Making a Scene Presents

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Billy Branch Billy Branch is one of the most respected living ambassadors of Chicago blues: an Emmy Award winner, three-time Grammy Award nominee, retired Grammy governor, Blues Hall of Fame inductee, educator, actor, narrator, humanitarian, and master harmonica player whose career has carried the sound of the blues around the world. http://www.makingascen...

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Billy Price Billy Price is a Blues Music Award-winning soul-blues vocalist whose powerful voice, deep musical roots, and decades-long career have made him one of the most respected singers in contemporary blues and soul music. Known for his commanding stage presence and emotionally rich vocal delivery, Price has built a career defined by authent...

Making a Scene Presents - Your Distributor Is Becoming Your Storefront: Private Equity, Consolidation, and the Fight for the Independent Artist’s Customer For many independent artists, choosing a music distributor feels like choosing a mailbox. You upload the song, type in the title, attach the artwork, enter enough names and numbers to make your eyes glaze over, and then wait for the music to app...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Clark Paterson Clark Paterson does not write songs from a safe distance. He writes them from the middle of the wreckage: hospital rooms, court dates, bar shifts at Robert’s Western World, old farmhouses mid-restoration, garages cluttered with vintage car parts, and the strange emotional territory between heartbreak, survival, and redemption. http://www.mak...

Making a Scene Presents - Build a Content Strategy That Brings Fans Home Every independent artist has heard the same advice. Post more. Make more videos. Be consistent. Feed the algorithm. Dance near the chorus. Point at floating words. Pretend your drummer did something shocking in the studio. Some of that may help people discover you. None of it automatically gives you a music business. A social...

Making a Scene Presents - Your Fans Are Not Portable Just Because Your Songs Are Your Fans Are Not Portable Just Because Your Songs Are On July 22, 2026, SoundCloud announced that it had acquired the remaining assets of Nina Protocol, an independent music platform built around direct artist-to-fan sales, editorial discovery, and blockchain-based ownership tools. The acquisition included Nina’s edi...

Making a Scene Presents - The AI Copyright Fight Will Be Won by Whoever Has the Best Records Sony’s New Lawsuit Comes With a Very Long Song List Sony Music Entertainment filed another federal lawsuit against AI music company Udio on July 20, 2026. This time, Sony’s complaint concerns more than 30,000 sound recordings that it claims were copied and used in connection with Udio’s generative AI model...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Leeann Atherton Leeann Atherton is a country, gospel, and blues singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas, with a voice shaped by the South, the road, and a lifetime of hard-earned musical instinct. Her sound carries the grit of the blues, the warmth of gospel, and the storytelling heart of country music, delivered with the kind of honesty that cannot be fa...

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview With Paul Sherry Paul Sherry is an award-winning Irish guitarist, singer, songwriter, session musician, touring artist, and educator whose music bridges blues-rock tradition with modern rock depth. Best known to many listeners as the lead guitarist with the award-winning Gráinne Duffy Band, Sherry has also carved out his own identity as a solo artist...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Silver Summer Silver Summer makes music for the neon hours: the space between last call and sunrise, between memory and possibility, between heartbreak and the reckless feeling that something beautiful might still happen before morning. Blending 1970s glam, disco, and punk with a shimmering wash of 1980s synths, the Mankato, Minnesota band creates a sound...

Making a Scene Presents - What Sound Actually Is: The Science Every Musician Should Understand Before the Microphone, Something Has to Move Every recording begins with movement. Before the microphone, the preamp, the audio interface, the computer, the waveform, the compressor, and the plugin with the picture of a rusty spaceship, something must vibrate. A singer pushes air from the lungs past the...

Making a Scene Presents - The New Music Search Engine Is a Conversation The Search Box Just Learned How to Talk Picture a music fan driving home late at night. The road is empty, the dashboard is glowing, and the fan wants to hear something new. In the old days, this person might search for “blues rock,” open a playlist with a picture of a guitar on the cover, and begin skipping through songs that...

Making a Scene Presents - AI Training Royalties Are Coming—But Will Indie Artists Get Paid? Artificial intelligence companies have spent the past few years treating music like an unattended buffet. Recordings, lyrics, artwork, voices, performances, and entire creative styles have been pulled into giant data collections. Artists were often left wondering whether their work had been used, who used i...

Making a Scene Presents - The Music Industry Does Not Have a Fan Problem. It Has a Customer-Ownership Problem An independent artist sits in front of a laptop, staring at numbers that should feel exciting. The new single has passed 100,000 streams. A video has collected thousands of views. The band’s social pages have picked up followers from several countries. Last month’s show sold well, and the...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Todd Mack For more than 40 years, singer-songwriter, producer, and community-builder Todd Mack has followed the road less traveled, creating a life in music that has taken him across continents, cultures, and unexpected stages. His songs have carried him far beyond the usual club and theater circuit, with performances at the famed Hong Kong Foreign Corresp...

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Ciarán Hodgins Ciarán Hodgins is an emerging Irish blues and rock artist from the northwest of Ireland, fronting The Ciarán Hodgins Band, a high-energy rock and blues power trio based in Ballyshannon, County Donegal. Rooted in the electric tradition of blues-rock, the band brings together raw guitar fire, driving rhythm, and a deep respect for t...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with The Customers Customers are a guitar-driven rock band originally formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1995 by songwriter and vocalist Ryan Sexton. The group’s story began when a demo of Sexton’s songs made its way to Elliot Roberts, Neil Young’s longtime manager, who was then helping launch Young’s label, Vapor Records. Roberts heard promise in the songs...

Making a Scene Presents - Arrangement Before Mixing: Fix It in the Song, Not the Plugin Welcome to the Plugin Pileup You press Play. The drums sound powerful. The bass sounds huge. The guitars und like a choir descending from the heavens with excellent credit. There is only one small problem. You cannot hear the song. The lead vocal is buried. The bass and kick drum are wrestling in a dark basemen...

Making a Scene Presents - How AI Can Turn One Song Into a 30-Day Marketing Plan Your Song Is More Than One Release-Day Post Independent artists are often told that they need more content. More videos. More posts. More stories. More emails. More reels. More reasons to dance in front of a phone while pointing at words floating over their heads. The pressure never stops. The problem is not that artis...

Making a Scene Presents - Fan Data Is the New Currency of the Music Industry—and Why Are Artists Still Broke The Gold Rush Nobody Told the Artist About Every time a fan streams a song, skips a song, saves an album, watches a video, buys a ticket, clicks an advertisement, follows an artist, visits a website, or abandons a shopping cart, something valuable is created. Data. That data may reveal wher...

Making a Scene Presents - The Breakthrough Myth Has a Cash-Flow Problem A viral moment can make an artist look successful. A durable mix of shows, merch, direct sales, publishing, licensing, fan support, and useful technology can help an artist stay successful. Week One of The Artist-Owned Middle Class replaces the lottery-ticket version of the music business with a system working artists can actu...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Brigitte Purdy Brigitte Rios Purdy is a Los Angeles-born singer and songwriter whose voice carries the warmth of classic soul, the emotional depth of the blues, and the smooth elegance of R&B. From an early age, Purdy understood that singing was more than simply having a gifted voice. For her, music became a way to translate inner feeling into sound, turni...

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Stone James of Hollis Dorian Hollis Dorian is an award-winning country singer-songwriter whose music blends country roots with rock and pop energy. His sound is built on strong hooks, honest storytelling, and a modern country edge that reflects the wide range of influences that shaped him. The title track from his debut EP, Country By Birthright...

Making a Scene Presents - Using AI Tools to Improve Your Mix Without Letting AI Take Over The New Home Studio Problem The home studio has changed everything for the independent artist. That little room in the house, the spare bedroom, the basement corner, the treated garage, or the desk with a laptop and a pair of headphones is no longer just a demo space. It is where songs are written, arranged,...

Making a Scene Presents - How To Use AI To Write Better Email Subject Lines For Fans The First Line Is The Front Door Every indie artist knows the feeling. You have a show coming up, a new single dropping, a fresh batch of shirts on the merch table, or a membership offer you finally got the nerve to launch. You write the email. You care about the email. You know the people on that list are not str...