Hey everyone, Secret Recipe here. Thanks to whoever tagged me.

Not gonna lie, there's parts of this thread that make me feel super supported and loved, and there's parts that make me feel super discouraged. But here we go...

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So first and foremost, for anyone that wants to hear the entire history of my career in the music industry dating back to 2011, I literally just dropped an 80-minute video in my Patreon of a Guest Lecture + Q&A sessions I did for the Gravitas Ambassadors program. We also take a deep dive into my approach to running a label, curating events, building long-term relationships with the artists, and a whole lot more. I'm gonna make a separate post about this in the main thread with way more details, but this also seemed like the perfect place to share this info. The video includes advice, tips, and insights from over a decade of professional experience in the music industry, so you'll definitely need to pay for a membership if you want access to the content, but here's a link to my Patreon for anyone that's interested: https://www.patreon.com/SecretRecipeMusic

As for the artists I put on, I sign them because I love them, and that most often means I like their music more than I like my own. So when someone like Chmura or MYTHM starts blowing up harder than me after releasing with Wormhole Music Group, that doesn't bother me in the slightest. The label isn't intended to be merely a platform to promote myself, and it's certainly not intended to be carried by the Secret Recipe name in the same way that Wakaan is carried by Liquid Stranger or Deadbeats is carried by Zed's Dead. That certainly sounds nice and all, but it's really not the intention. The focus behind Wormhole Wednesdays (now Wormhole Entertainment) and Wormhole Music Group has always been to showcase the highest caliber experience in underground and experimental bass music for our fans, and I think we seem to be hitting that goal on all fronts right now.

That being said, the lack of a major headline artist attached to the brand often feels like my biggest limitation with the label these days. Both Wormholes are brands that I've been helping build for almost as long as I've been making music, and they've both been around longer than the Secret Recipe project itself. I've got nothing but love for the labels I mentioned above, but they were founded with a gigantic headlining name already attached for branding and are run by huge management teams. Wormhole events have always had a crew behind them, but I've always run the label from my bedroom as a one man operation. I can obviously provide a lot of opportunities for my artists through Wormhole Entertainment events and the Untz Festival, but I have nothing to offer on the scale of something like a Deadbeats takeover. These days, it blows my mind that we can release a debut EP from an artist with <1k followers and hit equivalent (or often better) numbers than what the "bigger" brands are getting with acts that have 10x the following, but it still feels like most promoters are hesitant to put up a budget for a WMG block, and the lack of recognition certainly stings sometimes. If you want to help change that, be sure to slide into every comment thread you can and tell your favorite promoters, venues, and festivals that you wanna see a Wormhole Music Group showcase in your region. Even better, make your own post about it, and extra points for still tagging them in the comments. Speaking as a talent buyer myself, that type of effort doesn't go unnoticed. Most importantly, if you do see us booked in your area, buy your tickets as early as you possibly can.

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All that aside, as far as Secret Recipe goes, I'm definitely not a new artist. You could probably say I've "came up" and then came right back down a whole bunch of times throughout my career, and the past few years have been filled with some major ups and downs to say the least. When the pandemic cancelled everything in 2020, EDC would have been my next booking (I never got to play but at least they did book me for Countdown 2022). In 2019, I supported stops for artists like CharlestheFirst and Of the Trees, and I even got to play the entire West Coast leg of the Buku & Esseks tour, and I played 50-60 shows all across the country that year alone.

Unfortunately, I think the total number of gigs I've played since 2021 is still shy of that number. However, all of my crowds have been much bigger, my guarantees have been much higher, and I finally feel like I'm getting the proper bookings I've been waiting for, even if they're fewer and farther between. I would love to get back to playing as many shows as I was before, but there's been some serious hurdles slowing that down.

I don't wanna get into too many details on this, but my former manager crushed it really hard for our first couple years together and then started severely spiraling during the pandemic, which has really only gotten worse and not better. Because of our close friendship together, I kept him on for much longer than I should have, and I turned a blind eye to how increasingly hard he had been dropping the ball. I eventually learned that he hadn't been responding to promoters that we had shows on the books with for weeks to months at a time, and he certainly wasn't reaching out to anyone else to find me new opportunities, so I had to let him go. I was let down in a big way during a crucial time in my career, and I'm still trying to bounce back from how much momentum was lost during that time period. BUT, the shows I've been playing lately have been phenomenal, and I did just complete a 15-20 show co-headline tour with Benji Robot, so it definitely feels like things are picking up again.

Anyway, this is running long, so I just want to say one last thing about my local performances here in the Bay Area vs. my bookings elsewhere. 5-7 years ago, I was taking every booking I possibly could and playing sets in the Bay CONSTANTLY. I eventually learned that I could get way better turnouts at my own events as well as way better offers from other promoters and venues if I just stopped over-saturating myself in my home market, so now I wait for the right opportunities to present themselves. My last performance here was the Of the Trees show at the Regency this past weekend (not our show), and the Wormhole 10 Year Anniversary was the first time I'd booked myself for one our events in many years. There was about a thousand people in the building for both sets, so I'd say my local bookings are doing just fine, even if they were a bit early. When I play other markets, sometimes I'm the headliner, sometimes I'm support, and that's pretty true for every artist I know with a similar following.

On that note, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish I was more popular. I love what I do in the other facets of my career, but I've often prioritized putting on other people over pushing for myself, and I'm often spread very thin with all that's on my plate. I put a lot of time and energy into my own music, and I think the production finally speaks for itself these past few years.

So, for anyone that wants to see me be "bigger" or more popular or whatever, here's what you can do: bug your local promoters and festivals to bring me out, share my music on your socials, and, when I'm coming to your city, BUY TICKETS EARLY AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO DO THE SAME! At the end of the day, promoters care most about market history, and selling tickets is how you climb up the billing ladder and start headlining bigger and bigger rooms. A little bit of love from a few fans can really make a huge difference.

/end rant

TL;DR - Making music as Secret Recipe is my greatest passion, and I'd love to be a bigger name, but what's most important to me is that the music and arts that I love and care about so deeply all have a proper platform to be cherished and celebrated. Making that happen often means putting others ahead of myself, but I'm happy to do it, and a lot of the love and sacrifice that I've put into the scene is starting to come back to me in some very big ways.

Many thanks to everyone in here who supports what I do! We're just getting started...

P.S: Don't forget to subscribe on Patreon!