Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Seeger.
Hi Jacob, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I had been releasing music as an artist since 2015. Admittedly, the music was not good back then, but thankfully it led me to attending Northeastern University’s music industry program which gave me the opportunity to work at Glassnote Records and Island Records before graduating in 2019. After working at those companies, equipped with more knowledge of the ins and outs of the music business, I was more inspired than ever to graduate and hit the ground running as an artist. So upon graduating, I decided to pursue an artist career full-time.
Part of navigating the world as an artist involves hiring marketing companies to promote your music, which I was eager to do at the time. However the outcome unfortunately always leads to being repeatedly disappointed by those marketing companies. Their goal was always the same: put $1000 in and get X thousands of streams out. My goal was different – I just wanted 100 people who cared rather than 30,000 streams from people who didn’t. So while those marketing companies succeeded in delivering what they promised, their deliverable wasn’t satisfactory for my goals as an artist.
Frustrated but inspired to take matters into my own hands, I began taking courses online about how to run digital marketing campaigns. I learned about the full customer journey of what it meant to convert a stranger into a fan – including the psychology behind making someone want to listen to your music (in short: don’t ask people that don’t know you to do something for you). So I started running campaigns for my music.
With little budget, my music wound up getting over 1M streams, hundreds of sync placements on CBS, and most importantly, thousands of fans who really cared. They would make covers of my music, send messages showing their support, and even make fan art – all of which was completely mind-blowing to me. I had only believed a fanbase like that was reserved for superstars with major labels backing them. To my surprise, I was able to get a true fanbase solely through my digital marketing efforts.
Naturally, this led me to help out some friends with their marketing, most notably Will Tenney of SunPop. He gave me my first opportunity to do marketing services for the artists on his roster because of the work he saw me do for my artist project. I came into all of my campaigns with the belief that every artist has an audience, you just have to know where to find them. Digital marketing gave me the opportunity to help other artists reach their perfect audiences and build a fanbase like I had built for myself. It was an extremely fulfilling and rewarding feeling being able to do this for others, so I pivoted.
Shortly after beginning to help artists I formed the business Domno to provide these marketing services under. Thanks to the marketing services I was providing, I got to meet tons of incredibly talented artists and artist managers. This led me to begin managing the rising artist Jules Brave, who garnered one million+ streams in her debut year because I got to use my experience in marketing in tandem with the relationships I was making through Domno to further her career in music.
Since starting Domno over two years ago, we now have clients from major labels to indie artists, which has been super exciting to watch over the years (https://www.domno.co/clients). It was all super organic; making music led me to marketing which led me to starting to Domno which allowed me to take on management clients. Now I’m excited to be looking to the future of music and tech.
A huge focus for me now is on providing software solutions for problems in music. While running Domno, I noticed that there are some challenges artists and labels face that digital marketing may not be able to solve. Therefore I spent practically all of 2022 honing in on my software development skills and identifying key pain points in the music industry that could use solving. For example, I recently developed the platform “Levelr” alongside Anthony Pacheco which analyzes artists’ TikTok accounts and gives them personalized tips on how to grow their presence. I also developed “Cutdown”, an automated video cropper tool which formats videos into social media and advertising formats so that artists don’t have to use a video editor to perform repetitive tasks.
Some side notes:
1) I also run a TikTok page focused on AI and tech which has garnered over 30M views, 100K followers, and 4.2M likes. This started just out of being a nerd for emerging tech. I am always on the lookout for emerging tech and signing up for early access to products. Therefore when I got early access to Dall-E 2, I decided to take it to TikTok and it turned into a following of 100k other nerds like me who enjoy the same kind of content. Now, I’m grateful to partner on videos with companies like Microsoft and Notion! It’s been fun.
2) I initially got introduced to software development by creating multiple iOS mobile games when I was releasing music in an effort to drive value to my existing fanbase. I wound up loving the process so much that it naturally led me to learning how to create SaaS (software as a service) products for the music industry, as I mentioned earlier. I also developed custom tools for my business Domno which helps streamline the process, cutting my workload in half by removing repetitive tasks from my workflows.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh absolutely! Below are some to name a few:
1) As an artist, most companies you’ll work with won’t care about your success. As mentioned on the previous page, I was always so disappointed by other companies’ results which was very defeating at the time. I’m grateful that I had people around me like my brother, Aaron, who helped point me in the direction of learning digital marketing. I’m also very grateful to my girlfriend, Shannon, who also was a constant source of motivation during those times. If you’re deciding to be an artist, it’s important to have unrelenting belief in yourself. If you rely on others for validation, it will be tough for you. If it helps to know, my number one criteria for my music was that I need to want to blast it in my car. If I don’t like it, how can I expect others to? Be your own biggest fan, and you won’t need to rely on external validation.
2) Also an artist, people will despise you for absolutely no reason. I’ve had people be incredibly disrespectful directly to my face (literally while performing on stage) and at other times behind my back. When pursuing any career, but especially in the arts, it can be especially challenging pushing through the disrespect of others. At least it’ll give you thick skin!
3) People often think running your own business means not working for anyone. It’s actually the opposite – now instead of working for one person, you work for multiple clients. I still love it anyway.
4) Having my business be completely dependent on third parties to provide services, like Meta or TikTok for example, has become problematic at times. If they decided one day to suspend my account (which has happened), or even worse to remove advertising as an offering altogether, my business would suffer. I had this realization last summer when some accounts were wrongfully suspended, exposing the flaws in my business to me and ultimately prompting me to need to pivot. This was one of the big reasons why I began looking to create software products since having a product that you OWN is the only surefire way to not have potentially devastating dependencies.
5) Music as a business is a challenging space. The road isn’t always clear on what to do next or how to get there. As a marketing service, people will look to you to solve their problems without fail. However, the nature of music is that it’s based on a product (aka song) that people would enjoy. Therefore if people don’t enjoy the song, the marketing won’t work. Knowing how to manage expectations and work with people is a valuable skill I learned through the challenges of running Domno.
We’ve been impressed with Domno, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Domno solves the problems I had as an artist. The primary goal is to always take a fans-first, hands-on, boutique approach towards running digital ad campaigns with a strong focus on driving conversions to fan growth and streaming. Each campaign is custom-tailored specifically to the promoted song(s) and carefully monitored 24/7 to ensure that the perfect target audiences are being reached. In other words, we care… a lot! Our goal is not just about numbers, but about the long-term success of our clients which separates us from most marketing agencies out there. The way in which we do this is through digital advertising campaigns that focus on converting strangers into fans, not just impressions or clicks. It’s important that you actually see the results of your marketing dollars.
I am most proud of the fact that the results that our clients get are genuine and long-term. Most clients that run a campaign will sustain the same momentum that they had during the campaign for months after the campaign has ended. This demonstrates that the new fans they gained were real, engaged listeners – not just passive streams for the month that need to be sustained with more fake streams.
I’m also extremely proud to say that in the 2+ years that Domno has been active, I have not needed to spend a dollar marketing my business to get clients. It has grown extremely fast and organically based on word-of-mouth, starting with my friend Will Tenney. I’m fortunate to say the results have spoken for themselves, prompting introductions to others who may be in need of the service.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I strongly believe in taking calculated risks and betting on yourself is the single best thing you can do to set yourself up so that big risks don’t feel that scary to take. Betting on yourself means investing time and energy into bettering yourself for the future version of you, even if you don’t see an immediate return on your “investment.” It’s scary and unknown, and you don’t quite know if it’s worth it in the moment. You may not know if it’s worth it for several years in all honesty, but betting on yourself sets you up for infinite potential. Actions that I did years ago for free, are now the very same things that bring in money for myself and my business today. I am always trying to set myself up in a way that I am ABLE to take risks, rather than feeling like I NEED to in order to survive. By always learning and pushing myself today, I am able to decide which risks I can and want to take tomorrow. In my opinion, this is the ultimate form of freedom so that you can decide how you want to spend your time and energy. With enough preparation and experience, that “scary feeling” of taking a risk can be mitigated – that’s where the word “calculated” comes into play.
When I graduated college I decided to pursue an artist career full-time. Instead of applying to jobs, I spent my time getting better at writing, recording, producing, mixing, etc. when I could’ve been working towards a more stable career path. By doing so, I was facing the potential risk of failure, losing time on my resume, or missing important milestones that friends and colleagues are achieving through their jobs.
By the time I learned digital marketing and did it for myself, choosing to take on clients for the first time felt risky. I was risking managing other people’s money, being responsible for their successes/failures, and ultimately changing my career path from artist to marketing. However, my experience with marketing myself made me feel prepared to take a leap and take on clients. Since it came so naturally, I felt that was important to follow that rather than try and force it away and just focus on just my artistic career (and am very glad I did!). That ultimately led to the formation of Domno.
That same sentiment has been repeated time and time again throughout my story. From competing in local competitions (https://bit.ly/422aO56) and publishing my work and art to the public to starting multiple businesses – risk-taking had started to feel more like second nature simply due to the preparation that went into it beforehand. That doesn’t mean risk-taking always came easily or without fail though.
There were MANY times that I doubted my ability to succeed at any capacity. It can require a good amount of mental fortitude to continue pushing through that. When taking a big risk felt too daunting, I tried to approach it from a place of small victories instead. The single best thing I did during moments of doubt was simply to focus on the steps in front of me rather than the bigger (arguably almost unattainable…) picture at the end of the tunnel. Small accomplishments kept me grounded, focused, and motivated and make what others might see as “risky” not feel too risky after all.
It is important to note that after graduating, I was lucky enough to be able to stay home with my mother so that I could save money while focusing on my artistic career. That helped take the stress off of relying on my income to pay rent, especially since it was basically $0 at that time. I tried to make smart decisions given the opportunities I had access to at the time, like staying at home so that I didn’t have to struggle financially.
I completely recognize that not everyone has the privilege of having great parents like I do or the ability to stay at home with them and therefore may need to take a stable job to support themselves while they work towards their long-term goals. Some risks definitely are bigger than others, and not every risk can be completely mitigated with preparation. At the end of the day, risk-taking is tough, and doing whatever you can do to prepare will put you ahead.
Pricing:
- Domno starts at $1,000 minimum per campaign
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jacobseeger.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacob.seeger/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-seeger
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/jacobseeger
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/jacobseeger
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@jacob.seeger
Image Credits
The performance shot was taken by Joe Sung-Rae.
