In this interview spotlight, I chat with Kady Rain about her latest release, motivations, challenges and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
Born and raised in Austin, TX! Around these parts they refer to us as Unicorns because we’re pretty rare. 🙂
My music has been described as “pure sunshine with a beat” and I love that! With this batch of songs we, Ben Bazzrea (my co-writer and the Han Solo to my Princess Leia) and myself, wanted to surprise the listener and create music that was unexpected. We had been working in EDM for a while before this and having written around 400 songs together we just got to the point where we were tired of knowing everything about a song after the first :10 seconds and EDM is a very predictable genre.
Hopefully, my music is upbeat, sunny, and unexpected. 🙂
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?
We’re in the age of the super producer, everyone is doing the producer-as-the-artist thing, just like Calvin Harris or Alison Wonderland. With YouTube, Lynda.com, and practically every other educational platform on the internet, someone can sit in their bedroom and learn about production endlessly. This has bred a whole host of young, exceptionally talented producers who are able to hone their craft for practically no money, at home, all the while eating hot dogs and petting cute cats. Being about ten years too late to grow up with all of those resources, I can’t produce to save my life and Ben grew up thinking he would be an indie-rock guitar god. So, without being able to produce endless EDM bangerz we found ourselves writing songs. It wasn’t necessarily a business decision or something we actively thought about, it just happened.
What has motivated us to work harder and simultaneously led us down this path is the perceived “death of songwriting” that we’re currently experiencing. Because the bar is so high for producers right now, most producers focus on sound-design and production obsessively, which makes sense, and a lot of modern melody writers consider themselves “top liners.” Usually someone will call themselves a top liner when they write over an already produced track. So this means less people are focusing on harmonically-rich environments, otherwise known as a great arrangement/well written song, because they’re either honing their ability to make the track sound good, or they’re writing over the track as it is, without the ability to make changes. That being said, I’m not trying to fault anyone, because I know how hard a lot of these producers and top liners work, it’s just a flaw we’ve noticed within the system.
How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?
It Wasn’t the Roses feels like the first release that is truly Kady Rain standing on our own, outside the shadow of any other artist. Working in pop music lands us an endless stream of comparisons to everyone from Madonna to Katy Perry, and I love it, it’s super flattering, but “It Wasn’t the Roses” feels like it’s a Kady Rain song, and not a Kady Rain song through the lens of another artist.
Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)?
Ben and I have been able to cultivate a decent audience on Spotify and Soundcloud for practically no money and that is not something that was possible previously. That being said, we’re living in a constant state of content overload and more music is being released than ever before, which makes it even harder to stand out. Also, the ability to collaborate over the internet is nothing short of a miracle. We’ve worked with producers in Venezuela, Australia, Russia, and the UK through the magic of Soundcloud. But, the problem is that now everyone can collaborate over the internet and production/songwriting teams are popping up all over the place. For every team of hyper-focused writers and producers the bar gets that much higher. The listener doesn’t care how many writers and producers a track has, so even if you “aren’t competing with them,” you are.
Spotify has been great, with the indie sector seeing the largest growth in revenue last year. But labels are working harder than every to obscure their presence in the early stages of an artists career (looking at you Khalid) and Spotify is making that easier than ever. Instead of having to do a radio campaign that gives the labels presence away, you can just “magically” obtain a few key placements in large Spotify playlists and people can still sort-of believe that it was all just fate. My point is that these artists make it look effortless and for the rest of us, we’re not buying it.
Ben and I stumbled onto one of the darker sides of Spotify when trying to distribute our songs. Recently there have been a bunch of “Spotify-only” record labels popping up all over the place but especially in the EDM community, where streaming is HUGE. It’s basically 1-3 people working out of someone’s bedroom doing Spotify playlist pitching to various degrees of success. We encountered several of these labels offering artists TERRIBLE deals and people are taking them without even looking at the contract. We approached several labels like this and, without getting too in the weeds about contract law, the contracts were basically like this, “Give us 70% of the any revenue that the song generates and an additional 30% of the publishing, and we can charge you for literally anything we want against your royalties without having to provide any proof of these costs or have your approval, and you can’t audit us or ask any questions + 30 other terrible provisions.” Why would an artist take this agreement you ask? Well, because these labels are getting artists 500k to a million plays per release, and THAT IS AWESOME and as an artist you SHOULD expect to make some money from that. But then the artist starts to ask questions about when the streaming royalties are coming in and the label tells them how much the single cover costs, and this, and that, and then, magically, no one makes A SINGLE DOLLAR because the label’s expenses were just too high. It’s not a new story in the music industry, but it’s still sad every time you hear it. Of course you can argue that the exposure is worth it, and some people do enter and emerge from this environment with a fanbase and a way to make money, but not everyone, and just because there is some benefit doesn’t mean it’s worth it or fair. And maybe the really label does have a lot of expenses, but at some point, either you have to accept that if the label can’t make any money ANY release then they must be really bad at being a label… or there’s something else going on.
Where can we follow you online and hear more music?
WHALE! We are going to be releasing a lot more music and content in general this year and I’m so excited! You can keep up with me in any of the following places:
kadyrain.com
facebook.com/kadyrainmusic/
soundcloud.com/kadyrain
www.instagram.com/kadyrain/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3YF3JuP8XYLsZHsUFYC1Gg?si=bWuJxYHQTQ6xpfce2Rj9Pw
https://www.youtube.com/user/kadyrain
Anything else before we sign off?
Yes! First! I’d like to thank all of the people who helped me create It Wasn’t The Roses because their names don’t get said as often as they should, and they’re definitely the unsung heroes! Charlie Kramsky recorded my vocals at Austin Signal with Ed Boyer overseeing vocal production/general magic. Ben and I wrote the song together and worked with Yuri Zwadiuk (who produced, mixed, and mastered IWTR) to create a song that harkens back to a time when dance music meant something different. They all worked very hard alongside Ben and I to make this song what it is and we’re very honored to be working with such talented individuals.
Then we have the folks on the business side of things: Our manager, Louie Carr at Own Path Media Group, deserves a shout out! He has been in the trenches going to bat for us everyday and pushing the Kady Rain train (say that five times fast!) forward tirelessly and we really appreciate all of the effort he has put in. He is a great friend and an even better manager! John Guertin at CleaRights and John Cook at Work Pants Records have been helping us navigate contracts and provide general wisdom. Contracts and negotiating contracts are WAAAAAY too adult for me to handle but they both wake up every day and look forward to doing exactly that. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re both exceptional at it, which deserves some recognition!
Finally, I’d like to thank all of our fans who’ve been SO supportive! From the people at our first shows to the people who are just now hearing about us, this journey has been incredible and the positive response has been so overwhelming! Before there’s any money involved in the music all you really have are the people who believe in you. So, from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU SO MUCH! 🙂
