Creative Space with Jennifer Logue

From Indie Promoter to Sonicbids CEO: Dan Melnick's Unique Journey in the Music Industry (Part 1 of 2)

• Jennifer Logue

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In the exciting Season 3 premiere of Creative Space, we chat with Dan Melnick, indie music promoter-turned-CEO of Sonicbids, for an insightful two-part conversation about his incredible journey in the music industry.

In Part 1, Dan shares his early beginnings—how a football injury led him to discover a passion for music and launch his own company, Turnstyle Music Group. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at how Dan navigated the transition from entrepreneurship to getting his first role at Sonicbids and working his way up to GM in a few short years.

Whether you're an aspiring music professional, an indie artist, or simply curious about the inner workings of the music business, this episode is packed with valuable insights and lessons from Dan’s unique career trajectory.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we catch up on how Dan went from working for Sonicbids to becoming its CEO and co-owner in the span of a few months. 

SHOW NOTES:

0:00—Introduction
1:08—Dan's journey to music
5:50—Launching Turnstyle Music Group
9:51—The realities of life as an indie promoter
14:58—Defining creativity 
22:26—Dan’s transition from Turnstyle to Sonicbids
33:25—Embracing an entrepreneurial mindset as an employee

For more on Dan Melnick and Sonicbids, visit: sonicbids.com.

To sign up for the weekly Creative Space newsletter, visit: http://eepurl.com/h8SJ9b.

To become a patron of the Creative Space podcast, visit: https://bit.ly/3ECD2Kr.

Jennifer Logue:

Just a quick note before we begin the first interview episode of season three. This is actually a two-part interview, so I originally recorded this interview with Dan back in December of 2023, but just as I was about to release it, I got word that Dan's role had changed quite a bit at SonicBids. So I thought how about we do an update interview and turn this into a two-part episode? In this first part, we'll dive into Dan's journey in the music industry how a sports injury led him to learn guitar, how he started his own company after college, termed Style Music Group, and what led him to leave entrepreneurship behind to join SonicBids. Enjoy the conversation and stay tuned to part two, where we catch up on everything that's changed since then.

Jennifer Logue:

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together. I'm your host, jennifer Logue, and today we have the pleasure of chatting with Dan Melnick, general manager at Sonic Bids as well as professor at NYU and Rock Nation. Dan and I go way back, as I was one of the many artists he booked at shows in New York City and beyond through his company, turnstile Music Group. Dan's story is so interesting, first of all because he's made a career out of what he's passionate about music and he also went from working for himself to working his way up at a larger company, which I feel like most entrepreneurs do the opposite. So it'll be cool to get his unique perspective on how, you know, this has shaped his outlook and everything, and how he applies what he's learned as an entrepreneur within a corporate structure. Anyways, welcome to Creative Space, dan. It's been a minute.

Dan Melnick:

Hey.

Jennifer Logue:

Jen, how's it going? Going pretty well, going pretty well here in Philly. How's NYC Flash Connecticut?

Dan Melnick:

Well, yeah, how's Connecticut professional, but um I'm.

Jennifer Logue:

I'm up in the woods right now in.

Dan Melnick:

CT with the fam and uh, and I'm in the city once a week so I got to be. I got to see he actually this week at the Academy of New York City Halloween. Compared to Connecticut Halloween because I went out to some bars in both Connecticut and New York over the weekend. They're very different, very different. Yeah, they're different scenes. I do have to say I prefer the New York. It's a little more lively.

Jennifer Logue:

A little more fun. I mean, what's the scene like in Connecticut for Halloween?

Dan Melnick:

Well, let's say, I walked into the bar to meet a friend of mine on Saturday night. Walked into the bar to meet a friend of mine on Saturday night and there was an elderly woman stumbling out, drunk, with a mid-30s woman following her saying Mother, no, come back. And I'm like, where am I? This is wow. That's Connecticut.

Jennifer Logue:

That sounds pretty interesting to me. I don't know, that's like the beginning of like a TV show. Yeah.

Dan Melnick:

I mean it's like the beginning of a sad TV show on HBO. It's not going to be on a sitcom. I'm going to need somebody to sort.

Jennifer Logue:

Hey, depending on your perspective, True. And how's Sonic bids? How's everything?

Dan Melnick:

It's good. You know we're staying really busy. We've got a lot of irons and a lot of fires. We've gone through some massive changes over the last six months. I think I'm starting year eight this January, which is insane to think, which is actually getting very close to how many years I was at Turnstile. So I've it's a lot of it's. It's very exciting. It's nothing earth shattering, but it is for me in a lot of ways. So I'm excited about the short and long-term future of everything.

Jennifer Logue:

Wonderful. I can't believe it's been eight years. That's incredible. So we have never talked about your background, your early life, your career beginnings. So I'm going to go way back for myself and also for everybody else listening. But where are you from originally?

Dan Melnick:

Long Island. I almost said Strong Island Island. It didn't really sound terrible.

Jennifer Logue:

It's a Long Island okay, cool, uh, and were you always into music?

Dan Melnick:

no, actually, um, I was a football player and lacrosse player and I shattered my leg in like six places.

Jennifer Logue:

Whoa.

Dan Melnick:

I think it was my senior, yeah, my senior year of high school and I was in like a wheelchair for a couple of weeks and my and my dad was like, hey, I'm going to get your guitar, do you want my old guitar? And I was like, yeah. So then I taught myself how to play guitar, um, um, while I was in recovery for those few months and, um, yeah, I like really got into it, like really into it, really really quickly. Um, even to a point where I, uh, I actually ended up winning the battle of the bands for my high school. That that, uh, june wow myself. But in that fall which is crazy I'd never noticed that until just now. And then from there I was addicted all throughout college.

Jennifer Logue:

Yeah, who were your big music inspirations around that time?

Dan Melnick:

Around that time. David G Matthews, I'm not ashamed to say it.

Jennifer Logue:

Nothing to be ashamed about, oh my gosh.

Dan Melnick:

Oh, there's an amazing like underground music industry subculture of people who actually like Dave Matthews, but don't say that they like Dave Matthews, and we all get together at the bar once a year. Oh my gosh, that's awesome.

Jennifer Logue:

I don't get how some people in the music industry can be snobbish about certain artists.

Dan Melnick:

I think that a lot of people's I mean there's, let's just say there's a percentage of people in the music industry whose entire personalities are being snobbish about their musical tastes.

Jennifer Logue:

So oh, that's true, that's it, that's the entire that's, that's it.

Dan Melnick:

That's the entire. That's that's their dating profile.

Jennifer Logue:

Oh, that's rough, okay, well, I guess they won't go to a concert with you and you're reading I don't know.

Dan Melnick:

I, I I've never put much weight into like what kind of music somebody's in, like I don't care, like just be a quality human being and that's really what I care about. I'm not gonna like I don't know. I feel like that's.

Jennifer Logue:

That's a lot of wasted, emotional real estate I agree, although I do like when people like music. That's always a good. I did meet somebody in my life who did not like music. Oh, I don't like music. Yeah that was weird.

Dan Melnick:

Oh, okay, so what? And I'm like, ooh, okay, so what do you listen to while you're driving?

Jennifer Logue:

They like silence.

Dan Melnick:

Silence. That's sociopathic behavior. Yeah, so let's say I judge that, I'll judge that with you. I'll go on. Not the particular taste, but just the general ability to appreciate the art form.

Jennifer Logue:

Music of all kinds. It's all wonderful, yeah, but when did you know you wanted to work in the music business?

Dan Melnick:

Not until senior year of college. Actually, I started gigging my junior year of college and I think I went to Quinnipiac and I was convinced at the time that I was going to end up where all the other media production majors at quinnipiac ended up, which was espn in connecticut, that's where they're based.

Dan Melnick:

Um, and towards the, towards the end of my senior year I was like I just I want to do something in music industry and, hilariously, I was a music minor, um, but those classes were like composition and theory based, so there was no music business teaching at all or courses at all. So when I graduated I was kind of f***ed up. No one. The other thing is, no one ever told me because I'm old, so no one told me when I was in college that it was a good idea to intern. That was never said.

Dan Melnick:

I feel like that would be a good thing for colleges to tell their kids, um, but uh, so I didn't. So not only did I not know who the players were, but like the different facets of the industry, because there's so many different buckets. It's a huge industry but there's so many different avenues to go to. I remember like walking up to literally going to the red light management offices in Wall Street when I was like 22, with printed out resumes, trying to get upstairs to like give someone my resume at the front desk and being turned away by the door guy being like you can't do that, man, you gotta set an appointment someone. I'm like cool and here I am, wall street just by myself and, um, funny is like, a few years later is at their christmas parties. So it worked out in a weird way. Those are some awesome christmas parties that used to just throw so yeah.

Jennifer Logue:

So how did you eventually get in? Was it you starting your own company? Did you make your own way in?

Dan Melnick:

It's that period of time that I think a lot of people kind of hit the post-college like what am I going to do with my life, thing Right, which is always scary for everyone. It was a tough time for me, for sure. I remember it and I it sucks too, because I remember it. I was stressed out all the time but really it was a great time. It was a great time of my life, but I wasn't able to appreciate it at the time.

Dan Melnick:

But you know all my all my students and my interns I'm like you got to just be patient with life and just keep going and try not to get too much in your head in that in that time period, just because it's such a time. It's a tough time for everybody. But so I did what a lot of people do and I literally reached out to like every single human being I ever met and like everyone, everyone I ever met, looking for jobs. Um, and uh, two people got back to me and one was um, the guitar shop in whistler mountain, british columbia. Um, to work at their guitar shop for Ruben Board. So I would move from New York to above Vancouver.

Jennifer Logue:

Wow.

Dan Melnick:

The other one was a guy named Markel and he used to do booking at a small club in Lower East Side called 169 Bar.

Jennifer Logue:

I remember that place.

Dan Melnick:

It's actually still there and Charles still runs it and it's wow. It really is like a historical venue.

Jennifer Logue:

at this point they don't do live music there anymore.

Dan Melnick:

They put a table there, but it's the same aesthetic and, yeah, I've been there for a few cocktails here and there over the years, here and there, and it's great that it's still there. He used to book shows there. He used to do the classic $10 ticket first, 10 door deal thing. We started working together under the guise of Markel Entertainment. I was doing all the booking of Markel Entertainment. I was doing all the booking. Yeah, we, we, I did so. I set up three months of of booking Thursday, friday, saturday for this club called Julep on 9th Avenue A. But my spider sense started tingling within the first, within a month of our first show, because we really hadn't heard from our contact there in a while and I just I was texting him and calling him and just not getting anything back and eventually I text back and be like saying club sold, sorry.

Jennifer Logue:

Oh wow.

Dan Melnick:

So I worked for $0 at this point for about two months setting up this calendar of three, three months of shows, sleeping on a friend's couch Thanks Chris and literally surviving off his leftover Chinese food, and it was rough. It was a rough time but I was excited and I was like, all right, well, this sucks, but I'm like. You know, those things happen and they happen a lot in my life. I guess at that point where you have two options you either like fold or you just go forward. So I decided, by myself, to take the train into the city from Brooklyn and I started in the lorry side and I went up and down every single street physically and I started at probably about 11 am and I went to every bar I could to try to talk to the bar manager to see if there was any space that we could rent all of these bands that were already booked with us.

Dan Melnick:

I started there, I went from East Village, lower East Side, to West Village, you know the Bitter End area, the LPR area, and then I ended up in Tribeca, just hoofing it like an absolute psychopath, and I walked into this bar called Uncle Mike's and when I walked in I was like, oh, this is it. And when I walked in I was like, oh, this is it. There was a railroad long bar that opened up at the end with a stage with literal means and stage lighting already set up, but there was a pool table on the stage and I talked to the manager who was there. And there was a construction bar right around the block from the World Trade Center that at the time was still getting constructed and he was like yeah, go ahead.

Dan Melnick:

But they didn't have a PA system, they just had those means. So I had to, I, I got my, got got my PA which I had actually at my house in Connecticut and cause we're up there and got bought a backline and Thursday, friday, saturday for the two and a half years I think we were there, we were bringing up the whole back line from downstairs, setting it up, having all these people there and breaking everything down, putting it back in the basement for it to change into a part of the next day and, yeah, we grew from there.

Jennifer Logue:

So this is creative space and I love asking this question of everyone. Uh, but how do you define creativity?

Dan Melnick:

Ooh, that's a good. You know, I was actually going to ask you that question when you brought that up, right, Good?

Jennifer Logue:

to flip it yeah.

Dan Melnick:

All right, I'll go first, but I definitely want to hear your answer. I'll say creativity is the reorganization of a thing to solve a problem that the individual sees that others may not. Yeah, Okay.

Jennifer Logue:

Sound or paint or stone or a business, the reorganization of those things that a little bit, but to say, for me it's a force, it's an energy, and it just takes different shapes, it takes different forms. You know, it's this force that moves us to create something, to change something, to make something happen. It's like, if you were to break it down to its very fundamental element, it's like it's this force and we can either, and we all have it. It's like it's this force and we can either, and we all have it, and we can either choose to tap into it or not. And I think when you don't, that's when, like you know, we start to have problems in life. That's just at least my experience. But fundamentally, I think it's a force by totally. There's no right or wrong answer to this. Fundamentally, I think it's a force by totally. There's no right or wrong answer to this. But I love how you described it as well, like the reorganization of something and that thing can be anything, because you're taking one thing and you're transmuting it into something else.

Dan Melnick:

Yeah, Like even my boy with like Legos. That's creative.

Jennifer Logue:

Yes, yeah, and kids, like have the best grasp of it because they haven't let the world get to them yet.

Dan Melnick:

Which also that also I think, makes the best art when the world actually does get to you.

Jennifer Logue:

You think?

Dan Melnick:

I do, I really do. I think that's probably when you most need to create you know, but yeah, yeah, both, both are great, both are great.

Jennifer Logue:

Cool. So for listeners who may not be familiar with music promotion, you know how would you describe and you talked about quite a bit on the podcast already but what's like a day in the life, like of a music promoter. I mean you're booking bands, you're setting up the venues, you're setting up the back line, like you were talking about.

Dan Melnick:

Yeah, I mean, I think what's funny is the different varieties of music. Promoters also exist. Promoters also, um, exist. Uh, I, I say to to when I teach kids, um, you know, there's a, there's a threshold, um, in the size of venues and the size of the artists that you're working at, working with that. When you cross that threshold, it becomes it might as well become like culinary arts, because everything is different from like the independent way, the way that your independent concert booking and promotion and production organization, boom, you hit, you pay someone a guarantee that's an original artist everything is different from that point forward and that that echelon and you can you know?

Dan Melnick:

it doesn't necessarily, it's never necessarily up. The only thing that's up is the capacity of the venue. But, um, it's different, it's very different. So, uh, when I was an independent promoter, um, and there's a lot of us left, I, I'm not doing it anymore, but there's a there's a lot of them left in the world.

Dan Melnick:

I mean a day in my life back then was I worked full time Monday through Friday. I gave myself a break on Thursdays and Fridays on time, but I didn't have the ability to like take off. I mean I didn't have, we didn't have PTO.

Jennifer Logue:

We didn't have. We didn't have off days.

Dan Melnick:

Our life was our vacation. You know people were like, oh, do you travel? I'm like no, but I produce concerts in you know, new York city for a living. So that's you know. Being out at those concert was my, was my, was my off days. But we and we, we worked every Thursday night, friday night and Saturday night. Sometimes I did the doors, sometimes I was doing sound. I taught myself how to run sound early on, which was I think I did a damn good job actually, but that was what we did. So we had nightlife us and we had daytime us. So we had two, we had nightlife us and we had daytime us. And yeah, that's I mean all the booking, follow-throughs, confirmations, partnership meetings, and I was doing accounting and HR. It was a pretty crazy time for those first like nine years.

Jennifer Logue:

Wow, it's quite the life and it's a sacrifice when you're doing something you're passionate about. It's like you know there aren't days off. A lot of times you know it's. It's like it's a give and take.

Dan Melnick:

Yeah, I think that's there, isn't, I think, in all echelons of the music industry. I think there that's a common, an unfortunate commonality People that's why burnout rate is so high. It's uh, you miss a lot of things in your life. I mean, I miss. I miss like family reunions and birthdays, and um, there's a picture of me at a wedding early on with my laptop in the corner like plugging away on my laptop oh my gosh uh, because it had to be.

Dan Melnick:

you know, there's things that have to be done and I think a lot of people in a lot of music industry I'm not sure of others that well but they can relate to having to make those kinds of sacrifices. But we're not out there curing cancer, so we're making these sacrifices so we can continue to live the life that we chose to live. Um, you know, so it's uh, you know, no empathy really, but uh, it's a, it is a sacrifice that you make and it's a sacrifice, but sacrifice driven, uh, industry, because the ones, the people who are going to say yes to the things, are the people who are going to end up, you know, getting the opportunities that saying yes to the things, of the people who are going to end up getting the opportunities that saying yes to those things open up to.

Jennifer Logue:

Yes, everyone's on a unique journey and all the musicians who worked with you during those years, and myself being one of them, we really appreciated the opportunity to play and to have a culture of indie music where there was that opportunity.

Dan Melnick:

I liked it. There's so much, there's so much off of that. Like it's crazy. Like just last week, this guy used to play turnstile shows. Back in 2015 he played a turnstile show because he hit me up, he's on linkedin. He's like hey, like I used to play turnstile shows. Um, you know, just wanted to catch up and say hi, and now we're already working on an event together with one of the brands that he works with this December.

Jennifer Logue:

Love it.

Dan Melnick:

But, like I run into people at these random things and they've been like, oh yeah, I used to love turnstile and there is nothing in New York that has replaced it since we left in I think it was 2000. I think it wrapped in 2016. I believe was like it's december 2016 and I said I started sonica's in 2017. There was another, there was a few companies that came up and fizzled while we were doing it.

Dan Melnick:

Uh, there was one company that and this is the other side- of it is they spent too much time with the artists that they booked, so they made individual flyers for every single act. That's a lot of work, different art they promoted. I think they bought Facebook ads for their shows, but it didn't work, because you can't spend that much time on any individual act when you're trying to do anything at scale, because you also, as a person, need to be able to make enough money to eat.

Jennifer Logue:

It's important to have that business savvy because it's easy to get caught up. It's easy to not run a business the right way. You know you don't have that perspective, but now you've made the move from working for yourself to now you are the general manager at SonicBids, but you first were the director of partnerships. So you, you know, moved up. For people who don't know SonicBids what's like, what's it all about?

Dan Melnick:

people who don't know. Sonic vids what's like? What's it all about? Oh, yeah, so like the, the quick elevator pitch for sonic vids is we like to think of it as linkedin premium for musicians. Um, it's a place to to have your, your profile as an artist on the career side, um, available for people to share. Um, looking for new gig opportunities that are paid opportunities in some manner, and then, on the other side of things, we post jobs essentially.

Dan Melnick:

So when I first started, I was actually the promoter development lead there. So it was my job to just get new venues and festivals and opportunities for the platform. And, yeah, over the years my role there developed into partnerships director because I figured out some stuff to make things easier and better on the development side. So I also took on some more responsibilities to sponsor and produce things to get brand sponsors. So we worked with like Valley Presents on some events. We did like some Ex-Ambassador stuff. We had Fantastic Negrito at Brooklyn Bowl. We were sponsoring events for a little while and then also producing events that gained brand sponsors and the whole thing was we tried to do as many events as possible. That's when I was Partnerships Director and it worked out really well too. But yeah, that's SonicBids is at its very basis. It's an opportunity directory and also posting state for like your LinkedIn profile as a musician Cool.

Jennifer Logue:

So what brought about that change? When you decided, like you know, I want to make the move into working for a company I believe in, rather than being the person in charge of the whole company?

Dan Melnick:

So it was burnout, yeah, so. So I got burned out. It was like my early thirties. We actually we, we, we took a big L on a big deal that we put all of our eggs in. I won't name the brand, but we had a brand.

Dan Melnick:

We worked with Miller Coors for three years on Rolsh and Coors Bank with funded concert series, which was a large part of what we were at the time as Turnstile. It allowed us to do so much more and give our artists better opportunities, like opening up for larger artists, that large group, um, and we talked, we were, we met a brand at south by and we're talking to them about the things that we did with, uh, of course, banquet, and they loved it, they loved the idea, and so we pivoted and I went out and I got all the venues that we were working with to to have this product on uh on site and get ready for this. You know, I think it was 2017 or maybe 26, it was maybe 2016 concert series, um, and things kind of drag along, but they do when you do brands, like it takes months to get anything actually done. Um, so like, if anyone out there is ever working with a brand like, give yourself three to four months.

Jennifer Logue:

That's great advice.

Dan Melnick:

Yeah, but so that was normal. But what happened was we jumped on the final phone call. We had a, we had the proposal approved and everything and and I was like, look, we're good to go Like. And I was like, look, we're good to go, like I got all the product and all the venues that we're at. And the guy's like, oh, hold up what he's like. So you got all the product at the venues that you work at. And he's like I'm like, yeah, we're good to go. And he goes, oh, then why do we need you?

Jennifer Logue:

Oh, my gosh.

Dan Melnick:

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So I would say Miller Coors, really, really great company when it came to just being like moral and ethical, and this other company basically just used me as a free brand, fmm, for them to be placed in all these other, these other venues. So we lost that deal, which was, which was our driver for the year and, um, that caused a lot of stress for myself, um, it was brutal and uh, I I, at that point I'm like, look, I'm tired, of tired of wearing 17 different hats and, and you know, driving this forward and you know, depending on the accountability of things that I don't have control over, which I think is the definition of being an independent music promoter and I want to see how the other half lives.

Dan Melnick:

And I didn't put my resume out there for over eight years at that point. So I let my business partners know, like, here, I'm going to go, look to go see what's out there. And then, within you know, I let my business partners know I'm like here, I'm going to go, look to go see what's out there. Um, and then within six weeks I landed at Sonic.

Jennifer Logue:

Bids, like which is great Um and uh.

Dan Melnick:

funny. Funny thing is that the main reason that I left was to like not have to wear 10 hats. And now I'm GM of Sonic Bids and now I'm doing the same exact thing that I had the turnstile eight years later. But it worked out because I did like. Over those first couple of years when I was at SonicBids I was itching, I felt the itch to get back and do more things and control things, and stuff like that.

Jennifer Logue:

So how does it feel to work for a large? Do you think it's? Do you have a better work-life balance compared to when you ran the thing yourself like your own company?

Dan Melnick:

If I didn't have a family with two kids then I would probably say yes, but there is no work-life balance. You're right, it just doesn't exist. When you exist, there's no, there's no break, there's no break. I would, I think I would. No. Yes, there was a couple of years there when I first started, before children, and it was non-burnout. I loved going to the office and commuting and I loved getting a morning coffee out there and sitting at my desk in the office. Like getting a morning coffee out there and going and sitting at my desk in the office and just, you know, putting on my headphones and plugging away and going home and and you know, rinse, repeat. I really did like those days a lot. Plus, it was a music company.

Dan Melnick:

So, like in music companies, you're able to do things and you're, you know you're, I mean we're, I think we started cracking beers at the office at like five o'clock on on Thursdays and Fridays and you know, or Fridays I couldn't do two in a row, but uh, and then going out to events of sorts and stuff, and it was, it was better, yeah, Um, but COVID sucked.

Jennifer Logue:

COVID, yes, sucked for everyone, but especially for music live music, especially. Um. How do you bring your entrepreneurship experience into your role now?

Dan Melnick:

so I'm basically doing very similar things that I did at turnstile for on many, many different levels. Like um, brand partnerships is a huge thing that we're working on we're actually working with. One of the offshoots that we're doing at sonofits right now is working with independent venues to help develop their brand partnership departments, where most independent venues don't have those things. So we're working with them on developing that programming and the same software developments that we had already set our own custom software for Turnstile, which is a big thing, big thing with, actually, a friend of mine who I met, who worked for Red Light, and Dave Matthews helped me develop this amazing software that linked our Boston, philly, sf and New York bases together, so we were able to easily book in all four of those markets with Turnstile. So we're using some of the things that we had at Turnstile to develop now into our Sonic Bids platform and our software that we have there because we need a software upgrade for sure.

Jennifer Logue:

That's so cool because you have to think on your feet. When you're an entrepreneur, you know and sometimes it can be years ahead of where the corporations are.

Dan Melnick:

I can tell you one thing I learned from this difference. The difference is, I feel, like going the way that you said entrepreneur into corporate has benefited me because, like people who work for themselves, that freelancers, entrepreneurs that that know that they're only going to eat if they do x right, have a different kind of fire and drive that you just can't kill. So, since I've been working corporately, you know I didn't there was never a day that I took for granted. You know there was never. I you can't shut it off if you, if you already are built to like, you know I won't make rent unless I'm going 100 miles an hour every day where, like I remember, there's people who worked in my own corporate office that, like, would complain about the most ridiculous things, like the most like, like the snacks the free snacks was like a thing was a point of contention, and I'm, like I cannot believe that you're arguing about this, like it is insane that you're arguing about this I feel you, I feel you never been on fishbowl.

Jennifer Logue:

It could be. I won't get into that, but I'm not sure if there's a fishbowl for music industry, but it's an app yeah, I know people. Oh, you know what fishbowl is.

Dan Melnick:

Yeah, so I mean, like the snacks is a contentious issue for some people and I just I know I just like to look at things as like I just want to do the best I possibly can and then I want to go back to doing the other things that I love to do. Like I don't, like I don't like wasting time on like charcuterie board lessons with my remote work.

Dan Melnick:

Like I just want to, I just want to produce money for those who work with me or for me and those around me, and I just want to keep going. I don't like wasting time on things like that. That was the flop that I realized going between those two different kinds of cultures.

Jennifer Logue:

Cool. So you're also teaching at NYU now and Rock Nation Advice for your students. Slash anyone listening right now who's kind of like your student in a sense for sure.

Dan Melnick:

Uh, I mean, well, I do. I do give my students advice on a weekly basis. Whether they don't like it, I don't know. Um, it's, it's been fun. Uh, I like being, I like teaching my one class a week. Um, what? Let me, let me think of some of the advice that I get to my students. Oh, here's one of the things I get to my students is, and my interns and and anyone I ever meet who's in industry, music industry, um, you know, beginner, if you would, uh is that you can't dip your toe into this. So if I'm interviewing someone and they're like, um, I just want to see how the music industry is, you can't do that. You have to live it and breathe it and surround yourself with it, or it just won't work. And it's difficult, it's rewarding in different ways and it's a lifestyle. I'm glad I never regret any of the decisions, even the bad things that I think happened to me in the past. Like you mentioned, that deal, you're going to make mistakes and learn from them. It's a trip, man, it's a trip.

Jennifer Logue:

Jump all the way in. I'll just go ahead first.

Dan Melnick:

That's it. You can't take the challenge of this kind of stuff.

Jennifer Logue:

What's next for you?

Dan Melnick:

Oh, so yeah, I mean we're working on right now, I think, as I mentioned, the software updates for the company. We're working with these brand partnership deals. We have a great event on December 14th the Sonic Biz Holiday Mixer with an awesome band. It's just another band giving 100% of the profits to the artists who are performing. Awesome, it's going to be a great holiday hang. It's going to be good people there. It's open to the public. So if anyone wants to come chill and hang out and say what's up, feel free to come do that. If not, that's cool too, I guess. Awesome. Hang out and say what's up like.

Jennifer Logue:

Feel free to come do that. If not, that's cool too, I guess awesome. Well, dan, I know you have to go and pick up my children do daycare. Yes, don't leave them hanging the last time I've used each other in person.

Dan Melnick:

We were at like a bar eating sliders and drinking those big beers at national underground. This is a really big difference such a difference.

Jennifer Logue:

Time flies, but in good ways, in a lot of good ways too, you know, um. But, dan, thank you so much for taking the time to appear on the podcast. It was awesome catching up and, like man, congrats on all your success. It's it's wonderful to see how your career has grown. Anyway, I'll do your outro now. For more on Dan Melnick, you can follow him on LinkedIn and for more on SonicBids, visit sonicbidscom. And thank you so much for tuning in and growing in creativity with us. I'd love to know what you thought of today's episode. Yeah, what you found most interesting, what you found most helpful. You can reach out to me on social media at Jennifer Logue, or leave a review for Creative Space on Apple Podcasts so more people can discover it. I appreciate you so much for being here. My name is Jennifer Logue and thanks for listening to this episode of Creative Space. Until next time you.