Hey friends,
Welcome back to Creator Etiquette®.
Gracie and I met a couple of years ago at a summit and have been in each other's orbits ever since. She is the Head of Creator Partnerships at Epidemic Sound, the platform behind the music in more than 70% of the biggest US YouTube channels, and she has been in the music industry since she was ten years old. She made her first album at ten and was touring full-time by thirteen.
If you would rather listen, the full episode is on YouTube and Spotify. Stay tuned for a freebie at the end!
The Jocks and Nerds of the Creator Economy
Gracie opened by describing two types of creators. Jocks care about the type of content. Nerds care about how they show up professionally.
The ones she keeps coming back to, the ones she builds long-term relationships with, are the ones who treat their creator career like a business. Not because their content is necessarily better, but because the professionalism is there in how they pitch, communicate, or handle a no and come back with something better six months later.
If the pitch is clear and specific, the yes or no conversation is easy. Both sides are on the same page. And a no right now, she said, might be a yes later, but only if the relationship was built correctly in the first place.
Mood Is the New Genre
Gracie's observation is that the old way of thinking about music was by genre. Country. Pop. Hip-hop. The way the most successful creators are thinking about it now is by mood. What do you want your audience to feel? Suspense, to drive watch time? Energy, to pull someone out of their scroll? Education mode, to make them feel engaged and focused? The music is doing half the emotional work of the content, and if you are not thinking about it intentionally, you are leaving that half to chance.
She also introduced the concept of sonic branding, which is the idea that creators can build an audio identity the same way McDonald's built one with "I'm loving it." A consistent sound signature that makes your content immediately recognizable before anyone even looks at the screen. The creators who are building this right now are laying the foundation for content that is memorable, that drives retention, and that is already set up correctly if a brand wants to use it somewhere it has never been before.
The Music Licensing Gap That Is Getting Brands Sued
Marriott and Crumbl have been sued because of influencer marketing. The issue in both cases comes down to music licensing. Someone used audio in content that was not properly licensed for the way it ended up being used, and when that content got boosted, syndicated, or placed somewhere beyond the original post, the licensing did not cover it.
Gracie was clear that this is both the creator's responsibility and the brand's responsibility. As a creator, you do not want a copyright strike taking down your channel or a muted track pulling the audio out of your best-performing series. As a brand, you do not want to be the one holding the legal bill when the music rights do not extend to the paid campaign you ran behind a creator's video.
The Epidemic Sound model solves this by owning all the rights to all their tracks. But the broader lesson holds regardless of what platform you use. Set it up right from the beginning. Whether you have 20 million subscribers or 20,000, the licensing question is the same, and the answer has to be in place before the content goes anywhere.
The Case for Brand Collaboration at Conferences
At this year's festival, Epidemic Sound hosted a villa with Teachable and Filter. Her model for brand collaboration at events goes back a long way. She mentioned starting mixers at South by Southwest with Eric Weezy from Carrot years ago, bringing together two sets of creator relationships in one room. Intimate dinners. Pooled guest lists. The more the merrier.
She also predicted that fashion and luxury brands are going to have a massive Cannes presence next year. This year was dominated by tech, AI, and B2B companies. The lifestyle and luxury category is coming, and the creator-brand model for those partnerships looks very different from the technical media buying conversation that defined this year.
How to Pitch a CMO Who Has Never Heard of You
Some of the CMOs at events like Cannes, she said, might not even know who Mr. Beast is. So if your pitch starts with your subscriber count and your relevance in your category, you have already lost them. They do not have the context to evaluate that.
What they do have is a budget, a KPI, and a set of questions about how to justify creator marketing to the CFO above them. Pitch to those things. What would the ROI look like? How would you measure it? What content would you create, where would it live, and what reach or action would it drive? That is the translation they need to take your idea up the chain.
Know your audience and who you're speaking to. Whether you’re on stage, in a villa at Cannes, or in the bathroom line, that is the calibration.
If You Are Chasing a Trend, You Are Already Late
Gracie has been making music since she was ten. She was touring a hundred shows a year from the time she was a teenager. She has watched more trends come and go than almost anyone her age in this industry. And her read on the creator economy is the same read she has had on the music industry for fifteen years.
If you are trying to be Mr. Beast, you are already late. If you are chasing a trend, by the time your video is ready, the trend has moved. The creators and artists who build lasting careers are not the ones who are fastest to the trend. They are the ones who go so deep into what they actually do well that the trends eventually come to them.
Doing what you do is how you have success. She put out a few songs a year now, makes what she actually wants to make, still sits at around half a million monthly listeners on Spotify, and does it while running global creator partnerships at one of the most important music platforms in the creator economy. She does not need to be Sabrina Carpenter. She does not want to be.
Comparison is the thief of joy. You know your version of this. Apply it.
Go follow Gracie on LinkedIn, listen to her music and check out Epidemic Sound if you are not already thinking carefully about the music in your content. And get 25% OFF for the monthly or yearly subscription. Eligible on all plans. Code: GIGI
http://share.epidemicsound.com/gigi
Welcome to Creator Etiquette®. I am so glad you are here.
Xo, Gigi Robinson
Founder, Hosts of Influence® | Creator, Educator, Speaker, Author, Dog Mom 🐾
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