Who Am I

Hey everyone, I’m Andrew Southworth. I’m a former mechanical engineer turned YouTuber, music artist, entrepreneur and podcaster. My channel has over 7 million views and I have around 100k followers cross-platform online.

You’ll find I don’t talk about myself much in my content, but since this is an ‘about me page’ it’s all about me. Hope you find this interesting!

Quick Facts About Me

1. I was born in October, 1991 in Massachusetts. I’m 31 as of writing this.
2. I starting learning how to play guitar when I was 12, and singing when I was 14. Music has been a huge part of my life since then.
3. I was accepted to Berklee College of Music for guitar / audio production but didn’t go because I couldn’t afford it.
4. I received a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2016 and immediately starting working in the industry, receiving my Masters degree in 2018.
5. I’ve been making YouTube videos since 2007, but I didn’t start taking it seriously until 2018.
6. I’ve worked with thousands of artists, managers and labels 1-on-1, thousands more in my courses, and have managed over 100 million streams worth of campaigns for my clients.

My Journey

I built my first 5,000 subscribers on YouTube teaching metal screaming vocal lessons and guitar lessons. Many of these videos are still online today. You’ll notice they had bad lighting, bad thumbnails, bad titles etc. However, I was teaching something that at the time not many people were teaching so people subscribed and learned from me.

Eventually I switched to music production focused content. Around 2018 when I got my Masters degree I started taking my channel more seriously, learning about lighting, thumbnails, titles and other things that make a good YouTube video.

I decided that 2019 was going to be the year I figured out how to market my music online. That year I hired multiple companies, purchased thousands of dollars in Spotify playlist promotion, and dabbled in trying to make Facebook ads work for music. Eventually I found a viable strategy with Facebook ads.

Early 2020 I started making YouTube videos sharing the things I was trying to market my music, and these videos drastically exceeded expectations. I decided to go 100% all-in on music marketing and music business on my channel. This was an amazing year for me, and it is very likely the COVID lockdowns contributed to this growth since every music artist in the world was learning how to market their music online.

Over the years my subscribers started asking for courses, consultations and services. So I provided those for them. I don’t have a background in business or marketing so i’ve been figuring all of this out on my own through trial and error and lots of research.

My Businesses

My main business is called Genera Studios, and everything I do under that is in the pursuit of helping artists and labels grow their fanbase. Fun-fact, genera is the plural of genus, which is a categorization of species. I called my company Genera Studios because I wanted it to be the top level umbrella that all of my ‘species’ operated under.

My courses and consulting are directly under the Genera Studios brand, and I use it as my record label for my music. But I have several other brands I use under Genera Studios.

• MusicFunnels – a place for music artists to build their website, store, funnels and email list for one low monthly price
• Melodist – unlimited music distribution for one low annual price
• Forbid Media – digital marketing solutions for music artists and labels
• Music Growth Machine – my music marketing blog
• Music Marketing Monday – my music marketing newsletter
• Modern Music Marketing – my music marketing podcast

Seeing them all written out, i’m realizing thats a LOT of ‘M’s.

My Advice

If you’re an aspiring content creator, music artist, entrepreneur or whatever, I do have some words of wisdom to share that might be of help.

• Nothing happens overnight, get used to failure. I uploaded 700+ videos to get where I am today and along the way i’ve experience thousands of failures. You need to be ready for a long-term game.
• Persistency is better than talent. I don’t feel that I am particularly “talented“, but what I am is consistent and persistent. I will sit down and put in the hard work on something for years if I believe in it, and I will take the time to learn the skills I need.
• Value is everything. Everything you create should provide value to the people it was designed for. Whether that means you’re teaching people to overcome a problem or writing a song that will get people through those dark moments in life. It should be obvious who your content is for and why they should consume it.
• You don’t need to be the best in the world at something to be able to provide value to people. You just need to be better than most average people. I’m very likely not the best music marketer in the world, or the best Facebook advertiser in the world. However i’m better than the vast majority of people and i’m good at breaking down complex information and conveying it to people in a language they can understand.
• Doing something consistently for 6-12 months is better than outputting 4X as much content and giving up after 1 month.
• Done is better than perfect. Everything you do should be valuable and have reasonable quality, but obsessing over everything being perfect will ruin you. The quantity will give you the quality over time.