Penfriend's Letterbox
Penfriend's Letterbox
Ep45: Mary Spender on finding a smarter route to a full-time music career and building a huge fanbase on YouTube
0:00
-48:23

Ep45: Mary Spender on finding a smarter route to a full-time music career and building a huge fanbase on YouTube

Visit the deluxe show notes page: http://penfriend.rocks/mary

Read the text version: http://penfriend.rocks/mary-ts

.

Thanks for listening!

.

About my guest: combining her sultry voice and electric guitar to create rock songs infused with blues and soul, Mary Spender’s songwriting showcases her virtuosic style of guitar playing as well as her wide vocal range. Mary has amassed over 46 million hits on her YouTube channel, with nearly half a million subscribers watching her weekly videos, predominantly targeted towards guitarists and singer/songwriters.

.

She also offers online courses in Ableton Live (with producer Rachel K Collier) and Fingerstyle Guitar for Beginners on her website maryspender.com.

.

In this episode, we discuss finding a smarter way to grow your audience as a musician – opting out of the traditional singer-songwriter slog to make a full-time job of being a guitar nerd, what it takes to go from zero to half a million YouTube subscribers, how finishing John Mayer’s song for him led to a surprise package in the post and negative online comments – finding empathy for those who love to hate you on the internet.

.

About your host: I'm Laura Kidd, a music producer and solo artist releasing music as Penfriend. Come and grab two free songs plus letters about art and music from http://penfriend.rocks/hello.

.

Here's the direct link for my YouTube video about slaying your inner critic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3RQWj88Jck&t=1s

.

AND my new album “Exotic Monsters” is out now: http://penfriend.rocks/exoticmonsters

.

Recommended listening after this: Ep44: Ken Stringfellow (The Posies / R.E.M. / Big Star) on saying "yes" and Ep11: Skating Polly on the importance of dedication


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

0 Comments
Penfriend's Letterbox
Penfriend's Letterbox
I'm Laura Kidd, an independent music producer, songwriter and visual artist based in Nottingham, UK, making music as Penfriend (formerly She Makes War and Obey Robots).
My mission is to encourage creativity in others by sharing my artistic process, plus thoughts on the philosophy of creativity.
In my first podcasting era 2019-2021 I interviewed 50 of my favourite artists and comedians for my "Attention Engineer" episodes. I asked nosey questions about creativity, grit and determination and received some surprising answers...
In 2024 I missed podcasting so much I decided to start sharing here in a different way. Subscribe to join me for the next part of this journey!