Jack Conte Quotes

In YouTube’s early days, my band Pomplamoose was making a living by releasing videos on it, which drove iTunes sales. And because YouTube was small enough, our videos would bubble to the top and new fans could discover us.

We’re hyper-focused on providing the business infrastructure to allow creators to be successful in growing and running their businesses.

Basically all the art we know in history books, the business model for that art was not unit sales. It was patronage. It was a person who made great stuff. And then an institution, a religious institution, a government, a wealthy individual, would pay that person to go make more of that.

People are not machines. And we have to respect that.

I wanted a button on my personal website, on jackconte.com, that said please give me money whenever I make a video if you want to help me keep making videos. Seconds after I thought of that, I thought: ‘Well, gee, that’s something a lot of my friends would like, too.’

The epic failures make up the journey along the way to getting the wins.

Unless you’ve given up your business to a record label, there’s no such thing as just being a musician anymore.

I’m half of the band Pomplamoose and cofounder & CEO at Patreon.

I love the idea of creators having leverage and control.

I guess I kind of don’t like how there’s such a pedestal for music culture and especially for band culture. It just feels fake; it feels like smoke and mirrors. And I feel like music doesn’t have to be like that. It can be something that’s very normal and very accessible.

If you’re a really good community manager, that’s highly predictive of your success on Patreon.

Patreon is here to give control back to artists so it doesn’t need to be a hard conversation when a kid tells their parents they want to be a musician or a photographer or a comedian. It should be the same as wanting to be a doctor or a lawyer.

I learned all about big band arrangement and symphony arrangement and writing for strings.

The reality is Patreon needs to build new businesses and new services and new revenue lines in order to build a sustainable business.

I love well-produced stuff. The craft and the art of production is something I really, really love.

I love music with a violence and a fury that feels unqualified.

Building habits is important. One of mine is a weird, small thing, but it’s very helpful: I stop eating just before I’m full. I feel so much better throughout the course of the day if I don’t pack myself. It’s a good way to get more energy.

A lot of people hear the Pomplamoose story and think the moral of the story is to post your stuff on YouTube. I don’t think that’s the moral at all. The moral is, go where the people are, and be innovative and different. Make something unusual.

When I graduated college, I didn’t get a job. I started making YouTube videos. I used to spend my days making art, and I love that. And, if I’m being honest, what’s the hardest thing? I think it’s just becoming a CEO from this path of being a YouTuber.

On the Internet, it’s not just content that’s king. It’s regular content. But models like Kickstarter don’t work for regular content. And the advertising you earn on YouTube is nice, but it doesn’t seem to assign the appropriate value for the amount of work and passion that goes into certain types of content.

Kickstarter is not appropriate for a blogger who writes weekly articles – he doesn’t need a big chunk of money, and he has no big project to use it for. He needs monthly income, and Patreon brings crowd funding away from singular one-off projects and into the realm of regular content creation.

There’s a difference between what people will consume and what they will pay for.

Being in an indie band is running a never-ending, rewarding, scary, low-margin small business.

Having the opportunity to play music as a career is a dream come true.

Artists don’t have to starve any more.

I think it was iTunes that first proved that people would spend money to get things they really wanted.

I got to compose for a full symphony orchestra.

I don’t get a work-life balance.

We’re not trying to get 2 billion people on Patreon to compete with YouTube.

The whole idea behind YouTube is accessibility and openness.

When I read articles or interviews about building culture, the suggestions are often obscure or hard to replicate.

I really like incorporating noise music into pop.

Successful musicians are entrepreneurs – they work hard, way beyond 9 to 5.

I want creators quitting their part-time jobs and being creative for a living.

We want to make a living doing what we like to do.

If I can get 2,200 people to give me $2 a video, and I come out with a video a month, it becomes a good income.

I loved the ‘Sister Act 2’ soundtrack.

I’ve dealt with a record label in the past.

Patronage is a very old phenomenon that’s occurred in people and in society for thousands of years. It stems from an emotional response to someone’s art. It’s a feeling of responsibility and importance and a desire to be a part of what they’re making.

Concentrate on making beautiful things. Everything else will follow.

Within two months of Patreon’s launch I starting making $6,000 a month for my work with the support of my ‘patrons.’ The platform makes creators legitimate members of the workforce and is really helping to break the idea of the ‘starving artist’ by allowing them to earn a regular income.

We want Patreon to be safe, and we have no tolerance for hate speech. That’s something I think other platforms have been behind on. They’ve been allowing their platforms to become toxic places. We don’t want that. I don’t feel apologetic about that at all.

There are literally tens of thousands of people who create regular content on the web and have millions of followers.

Ultimately, our competitive advantage is that we’re the most creator-first company on the planet.

We get to make the music that we love.

Medium is like the Instagram of the corporate world. It’s the layer that we want everybody to see, but not actually how it is. It feels like content marketing.

Hard work works.

People like my videos, some of which can cost me thousands to make. So I just ask, ‘How about giving me $1 to help me make my next one?’

When I created my Patreon page, I knew the fans of my music would support me. I’ve met them on tour and I’ve seen their comments on Twitter and Facebook. I’m out there making relationships, so I should benefit the most, right?

We do love playing live.

I’ve always felt like I’m on the outside of the music industry.

Patreon, is, has been and will continue to be a creator-centric organization.

I’m not an entrepreneur.

Know your goals – it will help guide your decisions.

I work on myself all the time, and I’m constantly trying to learn and falling on my face all the time.