Cam Turney (aka Cam The Tastemaker) is an Austin entrepreneur who launched RentARecordLabel.com to help artists build thriving businesses around their music. It’s a new model that is catching on with musicians who are tired of chasing record deals and selling the rights to their music.
In this episode, he explains his business and how he cultivated his talent as a music tastemaker. He also names the Top 3 artists in Austin and how he feels about Austin as a home for musicians.
Listen to the podcast episode below. It’s also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or Stitcher.
Subscribers can check out the full transcript of our conversation below. For past “Cover Charge” episodes, click here.
Cover Charge: Episode 11 Transcript
Nick Schenck: [00:00:00] What’s up everyone? This is Nick Schenck, host of the Cover Charge podcast. Our guest this episode is Cam Turney, AKA Cam The Tastemaker. What’s up Cam? Thanks a lot for joining. [restrict]
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:00:11] Thank you for having me. I’m really glad to be here.
Nick Schenck: [00:00:13] So Cam and I met early in, nah probably mid 2020, I was working to organize 3rd & Lamar’s Rooftop Live with Tony Stolfa, head of production at 3rd & Lamar. We were trying to put the lineups together for, I think our second and then our third show. And I quickly realized I was out of my depth. I didn’t have the relationships with , the bands in Austin, the way I knew other people did.
And , I was introduced to you through, I think the manager for Kydd Jones, a rapper in Austin, and immediately, we hit it off. You helped us find some bands for our third 3rd & Lamar’s Rooftop Live. It was great to have those relationships, but I learned more about your business and I thought you’d be a great guest to bring on the show to talk about rentarecordlabel.com, your new business venture. And then also just about the music community in general.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:01:00] = I really appreciate that I mean, that’s exactly how it happened and it was very fun. So I appreciate Kydd Jones’ manager for that. Cause that was a really good connection and I think that we’ve done some really cool stuff since then. So thank you. But yeah, I mean a little bit of what I do. I have started a thing , you know, again, I go by Cam The Tastemaker , so I started a Tastemaker Group, which is now going to be like a sonic branding company is what I like to call it.
And basically, we want to give the sound to whatever an artist’s brand or event. And with that, the first of nine kind of solutions that we have under this group is rentarecordlabel.com. We want to use that to help de-centralize the music industry , basically giving creatives , an ability and a place to grow and have a safe environment , to be able to do what they love to do, which is just making music, without having fear of anybody owning them. And that’s kind of where the rent a record label comes from.
Nick Schenck: [00:01:47] Got it. So Tastemakers Sound is like the parent company and Rent A Record Label is just one of the brands that’s going to be under that parent company?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:01:54] That’s correct. So Tastemaker Group is the incorporation and then Tastemakers Sound is the record label. But rent a record label is like, The.com is basically the marketing
Nick Schenck: [00:02:05] the DBA, the doing business as
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:02:07] the marketing of it. It’s like, Hey, this is how we do business as Tastemakers Sounds. We’re not the normal record label, you can rent us.
Nick Schenck: [00:02:13] We’ll get into Tastemaker Sounds and kind of the concept of recordrentarecordlabel.com in a little bit, but first. Cam The Tastemaker, that moniker What year did that begin? And how did that start?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:02:23] Yeah, no, I, I love that actually. And it’s funny because I didn’t give myself that name. It was literally something that came about, because I guess about, six years ago I started MIXI and what we did is every year we had a South By show. And from those shows, a lot of the headliners that I brought in, they blew up afterwards. They became nationally known. And so by the time I had them, no one knew them. But a year later people realized like, wow, I can’t believe you had these people on your show. With that being said, an actual manager that I worked with, he was like, dude, you’re, you’re like a tastemaker man.
You should like name yourself that. You should just be like, I don’t know, like, Cam the Tastemaker or like Tastemaker Cam or like he was just coming up with all this stuff. And I was like, that’s weird, bro. I don’t know what that is. Like at the time, no one cared what tastemaker is. Now like even Pizza Hut has a tastemaker campaign, but it’s like at the time I had to explain to people what it was like. They were like, are you a chef? I’m like, no, like I can help you know what’s good before you maybe know what’s good.
Nick Schenck: [00:03:17] You said you were booking these lineups for South by Southwest shows. Later on those bands would go out and become big names. Can you list some of those bands?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:03:24] So Flipp Dinero, who’s now with , Cinematic, he had a song , “Leave Me Alone.” That song he performed like twice at our show before it even popped up.
And then we’ve had people like iLL Chris we’ve had Dave East. We’ve had, you know, he wasn’t performing, but T.I. showed up to our show. We had Trey. We’ve had. Man. I can just, it’s just so many. Jay IDK was our very first headliner actually like seven years ago and now he’s huge. He was on the cover of Forbes. So yeah, just stuff like that, that really kind of paved the way for me.
Nick Schenck: [00:03:53] And so, typically the genre that your specialty lies in is Hip-Hop, R&B?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:03:59] Yeah. When we were throwing the shows at MIXI that’s what we were focused on, for sure. And so I would say that is my specialty. But I am very open to a lot of other music. I love music. It’s just that I see that there’s an opportunity specifically for that group of individuals that maybe is not being seen for other people.
Nick Schenck: [00:04:14] Yeah. I mean, you told us about DOSSEY and Urban Heat. Bands that go far beyond those two genres.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:04:20] Well I appreciate that yeah. They’re I mean, they’re great too. And that’s the thing, right? Like I think good music definitely spans across genres of course. Right. But like, I am able to, even if it’s not like my main thing, I’m able to see like, dude, this is good. You know, this is, this could be placed on whatever TV show or this could be this. That’s also kind of my thing as a tastemaker like, I just kind of, I can feel it.
Nick Schenck: [00:04:41] Yeah, for sure. So growing up, you went to middle school, high school in Round Rock. Played soccer. You ended up going to UNC Wilmington playing college soccer. You actually came back to Austin, played for the Austin Aztecs, semi-pro soccer. That’s a cool story in itself. I’m just imagining you as a kid being obsessed with soccer and music. Is that, that pretty much dominate your life?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:05:00] Everything bro. I mean, it was even to the point like, and my soccer coach in college, didn’t really like that I was so involved with music. I literally made a song for my college before I even got there and it was MySpace days. So I put it on MySpace and I sent it to everybody that was going to UNCW at the time. And so they put it on their MySpace page. And when I got there, the basketball team asked me to like perform at halftime shows the song. Right. And I made a song for the school. My coach hated that shit. Right. Hated it. Oh my can I cuss? My bad.
Nick Schenck: [00:05:28] You can go for it.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:05:29] But yeah, it was one of those things that like, I was a freshman coming in and he just thought that, I mean, are you doing music or doing soccer? And I was like, I thought college was to figure out what I want to do, you know?
Nick Schenck: [00:05:37] Yeah.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:05:38] But it is true. I went to that school specifically to chase the national championship. I put my music on the backburner because I could have went to like Belmont or like music schools. And I decided like, I was just cocky and I was like, I wanna win a national championship, but you know, that’s what that’s what happened.
Nick Schenck: [00:05:51] Yeah. Cam The Tastemaker Instagram. You have a series of videos explaining kind of what a tastemaker is and your whole sort of business, your concept. And one of the Instagram posts I noticed it said. From a young age, I knew I had a gift. And so even before you went to UNC Wilmington, in high school were people like, Oh dude, Cam’s got the best mix tapes or like, I gotta get some music from Cam.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:06:15] Yes.
Nick Schenck: [00:06:16] How did that develop?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:06:17] Honestly, bro. It was just the fact that I hated hip-hop at the time. At the time, when I was a kid in high school, like I hated the music that was coming out and I wanted to be the guy that’s like this isn’t a terrible genre. Like this genre is actually real and I can give you good music that you would like. So it really was one of those times where it’s like, okay , and I say this on this video, actually, it was like, I remember in school, I was the first person to have a car in like my circle and all the guys would get into my car and I’d be like, what’s going on with you today? How are you feeling whatever?
And I could put on a song right after they told me and they would just, it would hit perfect for him, you know? And it’d be something they’d never heard before. It would be an artist they never heard of it before. So I remember the time when like one of my friends, Jake Lloyd who is huge right now in Austin. Right. I remember the first time I let him listen to Drake in my car.
He, flipped, right. He’s just like, who is this? I need to know what’s going on. Like, I don’t even listen to hip- hop anymore, but this guy is really the shit. And so yeah, like that, that’s something that I, I wish I would have tapped into back back then and just known that music and pointing people to things that they like is like literally my talent.
Nick Schenck: [00:07:17] Yeah. Everyone loves discovering new music. I’m obsessed with it. I just signed up for a Spotify premium subscription this past summer, before that I know it is going to make me seem old as hell, but I was on Pandora a lot. I still like Pandora. And actually I learned about more new music on Pandora than Spotify because Spotify, I like what I like.
And then, using their algorithm, you can like add new songs to your playlist, but like, I don’t really find new music that way. It’s not that great.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:07:43] It’s not great for it.
Nick Schenck: [00:07:44] So like for people listening to this right now who they know what they like, but they want to discover new music, like what’s like a three-step guide for them to help them find new music?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:07:54] For Spotify specifically, it’s the like, the art artists that other fans, like, I think it’s at the bottom. It says something like that. So you can scroll to the bottom and just see like, okay, if I like this artist, what other people are people that like this artist listening to? And so you might find it.
And that’s the way I found the best discover on Spotify. But for anything else, it’s really going to be just like, like I go off of the people that you don’t know their names on a major person’s album, you know? So they might have somebody that’s singing in the background. They have, it’s like featuring this person. Right. And you go find that person and you just realize that they’re going to be the ones that are next up on something. And then you can find great music just by seeing who’s related to the people that you listen to. That’s really how I, how I find it.
Nick Schenck: [00:08:34] What about in Austin specifically? Because you’re known to throw out playlists of just underground Austin artists. So how’s that happen? You just from people in your network and Austin, they’re like, hey, listen to this, listen to this?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:08:45] Yeah. Suggestions and then I actually just go out and look for it because again, I like to find new music. And so , what I like to do is just follow everybody that I feel like I’ve liked their music before that had a song and I just kind of keep up with it.
So it’s, it’s really. On that. Now that being said, part of the ecosystem that we’re building is hopefully an app that creates music discovery, makes it a lot easier. There are apps out there where there’s music sharing, but I don’t know and this is just like a foresight, like I’ve often wondered why Pandora, Spotify, and all these places don’t use the information that’s currently in your phone, like the temperature or like your location or how fast you’re moving or all these things that can determine what you might be listening to.
So if you know, I go to the gym, like you remind me that I go to the gym every morning at nine. So I needed, I need to leave at a certain time. Well, why when I get to the gym don’t you turn on a certain music? Why do I have to go back to my phone to then turn on the music that I listened to at the gym every day, if you know I listen to this music at the gym every day.
So that’s what I want to do is create an app that like just uses the information that’s there for you. And then we suggest music. It’s a tastemaker app. We suggest music to you.
Nick Schenck: [00:09:46] That’s a good point. There’s a guy I met in Austin. Not that long ago, played in the NFL for the Miami Dolphins as an offensive tackle.
I think he played at University of Miami too. His name’s Jason Fox. Okay. He started an app called Earbuds, so I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but yeah, basically for those of you listening, who haven’t heard of it, he saw Cam Newton playing for the Carolina Panthers, like bobbing his head in pre-game warmups, listening to his headphones. He was like, I wonder what Cam’s listening to right now. Like how cool would it be if I could be a fan in the stands, listening to exactly the same thing that Cam was listening to, and that kind of like became the Earbuds app , here in Austin. So my question for you is , when you were playing soccer in college , what was on your hype, pregame playlist?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:10:31] Dang, bro. It’s crazy. I actually had a lot of the stuff was stuff I found on FIFA to be honest. It was more of like a mood thing. So, you know, although I was heavy into hip hop, I was listening to like, there’s this song called like Dorime. I don’t even know who it’s by, but it felt like this like huge church song. Like, Dorime
It was just like this big buildup. I loved it. It just put me into the mood. So a lot of times it was more stuff that I think like gamers would listen to. You know what I mean? Like stuff like that, even if that song specifically wasn’t, but I, it was more hype stuff. So I couldn’t even tell you, like, I can’t even tell you the name of the songs, man, honestly.
Which is different now, because I feel like now people would just have the certain technology, but we like, I wasn’t able to listen to headphones, except for like in the locker room. Once we got on the field, we had to listen to what was on the stadium.
Nick Schenck: [00:11:18] What was the first concert you ever saw live?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:11:20] Up in Smoke, Snoop Dogg, Up in Smoke and think that’s when the first time I saw Eminem live the first time people saw Eminem live and knew who that was, like he had brought it, it was here in Austin at the Frank Erwin Center. And it was like an Up in Smoke tour and Snoop was like, Oh yeah, I got this kid, you know? And he came out and he started going crazy. And it ended up being Eminem.
Nick Schenck: [00:11:38] Dang
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:11:38] Crazy dude.
Nick Schenck: [00:11:39] What’s the band that you’ve seen most often live?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:11:42] I’ve seen actually. And it’s funny that you said that because it has been a band, the people that I’ve seen most, it’s like Florida Georgia Line.
And it’s probably, because of like the festival stuff. So it’s not really a choice that like directly, but I’ve seen them a lot.
Nick Schenck: [00:11:52] Yeah, a lot of festivals. Okay so let’s get to rentarecordlabel.com.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:11:56] Yeah.
Nick Schenck: [00:11:56] Just explain, like, what’s the problem that your product solves for, with artists right now?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:12:02] Yeah, artists have no way to have a viable , career outside of the music industry, but there’s a music business that’s available, right? It’s like, there’s a whole business that can be done, but right now people chase the industry and they don’t see between ground zero and record deal. They don’t see that in between there, there’s like millions of dollars.
You don’t have to be Drake. You could make a lot of money and not be anywhere connected to the industry.
Nick Schenck: [00:12:29] So you’re talking about like diversifying revenue streams?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:12:32] Legitimately yeah it’s, it’s how I tell people is like we decentralized kind of like Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, right. They exist outside of the market that they , complement.
So I’ve in this nine steps. We’ll have a whole music industry outside of the one that everybody’s chasing that allows people to live in this industry over here, without it being something that’s like some big dream thing, you can actually just be here and do exactly what artists do. And for example, like we give advancements, we do all the same things we do, but we do build your LLC, right?
So like you’re not going to go to the label. They’re not going to help you build a business, which is why you can’t partner with them is because you’re just a person. And they like here, here’s a million dollars and you’re like, I’ll take it. But if you’re a business and you have fans that you’ve built yourself, you have data, you have all this other stuff, it’s a different conversation.
But what I want to do is make it to where you don’t have to have that conversation with them because you’re making $20,000 a month because you have a thousand people. That’s it. If you get a thousand fans to pay you $10 to $20 a month, bro, you don’t need, you don’t need anybody.
Nick Schenck: [00:13:33] It’s kind of funny. You brought that up because I was listening to, you know, the, How I Built This podcast and Jack Conte, who’s the CEO of Patreon. He started this band Pomplamoose and was just trying to figure out ways to make it sustainable. And a lot of people were doing like Kickstarter campaigns so that their fans could fund their albums. And Jack was like, Hey, if people just pay me five to $10 a month, I can make it happen.
And obviously Patreons huge now. And I noticed that Bronze Whale another band you kind of introduced to me, Austin, electronic band, they started a Patreon. Yeah. So that obviously that’s just one way bands can monetize their audiences, I guess. What are some other ways that is the average lay person may not even realize?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:14:16] Right now everybody wants to be on Spotify. They want to be on Pandora. They want to be, but it’s like, again, if you have maybe 500 people that will pay you $5 for your album, put it on your website, let them buy it from you. You know. That’s how I tell people all the time. I’m like, so right now there’s this thing called Single Music, which is like , it’s a program that’s built into Shopify that actually allows you to sell directly to your customer, but it’s still verified by RIAA and Billboard.
So it’s just like, if you sold it out of Best Buy, you know, but it’s coming from your website on Shopify, but you get the whole, you get all of the money that you saw that you sold it for. And then your, your audience member just streams that or downloads it. So , I think it’s more of just B2C just creating directly to customer.
Nick Schenck: [00:14:57] Yeah. On a previous podcast. Adam Jones, he’s the CEO of Holodeck Records. He’s a member of the band S U R V I V E .
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:15:04] I didn’t know that.
Nick Schenck: [00:15:05] Yeah. He, he was talking about the best way to support a band that you like is to buy their music off their Bandcamp page.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:15:11] Yes, sir.
Nick Schenck: [00:15:11] Do you think that’s a good idea?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:15:12] 100%. A hundred percent. I use Bandcamp in our rollouts, basically. So like, I’ll say, you know, like we try to weed out the super fans. Right. And so we’ll put it on Bandcamp and see who buys it there. And then like, we’ll, we’ll rev them up and be like, Hey, here’s a free song that didn’t even come up out.
Like that didn’t come out or it’s not going to come out ever. But because you bought it from Bandcamp, now you have this other song or you get this percentage off on merch. And it came out a week before the song actually came out on Spotify. So yeah. There’s all that kind of stuff is a lot of just funneling fans, man, funneling them.
Nick Schenck: [00:15:41] Yeah. So what’s the strategy – if somebody’s got a lot of views on YouTube, they got a lot of views on Spotify. How can they use that to drive people to the actual channels where they can make money?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:15:50] That’s a great question. So I, I use those as. How I feel is you have to have your website. That’s the number one like you have your home base and then these things are just like your promoters, right? So they go out and do promoting for you to bring people back. So it’s the bio, it’s the content that you’re bringing. It’s the actual driving of people. So pixels, pixels are huge, right? If you get the pixels out, then you can retarget these people.
So it’s things like that. It’s literally like, I know artists don’t want to hear this, but you are a digital marketer who happens to be an artist. That’s really what the world is right now. Okay. You have to learn how to do that. And so, yeah, I mean, you just have to find out, so if it’s. YouTube.
It’s like making sure your bio is right. Making sure all of your social media is in the, in the description of the video. And then , you know, making sure people get the notification, all the things that are right within that platform and then having a pixel that then brings it back to your website.
Same with Facebook, Instagram, all those other things as well. It’s just, yeah. You should use them as promoters.
Nick Schenck: [00:16:44] Yeah. I’m glad you said that digital marketing piece because it is true. And I’ve thought about this when we’re putting on 3rd & Lamar’s Rooftop Live. We obviously book bands that we like, we, number one, we just like their music.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:16:54] Yeah. Huge.
Nick Schenck: [00:16:55] But number two is like, we need to monetize the Rooftop Live through either subscriptions or just eyeballs.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:17:03] Right.
Nick Schenck: [00:17:03] And so we’re counting on these bands’ fans to watch, to tune in, to subscribe. And so like, we’re also paying these bands because we’re counting on them to get their fans fired up for watching them. And so it’s like, we can only do so much because we don’t have that access to their fans.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:17:22] Sure.
Nick Schenck: [00:17:22] 3rd & Lamar exists for like one year. Right. And so yeah, some bands get it more than others, but it’s, it’s like an education type thing and so I can understand, like you can take that off band’s plates a lot if they work with you.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:17:37] Yes. Correct. That’s what, that’s what we’re hoping now that is. There’s a trade off to this and I’m sure there’s probably like questions about like, well rent or record label. Cause this is the pushback and I wouldn’t even say pushback. I think it just more of a conversation that we’ve had with people. And I invite this conversation because I like the education piece of it, right?
Yes, we are asking artists to pay us. Right. It’s flat out and I don’t have any reservations about that because you keep everything right. You pay us, but then we use 75% of that budget towards your career. And then everything you make off of that you own, rather than a record label, who gives you an advance and that’s a loan.
And then on top of the loan that you owe them back, you then give them ownership of your music for forever. Right? And so if you think about the trade-off, the trade-off is yes. You give a little right now, but we’re investing it into your business the right way. So I think about it as like an incubator program for artists, just like you would for any kind of startup business, we’re doing the same thing, we’re doing an audit.
You don’t have a website, you don’t have a business, like an LLC. You don’t have a bank account, all these things that we’re going to do with Spotify. Don’t matter if you don’t have this. Right.
Nick Schenck: [00:18:38] Yeah. Those are all the things that probably kill the creative process. Like if you’re in a creative mood and you’re thinking about, Oh shit, all this paperwork for setting up an LLC.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:18:44] They don’t want to do it. So that’s all, that’s why we’re here. Pay us, we got you, you know.
Nick Schenck: [00:18:49] Yeah, random question. I noticed on your YouTube channel, you posted one video explaining what you’re all about – you have 1,500 subscribers on your YouTube channel. All right. And this is like close to the heart. Because we’re trying to build our YouTube channel.
You can’t turn on monetization on YouTube unless you have 4,000 listening hours in the past, I think, 12 months. And a thousand or more subscribers to your YouTube channel, yeah. So how did you get those subscribers? Like what are some strategies? Ads?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:19:17] Yeah it was ads, it’s it literally I hyper-focused in on DJ Khaled’s fans, legit.
Because I knew that – what was the similarity between me and everybody else is that I don’t make music, but I have artists that I can help me put out songs. I put out songs on their behalf because I can get them eyes or whatever. Right. So they send me the songs. We put them together. I put them out kind of like a DJ Khaled.
So that was the drive for that. I thought that without me having to explain it, if people are going to watch this video, who would like it? And so I just tried to see if that would work and it did. Not only that, the artists that were on those songs have a really good fan base. So that’s, that’s another thing too.
And it was a YouTube fan base. I didn’t get that love on Instagram. It was definitely a YouTube fan base. They even in the comments, you can see like, Hey, I found you from this artist profile. I can’t wait for you all to come out with more music. And so now that I’m thinking about it, I probably shouldn’t have waited so long cause these subscribers that I have been waiting for like six months for something else. Right. So I have to reactivate that, And yeah, it was more of just, it was more kind of luck, man. You know what I mean? Like it was like it was positioning and I knew what I was trying to do, but it only worked on one channel and it did work on YouTube for me. But I don’t get the watch hours because people subscribed thinking that I was coming out with stuff, I think quicker than what I have. You see what I’m saying?
Nick Schenck: [00:20:30] Well get at us. We can help you with that problem.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:20:31] There we go. Yeah, man. So I would love to, I would love to ,
Nick Schenck: [00:20:36] All right. Let’s, let’s talk about Austin for a second. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen way more California, New York, New Jersey plates since March hit, you know, even before COVID tons of people are moving here. Do you see that influx of people to Austin as good for the music scene, the creative scene in Austin? Or are you kind of, not as keen on it?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:20:56] Kind of both. There’s a, there’s a double-edged sword with that as well, just because like they’re taking all our venues away just because they want to live downtown, which is crazy to me, like you moved to the music city and then, you know, you complain about the sound of the venue that you move next to, right?
Like the venue was there way before you, but at the same time , the reason why I feel like Austin hasn’t become this Mecca, like everything else is because we didn’t have that. Like, we don’t have any professional sports teams. Like you go to Atlanta, you go to Miami, you go to L.A., all these things exist and you can have like that one player who never got off the bench, but he can come spend $20,000 in the club. That changes your economy and your city. You know what I mean? And so the opportunities that happen, the type of brands that are around, the type of eyes that people see, the network that people have, right?
Like. I invite all of that. I just hope that they don’t take it and try to change it to whatever they think it should be. You know what I mean? I feel like Austin has a unique culture that just needs to be built on top of, rather than like changed.
Nick Schenck: [00:21:54] Yeah. Do you think Austin is still a good place for artists to live?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:21:58] I think it’s perfect right now. If you’re looking future, if you’re looking for like right now, like I need to get something to happen, go to L.A., Go to those places. But I think it’s prime. Like Elon’s here. Like a lot of companies are moving here and I think that’s just begs that they’re going to need creative or some type of things to go along with these some kind of infrastructure.
And so I think artists have a really good, like BMI’s here now, or like , there’s a lot of things that are coming here. And I think that if you’re here early, you can get the relationships that you need because these people have the relationships with the people in other cities. Yup. So,
Nick Schenck: [00:22:28] Okay pre-COVID or now what’s your, what’s your favorite music venue in Austin? Where do you like to see a show the most?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:22:35] Ooh, I love , I would have to say Stubbs. If we’re talking overall, it’s only because everybody’s standing. It’s a big mosh pit. You know what I’m saying? I love Stubbs for that reason. So no matter how big it is, you know, it’s like, but at the same time, they’re very professional.
You can get killer food, drinks, all kinds of stuff. The environment is good. They have a VIP, I would say Stubbs man if it was on everything.
Nick Schenck: [00:22:55] Yep. What are three bands in Austin that anyone listening to this podcast has to listen to right now? The three hottest bands?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:23:03] All right. Dude. Damn, that’s hard. Okay. Let me think. I’m going to say, Oh, that’s hard, dude. You know, I’m going to get DMs about this, right?
Nick Schenck: [00:23:12] Yeah,
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:23:13] Man, you didn’t call me up. Let me say, I think Abhi the Nomad is hot right now. He’s a rapper. I would say I have to put Bronze Whale in there just cause they’re just on top of it.
They have this crazy Australian fan base that’s like brewing right now. It’s insane. So I’m curious to see what they’re going to do with that. Their top five cities are like Australia.
Nick Schenck: [00:23:32] Bronze Whale yeah.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:23:33] Yeah. And then, Oh man, I gotta be good with this third one. You gotta listen to Bronze Whale. You gotta listen to Abhi. Melat if you’re looking at the singer,
Nick Schenck: [00:23:42] M E L A T .
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:23:44] Yup. Melat is , I think she’s super slept on she’s verified on all social media, but as far as Austin is concerned, I think her voice and content is just so crazy good. And I just feel like she should get a lot more looks for sure.
Nick Schenck: [00:23:56] Okay. I definitely want to have you on again, for sure. In the future. In the meantime, if people want to learn more about Cam The Tastemaker, rentarecordlabel.com, where do you want them to reach you?
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:24:07] Please go to my social media. All socials are @camtheTSTMKR. Of course camthetastemaker.com, rentarecordlabel.com.
Yeah holla at us man. We, we got a team ready to work.
Nick Schenck: [00:24:18] Cool, man. Thanks a lot for joining dude.
Cam the Tastemaker: [00:24:20] Thank you, man. It’s been great. Thank you so much. [/restrict]