Emily White, iVoted Festival founder, returns home to Milwaukee for music business podcast

Emily White's music career has taken her all over, figuratively and literally.

In her early twenties, she managed Dresden Dolls and Imogen Heap on the road. She's managed clients like Brendan Benson of the Raconteurs and W. Kamau Bell, and currently is a partner for a firm in New York, Collective Entertainment, that includes Pat Sansone of Wilco and Urge Overkill as clients.

And she co-founded the iVoted Festival, a massive online event designed to increase voter turnout that featured more than 400 artists, from Billie Eilish to Run The Jewels, in 2022.

And now White's career is taking her back home to Milwaukee.

Through Feb. 18, the Oconomowoc native, who grew up in Hartland, will be recording 12 episodes for the second season of her podcast "How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams" at No Studios in front of live audiences and for online viewers through volume.com. Three episodes have already been taped this month, including a season premiere conversation with Vernon Reid of Living Colour; upcoming episodes feature No Studios co-founder and Oscar-winning filmmaker John Ridley and more.

"The music industry was set up in the 1950s to confuse artists," White said. "I want to help artists here and to also illuminate opportunities for up-and-coming industry folks about stuff I wasn't aware of growing up here."

'How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams' went from a book to hit podcast

As White's career and network continued to blossom and she spoke at music conferences around the world, "musicians kept asking to get coffee and set up Zooms to pick my brain," White said. "I was having the same conversations over and over, so I thought, if I write this down for everyone, the information will be much more accessible."

That inspired White to unplug for a few weeks at the start of 2019 to write "How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams," a book she self-published in March 2020. Even though it came out during the dawn of the pandemic, when the music industry was turned upside down, it became a hit on Amazon and inspired the podcast of the same name. The podcast launched in 2021, with White interviewing guests including Justin Vernon, Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond, Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman and others.

All of White's conversations for the podcast's first season were private, largely recorded from her home, so for Season 2, she wanted to stage the discussions in a live setting to spark further discussions between guests and listeners.

And instead of taping in a city with a firmly established music industry infrastructure — like New York, Los Angeles or Nashville — she opted for Milwaukee, to put emphasis on her argument that a sustainable career in music is possible outside of a major music hub, citing Vernon's operations from Eau Claire as an example. In Milwaukee specifically, White suggests its proximity to other Midwestern markets and a more reasonable cost of living compared to larger cities make it a favorable place to grow a music career. (White has continued to keep tabs on Milwaukee's music scene from New York, inviting several local artists to participate in iVoted the last few years.)

Wisconsin guests are planned for Season 2 in Milwaukee

While the lessons from her podcast are designed to be applicable around the country — "Someone pitching to Radio Milwaukee is no different than pitching a music writer in Baltimore or Albuquerque," she said — White has lined up Wisconsin residents for some Season 2 guests.

They include Pitchfork and Rolling Stone contributor Evan Rytlewski, who'll share tips for successfully pitching radio stations and music publications; Pabst Theater Group Chief Operating Officer Matt Beringer, who'll discuss best practices for efficient touring; and Chris Moon, artist relations manager for Eau Claire-based Ambient Inks, who will discuss the ins and outs of making and selling merchandise.

"It is so moving to do this here," White said about staging the podcast in front of audiences in Milwaukee. "What's really warmed my heart is the passion the artists in the audience have had with their questions. ... Their questions are way better than mine."