We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nate Daniels a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nate, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Our mission statement for Echoes Collective is to “provide and promote the best in bass music”. However, the way we achieve that mission is a lot more than what meets the eye. Yes, our goal is to provide and promote the best in bass music, but our goal is also to achieve that goal while remaining true, genuine, and positive human beings; staying true to our artistic and interpersonal integrity, ingenuity, and genuineness while remaining a positive guide and path to those around us. The music industry, as with any entertainment industry, can be an overwhelmingly negative environment to be a part of, so to curate and be a part of a team that can give you a shoulder to lean on and a light at the end of that tunnel can sometimes be all you need to get through it all.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Nate Daniels and I started Echoes Collective at 16 years old because I felt underrepresented with my music. I was shooting off demos of my tracks to every music label I could think of, and each time, if I even got a response, it would be a no. For any musicians out there that have gone through a similar scenario, you know how defeating it can be to know that your music is up to standard, but to not have the reassurance of acceptance at the very least. I took my feeling of defeat (and honestly, anger too) and turned it into an idea: why not start up my own music label? Not just for myself, but for all of my friends and peers that were going through the similar situation of being constantly shot down. So, long story short, I started up a music label! At first, it was what I like to call a “homie project”. Then, it quickly grew into something that other people resonated with. Now, 5 years later, after lots of learning and growing, we achieve our mission as not just a music label, but also as an artist management agency and an amplifier of voices who are soon to be heard.

From the start, we have strived to put out some of the best music in bass music from the best underground artists that bass music has to offer. For 5 years, we have achieved that goal consistently throughout. Now, aside from the music we release, we also have several artists that we manage under our agency (in ABC order): Adacic, Angel, ASMO, Bavi, Dani Demand, Echo Drone, EVVDE, Junki, MIKESH!FT, SFYNX, Soundwave, and Warzone, who are some of the best talents in bass music from their productions to their performances. We consider it a privilege to be able to work with them and help them curate their own success stories, and those successes along with the music we put out is what we believe to be what is leading us to become a powerhouse group in both bass music and the music industry as a whole.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Echoes Collective was my side hustle for a very long time! Well, I actually always considered it my second full time job (although it always has and always will be done out of passion)! As I said previously, I started it at 16 years old, so I was in high school, trying to start up a career in music, and working a full time retail job, all while starting up this music label and learning the ropes of it all. It was a lot for young me to take on to say the least! For someone who was still a teenager, doing something as simple as scheduling ahead of time wasn’t something that I was accustomed to, so I had to not only learn how to run and operate a music label, but I also had to sort of conform my mindset to be able to achieve it too. It is in my nature to not give myself enough credit, and as I’m saying this, I’ve got to give myself some props here haha!

Anyways, to get back on topic – in the first few years, we put out lots of new music from many different artists and we always made sure to take advantage of every opportunity and strategy we could get our hands on to promote these releases. Over time, we grew our audience and our resources, our releases did better, and our artists started branching out and growing to new depths and new heights. After a while, I started to realize that we’re doing something right here! Then, when the pandemic hit and everyone had to stay indoors, that’s when we truly grew to never-before-seen heights. Of course, the pandemic is not something that we should be looking back positively on, but I’ve got to give it some credit for helping us get to where we are now! On May 14, 2021, we put out Echoes Issue 003 which was our third annual compilation album consisting of 11 tracks from 11 different artists. That compilation album ended up performing extremely well and is what I consider to be what put us on the map for good. Then, a few months after, we put out another compilation album titled “Heavyweights Vol. 1” – 11 new tracks from 13 different artists – which helped solidify ourselves even further. To put out great music from fresh, new names was something that people were wanting to see and hear, especially during a time where festivals and shows were put on an indefinite hiatus.

Then, in early 2022, we decided to branch out Echoes Collective into an artist management agency. We felt we had the resources to truly help and benefit artists. At the time, we only had a fraction of the roster we do now, and in the short amount of time we have been managing our roster, we have achieved absolutely great things! Once our roster started seeing success under our wings, I made the decision to start to try and pursue Echoes Collective as a full time career. I wanted to put all of my time into not just promoting great music, but to help shape the future of all of these well-deserving, skilled, and talented people.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

High morale is key to any business, and that does not change for the music industry. Maintaining high morale can be tricky in the music industry, because for a long time, you won’t see the results of your hard work. Passion is what drives a lot of these artists, and with all of the work, doubt and fear that goes into the pursuit of a career of it, morale can constantly be at stake. I can’t say that I’m completely innocent of low morale either!

Open-mindedness, understanding, and not reacting to situations based on emotion are three huge concepts that I have learned and practiced over the years and are what I believe have helped us achieve high morale. Releasing music from so many artists, as well as managing multiple artists, can require that you remain open-minded and understanding on their concepts and ideas for their releases and their projects. These projects are their pride and joy, so being able to achieve their ideas to the nearest extent that you can is the least they can ask for! Sometimes, concepts and ideas can change in the moment, and it can be frustrating as a label or management team to have to take the ideas that you worked to conceptualize and have to switch it up. Reacting emotionally will only distance the artist from you and will make it where they will not want to work with you. Again, these projects are the artists’ pride and joy; reacting emotionally to their idea or concept changes will only make you look bad, jeopardize your relationship with them, and of course, weaken morale.

You can also look at it from this standpoint: with how competitive and cutthroat the music industry is, a lot of times, you will run into the situation where you may be promised an opportunity, and that opportunity will be pulled out from beneath you. This is absolutely damaging to morale, yet it happens all of the time. Bad business is rampant in the music industry, so how do you maintain high morale with that in mind? It’s best to keep in mind that how you react to bad situations is detrimental. You may decide that you don’t want to put up with it and air out your dirty laundry with these people on social media. Well, people that are important to your success are always watching. If you publicly handle your private situations, then that will be a bad look for you and will put any future opportunities you may have had on the line. So, remaining open-minded, understanding, and most importantly, NOT reacting on emotion is key at all times. You can rest assured knowing that if bad business is done to you, it has probably been done to many others, so they will receive their karma in due time. Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and know that you’re doing great!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.echoescollective.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/echoescollective
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/echoescollective
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/echoesclctve
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/echoescollective

Image Credits
Personal photo: Jonah Daniels Additional photos: Photos 1-5: Dynsul Media Photo 6: Maddux Mehal Photo 7: Lost Ambitions Photo 8: Republic NOLA