We were lucky to catch up with Andrew Simmons recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrew, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

I’m seeing a rise of the middle class in the music industry! With the ability for artists, producers, and all kinds of music creators to do things like self-release to major platforms, create content that reaches millions, and not have to rely on the typical “get signed to a label” route in order to have a career in music!

There are a couple really great examples of this, most notably being the artist Nic D who makes primarily pop/hiphop leaning music and has (at time of writing this) over 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. He has a small team of a handful of people that help him run everything from music production, merch, and content creation and he is making a killer living not having to tour or rely on traditional major label payouts to live. He also owns all of his music making him more nimble to adjust to the ever changing industry a lot faster than that at the “top” of the industry.

Another great example is my friend Matthew Parker. He’s a producer/artist who makes EDM/Pop adjacent music, but also producers for a small handful of other friends across the world. He currently has roughly 150k monthly listeners on Spotify and has a super solid fanbase that religiously streams his music! He’s able to make a solid living just creating music and making his ideas come to life, which I know a ton of people would LOVE to do in their lifetime!

You don’t have to be at the top to win. You can manage your expectations and come out making a great living of $60-90,000 a year in music and just live the life you want to live in freedom!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

For those that may not know me, I’m Andrew Simmons aka drû. I’m a Music Producer and Mix Engineer from Upstate South Carolina and I’ve been making a living with this as my main job for the past handful of years!

I love taking artists and bands and helping them realize their full vision for their art. It’s really hard sometimes to put into words the things you’d like to sound like or the direction you’d like to go, and I pride myself in my ability to come alongside you in your journey and help you find that direction and grow towards creating the EXACT art you’d like to hear be your own regardless of the genre you are looking at diving into!

I also host a podcast called the Home Studio Hangout podcast where I talk to producers across the world about their success, failures, and how to grow in this ever-changing industry in order to turn this into a full time job! We have over 100+ episodes and are always bringing new incredible guests as well as talking about things that happen in the industry or may impact the industry!

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The expansive world of online learning is something I wish I knew existed as I was coming up. Having to fully learn by trial and error can be exhausting sometimes, and I wish I could have compressed some of that time by being able to watch someone at a high level work! Luckily in today’s world we have things like Youtube channels dedicated to it, mix with masters, or nail the mix all talking about different aspects of music production and high level mix techniques!

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I think that NFT’s as they exist right now aren’t the way forward. I think the technology of being able to see the history of ownership of digital goods is huge and can be used for good eventually, however I think as they stand right now they have a lot of work to do to get it to clear out the scammers, create better laws/rules around them, and make sure that the end result for the buyer is ultimately worth it. To me right now it’s not ready to be in the forefront of tech like people are making it out to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.musicbydru.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/musicbydru
• Twitter: twitter.com/musicbydru
• Youtube: youtube.com/@musicbydru
• Other: Check out my podcast Home Studio Hangout at www.homestudiohangout.com

Image Credits
photos (mostly) taken by Kevin Dejong https://www.instagram.com/itssefu/?hl=en