Part of me is still amazed that I am a full-time writer today, because that was never part of the original plan. For most of my life, my experience with music was as a performer; I was classically trained in piano for 12 years, and initially intended on studying at a conservatory full-time. I also happened to be a huge math nerd growing up, and ultimately decided to pursue a liberal-arts education majoring in statistics while minoring in music, immersing myself in the best of both worlds.

I’ve been thinking about the intersection of music and math for years, and initially applied those interests to a mix of academic and industry-facing projects in college, including internships at Ticketmaster and Interscope Records and a research project on digital-music innovation at Harvard Business School.

My first writing opportunity was completely unexpected: When I was a junior in fall 2015, my friend persuaded me to check out my college’s Media & Advertising Career Fair with only 30 minutes remaining. I was running around the fair trying to meet everyone, and ended up stopping by the Forbes table because they were displaying their Celebrity 100 issue with Katy Perry on the cover. The man staffing the table ended up giving me my first freelance gig: we struck up a conversation about music and tech, and he mentioned that he was looking for more contributors to write about music streaming and startups for Forbes’ website. I knew nothing about freelance journalism at the time, but took up the opportunity just to see what would happen. I ended up falling in love with the process of writing, and of applying a data-driven perspective to communicating trends and patterns in an industry like music that was so dear to my heart on a creative level as well. The rest is history!

I also never saw myself as a frequent moderator or public speaker—I am a stereotypical introvert in every way—but the opportunities also came organically as conference organizers were looking for more specialists to speak on the topic of music, tech and innovation. My first-ever moderation opportunity was a panel at the 2016 Sonar Festival in Barcelona about the value of startup accelerators for music and other creative fields. At large, people have mixed feelings about the efficacy of conferences, but I think they are so important because they enable me to do my job better: building face-to-face relationships with my target market (and potential sources), as well as taking the pulse on people’s opinions and emotions on the latest industry trends.

I think more independent artists should be given the opportunity to weigh in on music-industry news and trends, especially beyond the major-label bubble. Major-label artists might bring in the majority of recorded-music revenue, but they account for a minority of musicians in the world trying to make it today. The economic realities of an independent or emerging artist in Asia, Africa, South America or Australia are so different from that of a Billboard chart-topper in Los Angeles, and I wish that that discrepancy were examined a bit more, through the lens of the artists themselves.

I also think more coverage should treat the “music industry” not as a standalone, siloed bubble, but rather as a permeable ecosystem that intersects with literally all other aspects of culture, including film, gaming, fashion and food. Events like Marshmello’s recent set in Fortnite, and the significant impact of the film Bohemian Rhapsody on streaming consumption for Queen’s discography, demonstrate music’s malleable impact across multiple cultural environments, and I look forward to seeing more articles dive into those complex relationships.

Yes! So glad you figured this out. As I was writing more about the music industry and talking more with artists about how they’re approaching growing careers and engaging their fans, I realized that traditional practices in the freelance journalism industry are actually quite backwards compared to music, for a number of reasons:

1. As a freelance writer, unless you go out of your way to set up your own system on Patreon or PayPal, there’s no way for readers who like your work to contribute financial support to you directly. Quite literally the opposite of direct-to-fan.

2. Many freelance contracts have clauses that give publications the rights to your work in perpetuity—a massive red flag for any independent creator building a career off of their intellectual property. (I think this practice is slowly changing, thanks in part to media resource groups like Study Hall and the rise of journalists optioning film rights for their articles to Hollywood studios).

3. Typical media-industry practices prioritize the brand of a publication over that of the individual writer. For instance, if an article cites this recent writeup from the New York Times, it will most likely cite the Times and not the two reporters. This is not “bad” per se but it is definitely a disadvantage to freelance writers trying to build their own brands.

In short, I’ve been putting a lot of effort this year into building out a freelance writing career that addresses all of these issues—i.e. that is truly direct-to-fan (or in this case “direct-to-reader”), that gives me ownership over the majority of my work and that allows me to cultivate my own audience that remains robust independent of any third-party brand. These are indeed priorities that a growing number of independent musicians share as well.

1. The ongoing mega-concentration of artist-development resources in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, at the expense of building more robust A&R infrastructure in the smaller, regional communities that need it most. City governments from the likes of New Orleans have already spoken out about how they struggle to capture the true value of their local artists’ successes back home, because those artists end up choosing to sign with labels and agencies in L.A.

2. Artists using bots, fake accounts and/or shady paid marketing to pump up their streaming and follower metrics, in the hopes of getting noticed or getting a deal. I understand the pressure to deliver on metrics in a streaming-first world, but this approach ultimately hurts everyone involved— artists lose people’s trust, business partners make bad decisions and media partners end up giving credibility where it isn’t due while leaving those who truly put in the hard work behind.

3. The assumption that the Western music industry is the “default” model for the rest of the world. Most of the billions of people living elsewhere in the world have a vastly different experience with music than what the U.S. and Europe are used to; if the music industry is going to become truly global, I think we will need to stop centering Western markets as the “default” and celebrate the triumphs of different kinds of artists and fandoms from around the world, even if those triumphs are not “our own.” Part of me is also wary about the rhetoric of trying to get every market in the world to convert to a monthly paid streaming subscription, without more open discussion about the nuances of local music economies and the approach of strengthening what already works, rather than imposing an otherwise foreign business model.