Cassidy Frost, Dedicate Your Life To Music
💭 Thoughts on independent radio, Susan Rogers’ This Is What It Sounds Like, and turning toward the magic of music.
Cassidy Frost writes the newsletter Dedicate Your Life To Music, where they teach independent artists practical skills to build sustainable careers in music. They also lead an incredible private community where they work hands-on with women and queers to build and develop their music careers.
In a past life, they co-founded Public Display PR, the first publicity agency specifically designed to secure top-tier national press for the releases of unsigned artists.
They've recorded and toured in countless projects, most notably fronting Portland indie slow-fi outfit bed., a group whose records received critical acclaim in Noisey, NPR's All Songs Considered, & DIY.
Frost has also worked as an A&R, artist manager, and composer, licensing original works to places like Netflix and Lucasfilm. They speak at conferences and colleges around the US and serve on the community advisory board for Seattle's KEXP.
🎯 Current focus
My priority is connecting with women and queers through music. Any time I can get in a room with my people and play music together is time well spent.
I’m very proud of the work my private community is doing. We just launched our Branding Challenge for the month of January. And I’m even more excited about the subsequent career development exercises we have coming up for later in the year.
The first exercises mostly focus on defining your artist archetype. I can’t wait to see the written responses my readers and the members of my community come up with as they trickle in throughout the week.
My favorite book right now is This Is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers, the neuroscientist and producer of Prince’s Purple Rain. In the book she looks at the science of how we listen and how the different elements of music interact with our brains’ reward center. It essentially makes a scientific case against the idea of a musical hierarchy, or that some music is better than other music, which I think is important. It’s actually a pretty subversive idea because so much of how we think about what music is good, serious, worthy of acclaim has come down to the opinions and tastes of white men, who historically have been the most powerful players in the world of music.
✨ Turning toward the magic of your music
I love helping artists ground into what’s real. Giving up on trying to summon self-confidence and bravado and turning toward the magic of your music and what you really have to offer the world. Turning away from social media in favor of building a real live draw in your geographic region that can support your life.
💗 Being generous with your experiences and passions
I look up to Jeff Tweedy as a songwriter and as a parent. I admire the life of music he’s built around his family and how he’s been so generous with his experiences and passion in his work. I especially like his book on songwriting, How To Write One Song. He makes the process of making music accessible, as it should be. We all have poetry inside us and all of it is important.
📻 Independent radio
My favorite way to consume content these days is independent radio. Shout out to KEXP in Seattle, which you can listen to via the KEXP app anywhere in the world!
I send out a semi-regular A&R newsletter to my music industry friends. This last one included a UK post-punk artist named Hang Linton, who recently released the song “Wishbones”, one of my favorite songs of last year. I think he’s brilliant.
Everyone talks about this but I love what King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard does with merch. Having a steady stream of new hilarious and outrageous t-shirts for their fans is such a win/win/win. It means more opportunities to make a sale, more opportunities for individual fans to wear the shirts (especially as they collect several). It strengthens their brand visibility & community and it gives them ever more opportunities to expand the rich and delightful visual canon of their music. No notes.
Follow Cassidy on Instagram & Linkedin and check out their Substack here.
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