From being a trio to being a duo, to seeking a record deal and not getting it, and then almost quitting altogether, Prince Ivan has been through the fire over these last two years. Their first full length album, The Preface, marks the completion of that phase of their story and the beginning of a fresh new chapter in the Chronicles of Prince Ivan.
With noticeable helpings of pop, R&B, hip-hop and even EDM flavor, the new songs are a reflection of what Prince Ivan has learned so far about life and music as well as a prophetic springboard into the future world they hope to create. A SpectraCulture world—a world where light drives out darkness, where good overcomes evil…a world where love wins.
Prince Ivan is a songwriting, production and performing duo consisting of Brydon Brett and Aaron Space, plus whoever else they choose to work with. To the average observer Prince Ivan is, as they like to put it,
…just two nice guys who happen to make dope music.
Upon further analysis, their music and mission go much deeper.
In this interview spotlight I chat with Prince Ivan about the latest project, technology, 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.)
I’m from Texas and Aaron is from Maryland originally, but we both live and work from Branson, MO. We call our musical output, SpectraPop. It’s a Top 40 fusion of pop, R&B, hip hop, urban, EDM and even gospel. It’s cross generational and cross GENRE-ational. That is our goal—to build bridges and create music that crosses musical and cultural boundary lines. We keep our content appropriate for all ages because we think music should be enjoyed by everyone and we don’t want to exclude anyone because we include suggestive or profane content in our music. So keeping it clean and fresh without being cheesy or hokey is a big part of our musical focus.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
We believe that artists have great power to influence the minds, hearts, actions, the culture and ultimately the laws of society. We take that power and responsibility seriously. So, at the end of the day, we do music because we want to impact culture positively. But we also do it because it’s fun! We love it. We love the creative process and we love connecting with people when we perform live. There’s nothing quite like knowing your music is touching people around the globe. We love what we do and we feel a lot of purpose in it every day.
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
This release is our first release as a duo. We were a trio for about four years and had released an EP and three singles. But then we made a change to being a duo in January 2018 and it took us almost two years to refigure out who we are. So, this is a brand new Prince Ivan and a brand new sound. We also collaborated with amazing co-writers, including Grammy Award-winning writer, Carlos Battey. We worked a lot in LA on this project and overall just put together a new team to make it all happen. It’s definitely just the beginning of the Prince Ivan journey. That’s why we called it The Preface. But it’s also a big bold move for us into the realm of modern Top 40 music. So, we’re excited to see what rooms and conversations this album gets us into. It’s already starting to take off!
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
The biggest challenge we faced was finding the right writing, production, mixing and mastering team to make the music as high quality as what’s on radio today. That took a long time. Once we accomplished that, it’s now all about marketing and promotion, which is a huge world. And since we’re self-managed it all just takes a little longer than it would with management. But we’re in this for the long haul. Building brick by brick and maintaining creative control of our music and our business is important to us. So we’re willing to build more slowly because we believe it will pay off in the long run.
Technology has helped tremendously! BUT, at the end of the day, technology and social media are just channels and tools to use. It comes down to the quality of your music, your show, your merch, your branding and your story. If those things aren’t tight, then the channels don’t really matter that much. You gotta have something worth talking about.
What was the last song you listened to?
For me, the last song I listened to was the Star-Spangled Banner lol! We’re working on an arrangement of it for a professional sports team, so that’s currently top of mind. Not quite the most exciting thing, huh?!
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Definitely MP3s for ease and digital delivery. Streaming is a game-changer. But we still print physical CDs to sell at live shows because our fans love having it almost as a collector’s item. Should we do vinyl? I think we’re gonna try a limited run of vinyl later this year, but we’ll see.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
We honestly get better results on Apple Music and we’re both Apple guys, but we’re JUST getting started on Spotify and intend to build it massively over the next 2-3 years. BUT, we don’t ignore Apple Music or the other streaming services either. With streaming you have to have multiple streams and we find that Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google Play and Pandora actually make us money, so we try to nurture those ones. But we try to be everywhere—Soundcloud, Reverbnation, etc.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
By far our website. Go to www.princeivan.com and you can sign up for an exclusive video series that takes you behind the scenes of our album creation process, plus you’ll get an email-only deal on the album and merch. So, that is our main focus, but beyond that, Instagram, Spotify and YouTube are great places to connect with us and our music. We haven’t started the TikTok game yet, but we’re thinking we’re gonna have to. Ahhh!! There’s so much to do, but it’s such a cool time because you can connect with fans and be discovered in so many ways.
Anything else before we sign off?
We’re excited that one of our songs just got picked up for film placement and we were selected from over 3000 artists to participate in Springboard West Festival in San Diego recently. Good things are happening and we’re excited to keep the momentum going. We’ll be releasing more singles and doing tour dates all year long. We’re in the game and we’re not stopping, so we’d love to invite anyone reading this who connects with our music and vision to join the journey. It’s gonna be a fun ride!
