We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Darren Paltrowitz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Darren below.
Darren, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
I started early, since I began interning and writing local publications when I was in high school. But the mistake was quitting when a few publications stiffed me on invoices around the same time. And unfortunately that sort of thing happened a few more times over the years, which I would learn is normal for the freelance and creative worlds.
After a few start-and-stop runs, I really got back into writing about 10 years ago, evolved more into podcasting in 2018, further evolving into producing more audio-visual content in 2020. The “being my own publication” happened in late 2022.
I would probably be further ahead in certain aspects had I never quit or taken hiatuses. Then again, seeing how everything progressed, I would have had to evolve with the times, since social media, podcasting, YouTube, Zoom and AI are all examples of things that were not around when I first started writing. But hindsight is 20/20. I am now where I am supposed to be.
Darren, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I started off writing album reviews and taping interviews for a mix of websites and New York publications when I was in high school. Around the same time I was also interning and doing what I could do to work with artists. That continued through college, and my first full-time job after graduating from Hofstra was in artist management.
For the “Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz,” I write articles, tape and edit interviews, and so forth, which then air regularly via 150+ TV stations and OTT carriers and also go out as podcasts. Some of my recent guests include Kat Graham, Steve Coogan, Alison Brie, Michael Cera, Emma Roberts, Sam Richardson, Maya Erskine, Ice-T, Tom Morello, Johnny Knoxville, JB Smoove, Murr from “Impractical Jokers,” Adele Parks MBE, Kat Timpf, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
On the artist management end, I still consult and help out some folks when time permits. Sometimes the problems I work on are logistical, other times research-oriented, other times strategy-centric. I may or may not have recently ghostwritten a speech for an award-winning composer.
All of that aside, my 3rd book came out last year, “DLR Book: How David Lee Roth Changed The World.” Writing that book tied in with my work as a licensed Private Investigator and indirectly led to me becoming a librarian.
I really don’t have an easy answer when someone says “What do you do?” — but that is entirely in line with my long-term goals. From week to week, it varies as to how much investigating I am doing versus creative work, librarian work, or entertainment-related consulting work. Every week is different, and I enjoy that.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Of all the social media networks, I have had the most success with YouTube. I initially grew an audience by posting regularly, promoting that content on other social media, and responding to comments. But I more than doubled my subscriber base last year, within months, by starting to create YouTube Shorts. That then led me to getting invited into an online “Creator Community” and “Bootcamp” run by YouTube, which then taught me more to help grow my audience. There is PLENTY more to learn, though.
My best free advice I can give is that you need to spend more time on the metadata (e.g. title, tags, description) for your videos on YouTube. If it is not suitable to the algorithm and the first few people who click on it don’t watch much of it, then don’t expect a lot of people to have the video recommended to them. Should that happen, then you really need to spend time promoting your content to the people you think it is meant for. Don’t be afraid to go niche on YouTube.
Just as entirely important, I would argue is posting YouTube Shorts to your account. Even if it is the same content as your regular YouTube videos. YouTube Shorts reach a different audience than the regular longer-form videos posted to YouTube, so it is another way to monetize — if you meet monetization requirements — and gain subscribers.
Oh, and one more thing: Using or repurposing other people’s content on YouTube as a way to grow your audience is really playing the short game. It may initially grow your subscriber numbers and make your channel some revenue, but it could also potentially lead to copyright strikes — three of those from YouTube in a short time period and your channel may be permanently suspended — or demonetized.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Artists and creatives need to support other artists and creatives. Art is not a competition. There is room for many, many people — not “everyone,” of course — to make a living and succeed. In other words, someone buying your friend’s book, movie or album doesn’t mean that money was taken out of your pocket.
Artists and creatives also need to learn to take things a little less personally. If you didn’t get “the job” or “the deal” or whatever you were chasing and someone else did, it may have been because you were not the right fit. But as the expression goes: every pot has a lid. And sometimes you have to go outside the traditional system and make your own scene.
Also, the majority of people don’t seem to take art or entertainment as anything more than “fun.” They don’t necessarily care who wrote the song, who directed the film, who actually wrote the joke, and so forth. I personally care about all of that, but it is a small percentage of people that do. So when you are creating, know that the majority of people are likely receiving that art or content at face-value and it is a tiny percentage of people who really care about — pardon the expression — how the sausage was made. And you can succeed with both of those sorts of followers in your fanbase.
One more thing, there really are no rules anymore. The largest marketing budget does not guarantee anything to be successful. So make things that you are going to be proud of and want to promote and show around, and with enough enthusiasm, luck and good vibes, it should eventually find its deserved audience.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.paltrocast.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/paltrowitz
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/darrenpaltrowitz
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-paltrowitz-44a6a11/
- Twitter: http://www.x.com/paltrowitz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@paltrowitz/videos
- Yelp: https://imdb.com/title/tt14955106/episodes/?season=35&ref_=ttep_ep_sn_nx
- Soundcloud: https://open.spotify.com/show/7xWVx1NZKd38tpwNISs0Ux
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/paltrocast-with-darren-paltrowitz/id1429248132
Image Credits
All photos created and provided by Darren Paltrowitz and/or the Paltrocast