Making a Scene Presents

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with The Lucky Losers

The Lucky Losers are an award-winning six-piece blues and soul band from San Francisco. Since 2019, they have won six Independent Blues Awards, including Artist of the Year for vocalist Cathy Lemons and Song of the Year for “Godless Land.” The band is fronted by Lemons, a powerful singer raised in Dallas, and Phil Berkowitz, a New Jersey–born harmonica player and vocalist known for his distinctive style. Together, they lead a band that blends blues, soul, rock, gospel, and Americana into a bold, full-band sound built mostly on original material.

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Making a Scene Presents - Focal Listen Professional Headphones - A Deep Dive Review
Why Tracking Headphones Matter More Than Most People Think

Tracking is where the music actually gets captured. This is the moment where a vocal performance is frozen in time, where a guitar part becomes permanent, and where mistakes either get fixed now or haunt you forever. Mixing can polish things later, but tracking is where the foundation is poured. If you can’t hear clearly while tracking, everything that comes after gets harder.

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Making a Scene Presents - The Hard Truth: You Already Run A Business, You Just Haven’t Admitted It Yet

If you’re releasing music and touring locally, regionally, and nationally, you’re not “trying to make it.” You’re already operating a real business. Money comes in. Money goes out. Contracts get signed. Taxes show up whether you feel ready or not. The only question is whether you’re going to run your music business on purpose, or let it run you by accident.

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Making a Scene Presents -The Indie Artist’s Guide to Writing a Real Business Plan

For independent musicians, the music business can feel confusing, overwhelming, and honestly a little intimidating. You make music because you love it, not because you dreamed of spreadsheets and contracts. But here’s the truth nobody tells you early enough: if you want music to be your career instead of an expensive hobby, you need a business plan. Not a corporate one. Not a label-style fantasy deck. A real, usable plan that reflects how music actually works today.

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Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Andrew Strong

Andrew Strong was born in Dublin in November 1973 into a deeply musical family. His father, Rob Strong, was one of Ireland’s most respected rock singers in the 1970s and remains active in music to this day. Growing up around performers and rehearsals, Andrew was drawn to music early and naturally.

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Making a Scene Presents An Interview with Ross Neilsen

Here’s a rewritten and expanded version that keeps the facts, adds context, and smooths the story into a clear, compelling narrative.

Ross Neilsen didn’t build his career in a straight line. In 2007, he quit his job, gave up his home, and moved into his car so he could follow music full-time. For the next two years he couch-surfed, slept wherever he could, and stayed on the road almost constantly. That choice shaped everything that followed. The highway became his classroom, his stage, and his home.

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Making a Scene Presents - THE HITS ACT EXPLAINED FOR INDIE MUSICIANS (NO LAW DEGREE REQUIRED)

If you’ve ever finished a recording project, felt proud of the music, and then felt sick when you added up the studio bills, this article is for you. Recording costs hit indie musicians before the money comes in, sometimes long before. The HITS Act exists because lawmakers finally recognized that problem and tried to fix part of it.

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Making a Scene Presents - Unreal Engine 5.7 For Music Videos A Deep Dive Review

Epic Games built Unreal Engine to make video games, but that is no longer the most interesting use case. Over the last few years, Unreal has quietly become one of the most powerful tools for film, television, and music visuals. Version 5.7 continues that shift. It is not a toy, and it is not a filter. It is a real-time world-building engine that lets independent musicians create cinematic environments that used to require soundstages, location permits, crews, and serious money.

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IPFS and the Decentralized Music Archive
How Indie Artists Can Host Their Entire Catalog, Serve Every Kind of Fan, and Build a Real Legacy

For decades, independent artists were handed advice that sounded helpful but quietly worked against them. Upload your music to platforms. Share a link. Trust the system to take care of the rest. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. In practice, it put your entire career inside systems you never controlled. Dropbox links expire or get buried. SoundCloud accounts get capped, throttled, or flagged. Platforms change pricing, remove features, rewrite terms, or simply decide your music no longer fits their priorities. Meanwhile, your catalog, which might represent twenty or thirty years of creative work, ends up scattered across services that can disappear, lock you out, or change the rules overnight.

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Making a Scene Presents - AI Won’t Kill Music Careers—Starving Artists Will

As we head into the New Year, it’s time to take an honest look at one of the hottest and most misunderstood topics in the music industry right now. Every few months, the same cycle plays out. A scary headline appears. A new AI tool gets released. A video goes viral showing a fake song that sounds like a famous artist. Almost overnight, the mood shifts. The conversation turns dark. People start saying AI is going to replace musicians. They claim creativity is dead. They insist the soul has been ripped out of music and that this is the end of everything we care about.

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