This week on the podcast, I caught up with Spencer Crandall and his manager Jeff Cherry. As an independent artist, Spencer has 1.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, over 1 million followers on TikTok and over 250 thousand followers on Instagram. His new album Wilderness is out now. We talk about how to build a fanbase on social media, the perks of being independent and so much for more. Click here to listen to the full episode and see a couple highlights from our conversation below. TNB - Spencer, I know how much of a Justin Timberlake fan you are. When he played the CMA Awards with Chris Stapleton, was that a massive moment for you?Spencer - I think Jeff and I talk about that almost once a week. It was such a pivotal moment. It really impacted our lives because we were like "That's the coolest thing ever". We looked around and were convinced somebody was going to jump on that sound. We were like that "That's what we actually listen to, it's authentic to us, and it's not being done in the market place". I think we were nervous to commit to it at first, but this new album really dives into that Justin Timberlake meets country music sound.TNB - Jeff, how do describe your position with Spencer?Jeff - On the social and marketing front, that's really Spencer. He gets the internet. He watches and observes and then he is very fast to go do something about it. I don't get in the way, because it works. I think my strength is looking at the massive following Spencer has built and thinking about how to maximize it. For example TikTok is such a weird thing because people basically just watch what's popular on a given day. I want to be sure that fans who find him on TikTok have a way to be engaged outside of the app, whether that's texting or email, or something else. We are very data driven. Instead of getting in a van for 15 hours and seeing if anybody is going to show up in Michigan, we would rather go live and ask people where they are. And you see, "oh, there are a hundred people in Ohio, let's go there". At the end of the day though my job is all about trying to understand what's in Spencer's head and helping him bring it to life.Spencer - Jeff is such a valuable asset. I am a massive dreamer and Jeff is amazing at breaking everything down to make it feel tangible.
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