.

Lennon: I've recently been getting into to RuPaul, and they always talk about Madonna on there. They're doing like Madonna looks throughout the decades. They're doing re-enactments of some of her performances and her choreography and they've got to get into character. It's a lot of fun. So when I saw that you worked with Madonna and kind of kick started her career into what she is today. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Camille: I'm glad to hear it. It was a perfect match. And we built a strong foundation for her career early on, and it's managed to the test of time. The truth of the matter is, she's an icon. A lot of people call artists icons right now. Are they really icons? Have they really changed the fabric of our society culturally? She has. The book goes into that too. Icon or superstar? It's turned into kind of a dinner party conversation now. Who's a superstar? Who's an artist? Who's an icon? Is Childish Gambino a superstar or an artist? Is Billie Eilish a superstar or is she an icon? There's so much that we could talk about. We've gone over I apologize. We had an hour I think we're over that hour.

Lennon: Oh, no, no. I go for as long as the conversation goes, unless somebody has a time limit, but I'm totally open to hour-and-a-half whatever it is. This has been great. I've gotten so much information. I'm so glad that we're connected and I hope to continue to stay connected and share resources amongst each other because we both share the same vision for the modern music business and that's to keep musicians and people in the business educated and keep things factual.

How can listeners keep up with you and what you're doing and reach out to you if they have any questions on anything you said?

Camille: Ok. There's my Instagram account @camillebarbonecoaching. You can reach me through there. You can also email office@camillebarbone.com. The website is www.camillebarbone.com. It's all there for you. Pretty much everybody can find me. If you Google search it you'll get Dawn first, but then you get to me.

Lennon: Great. Yeah, so I'll put all of that information in the show notes as well so people can easily access it and reach out if they have any questions. So, I just want to say thank you again so much for your time today and all of the information that you shared.

Camille: My pleasure.