Make Your Own Wave: Russ & Andreea Gleeson on Artist Independence
Summary
This SXSW 2026 Music Keynote features a wide-ranging conversation between chart-topping independent rapper/producer/author Russ and Andreea Gleeson, former CEO of TuneCore. The session traces Russ's career from a teenager recording in his parents' basement with a Rock Band microphone and pantyhose pop filter to becoming the second-highest certified independent rapper in RIAA history — a milestone announced just six weeks before the event. Central to the discussion is how Russ built a self-sustaining independent career by doing everything himself: writing, recording, producing, mixing, and mastering his own music. He and Bogus (his longtime collaborator) founded the label DIEMON — an acronym for 'Do It Every Day Music Or Nothing' — and Russ released music weekly throughout 2015 and beyond, amassing over 200 songs before his streaming income jumped from roughly $600 in June 2015 to $100,000 in June 2016, purely through compounding catalog and fan loyalty.
A significant portion of the conversation focuses on Russ's direct-to-fan philosophy. He argues that true direct-to-fan means owning your fan data and selling directly through your own storefront, not routing through intermediary platforms. His most recent album W!LD debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200 — number one among independent artists — in part because of a physical release strategy where he personally signed all 18,000–20,000 vinyl copies sold through his own store. He explains the streaming-to-sale math: 1,200 streams equal one album sale unit, while one physical vinyl sale equals one sale unit, making physical sales far more chart-efficient. Beyond commerce, Russ describes maintaining Discord servers with 20,000 fans, hosting spontaneous four-hour group sessions on stage within Discord, and maintaining Instagram group chats with his earliest supporters, reflecting a philosophy that fans are not a marketing channel but the actual infrastructure of an artist's career.
The conversation takes a meaningful turn into Russ's personal and artistic evolution. After years focused entirely on external achievement — the manifesting tweets from 2011 (including 'A million dollars a beat from now on'), the MTV 'Get in the Game' segment secured by spamming a journalist on Twitter, building a collective of Atlanta rappers — Russ describes hitting a wall in 2022 when his childhood dog's death triggered an overwhelming wave of grief he had been suppressing. Facing a tour he felt emotionally incapable of delivering, he publicly canceled it and disclosed the real reason, against his team's legal advice. This transparency, he argues, catalyzed the deepest fan connection of his career and led to his album Santiago — an album where he scrapped vapid verses he had already recorded and rewrote them as near-therapeutic excavations of his inner life. Santiago in turn opened the door for subsequent commercial hits like 'Working on Me' that would have been incoherent to fans before that emotional groundwork was laid.
Russ articulates a broader philosophy of artist independence and self-mastery that runs through every dimension of the session. He uses the 'Netflix model' as a framework for catalog strategy — each album is a season, each song an episode, and a deep catalog lets newly discovered fans binge an entire creative universe. He describes discovering two 21-year-old Australian producers (Jake Jeepson and Kier Gerbs) through TikTok and DMing them to co-create his W!LD album as a way of escaping his own creative ruts while staying independent. His upcoming album Elephant and the Rider draws from the psychological concept of the elephant (body) and rider (mind) being in alignment — the third arc of a trilogy that moves from internal excavation (Santiago) through integration (W!LD) to mind-body alignment. He also mentions a forthcoming film, Don't Move, in which he has a lead role, due out in September, and a deluxe album he describes as 'really good.'
Key Takeaways
- •Russ is now the second-highest certified independent rapper in RIAA history, achieved entirely without a major label deal for the bulk of his career — proof that 'success is just consistency that stayed alive long enough to compound.'
- •True direct-to-fan means owning your fan data by selling through your own storefront. Selling through a platform that sits between you and the fan is, by definition, not direct-to-fan — and you lose the customer relationship and data.
- •Physical vinyl sales have a massive chart advantage over streaming: 1,200 streams equals one album sale unit, while one physical vinyl sale equals one unit. W!LD debuted at Billboard 200 #10 partly because Russ sold 18,000–20,000 personally signed vinyl units directly to fans.
- •The 'Netflix model' of catalog building: treat your artistry like a TV show where each album is a season. A deep catalog lets newly discovered fans binge your entire archive, turning them into diehard listeners instead of casual ones. By June 2015 Russ had over 200 songs out, enabling that binge effect.
- •Monthly streaming revenue jumped from roughly $600 in June 2015 to $100,000 in June 2016 — not from a viral moment but from a compounding catalog built by releasing a song every week throughout 2015.
- •Russ publicly canceled a tour in 2022 and told fans it was for mental health reasons, against his team's advice. The radical transparency deepened his fan connection more than any performance could have, and the honesty directly shaped the creative direction of his album Santiago.
- •For Santiago, Russ had already recorded all the hooks but scrapped the verses because they were 'vapid.' He rewrote them as genuine internal excavations, effectively doing therapy on the mic. The vulnerability opened the emotional register that made later anthemic songs like 'Working on Me' credible to his audience.
- •Russ found his co-producers for W!LD (Jake Jeepson and Kier Gerbs, two 21-year-olds from Australia) by doom-scrolling TikTok, where they had 2,000 followers. He cold-DMed them into a group chat and built the album collaboratively — demonstrating how the internet now gives independent artists access to world-class collaborators outside industry gatekeepers.
Transcript
[applause] [cheering] How you all doing? >> I'm so excited about this conversation. >> Same. Very. >> Thank you all for being here. Really. Um, so it's just such an honor of mine to be here with one of my favorite artists. Not only have I had the opportunity to work with Russ, but I'm such a fan >> on every level. Um, >> thank you. >> He is not just an incredible musician, but he digs into every aspect of the music industry. >> From writing the music to recording it to producing it, um, to mixin...
