Your music deserves a career as intentional as your art.
Nobody teaches you the business
at soundcheck.
The artists who last aren't always the most talented. They're the ones who understood the paperwork.
You finish the set, pack the cables, and drive home at 2am. Nobody in the green room mentioned that the venue is keeping 20% of your merch. Nobody explained that the promoter's 'door deal' is structured so you break even only if 80 people show. Nobody told you that the song you co-wrote at a friend's session might already be registered under someone else's publishing deal.
Music school teaches you chord extensions and microphone placement. The industry teaches you everything else — usually through a mistake you can't undo. Cadence exists in that gap. Not to make you a businessman. To make sure the business doesn't make a fool of you.
Your setlist
is a sales funnel.
The first song earns the room. The fourth song earns the email. The seventh song earns the merch table.
Every set has a conversion arc whether you designed one or not. The opener earns attention. The mid-set build earns emotional investment. The story before the slow song earns the follow. The closer earns the merch table visit. Most artists sequence by feel — which is fine — but the ones who think about it as a designed experience tend to leave with more emails, more sales, and more return bookers.
Live performance isn't just a revenue stream. It's your most efficient marketing channel, your best A&R feedback loop, and the clearest test of what your music actually does to a room of strangers. Treat it like the high-stakes, learnable craft it is.
Own your masters
or someone else will.
A song placed in one TV episode can generate more income than a regional tour. That math only works if you own what you wrote.
The word 'masters' sounds abstract until you realize it means: who gets paid every time your recording is used, streamed, or licensed. If you signed something in 2018 without reading it carefully, there's a reasonable chance the answer isn't you. This isn't a scare story — it's a prompt to understand the four revenue streams attached to every song you create: master royalties, publishing royalties, sync fees, and performance royalties.
Each one has a different owner, a different collecting body, and a different path to your bank account. Understanding the architecture doesn't require a lawyer. It requires about forty minutes and the willingness to treat your catalog like the asset it is.
Get the Career Playbook
Forty pages on royalty splits, sync pitching, tour budgeting, and turning Tuesday sessions into sustainable income. No fluff. No paywalls. Just the playbook nobody handed you.
The curriculum nobody
put in your syllabus.
Six deep-dive topic areas. Each one a gap between where music school ends and where the industry begins.
12,000 musicians
building on purpose.
Gigging singers, bedroom producers, session players, and touring artists — all finding the same thing: the business is learnable, and learning it changes everything.
I've played 200 shows and never understood publishing splits. Cadence explained it in one essay, clearly, without making me feel like an idiot. That piece alone was worth more than my music business elective.
Maya Okonkwo
Singer-songwriter · Nashville, TN
I was selling beats on Instagram for $30 a pop. After reading the sync licensing guide, I landed my first TV placement in eight weeks. The specific email template alone was worth the subscribe.
Jordan Reyes
Producer & beatmaker · Los Angeles, CA
Session work felt like begging before I read the rates piece. Now I have a rate card, a contract template, and I turned down a gig last month because it was below my floor. That's a first.
Priya Subramaniam
Session violinist · Chicago, IL
Ready to earn your next note?
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