Community Member Q&A: Jennifer Bonita, Senior Manager, Artist Relations at Yousician

We’re excited to share the second edition of our semi-regular community member Q&As, where we highlight the perspectives of Water & Music members with diverse backgrounds, career paths and industry perspectives.

Our second Q&A is with Jennifer Bonita, a music strategist who has worked in a diverse range of roles in the music industry. Jennifer began her career in marketing at Savoy Label Group, before transitioning into product management and label management roles at The Orchard, eventually ending up as Assistant Director of International Label Management at the company.

After five years at The Orchard, Jennifer changed tracks at the end of 2020, joining the edtech startup Yousician, which uses interactive techniques to gamify learning musical instruments. Jennifer heads Yousician’s Artist Relations team, and is currently building their artist partnerships program from the ground up.

We caught up with Jennifer to discuss her career thus far, the differences between marketing and product-management skill sets, what Western markets can learn from K-Pop, and how music edtech platforms like Yousician could offer musicians an alternate source of income and an additional channel to engage meaningfully with fans.

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W&M: When did you first fall in love with music?

Jennifer Bonita: Growing up in the 90s, the first thing that I saw on MTV was Nirvana’s Unplugged,which had an immense impact on me. Later on, I started listening to punk and ska, and discovered a love for going to underage shows. I felt at home at those shows, and loved the sense of community between the fans and bands. In those moments, I realized that I had to work in music!

Early on in your career, you shifted focus from marketing to product management, client relations and eventually label management. What were the key differences you noticed among these focus areas in the music industry?

The biggest difference with each role is being able to strategically switch between micro and macro thinking. When I was running marketing for artists, I was very much working in my lane as a marketing person. As I grew into product management, I was working with all departments that impacted an artist’s business. The key is to think more strategically, and to be diplomatic through listening and understanding all angles of the business. My job was to think of the project as a whole, allocating resources and identifying the critical pieces that would make the project successful.

Label management is a natural progression from product management. However, at the label management level I worked with executives at major companies across their entire business. It was important to focus on delivering a high impact on their major business goals, while balancing key stakeholders’ priorities.

For someone starting their career in the music industry, no matter their focus area, I always suggest that they find mentors to learn from, and always try and do their best in whatever role they are in today. If you do those two things, the opportunities will come.

Do you have any favorite artist campaigns you’ve worked on?

I’ve had the privilege of working with so many amazing artists in my career, but product managing John Mayer’s 2018 hit single “New Light” is one of my favorite campaigns. John came in with a strong creative vision for the single and how the campaign was going to be rolled out. When working with an artist like John who has so much experience, passion and drive, it’s important to have the team aligned around his creative vision. The release was a quick turnaround, and thanks to the team’s tremendous drive, “New Light” is his most streamed song to date. I’m very proud of the team and of what we accomplished.

In 2019, you temporarily moved to Seoul to work with Orchard’s priority K-pop clients. It feels like K-pop is often one step ahead of Western markets when it comes to music/tech, especially around community-building and superfan experiences. What lessons about music marketing and the industry at large did you learn while you were out there?

I had been working with clients in Asia for a while, but the opportunity to live and work in Seoul gave me so much perspective on people, cultures and how we can work together.

The biggest thing I learned is how K-pop artists build community and engage superfans on and off the album cycle. The marketing of K-pop is very story-driven, and the creative concepts often cross multiple albums. This allows for endless types of content, fan experiences and merchandise around a particular creative concept. Experiencing this endless stream of content, fan events and pop-up shops offered me a whole new perspective on how artists can build out effective marketing campaigns.

It was also fascinating to see the reach that these artists have on social media platforms not as commonly known in the US, like VLIVE. They use these platforms to foster highly engaged relationships with their fans. We’re just now seeing American artists use similar platforms to engage with their fans, but we have a long way to go.

What motivated you to switch tracks from working in more traditional music business roles, to now working for an edtech startup? Do you have any advice for anyone considering a similar move?

Towards the second half of 2020, I was heading toward burnout and needed to make a change, which I knew for a while. While the music industry is filled with so much passion, burnout and mental health are underlying issues that aren’t talked about enough.

I was always interested in music partnerships and technology, but I didn’t know how and when that would happen. While I didn’t plan to land in edtech, when I talked to Yousician and learned about what they were doing for the future of music education and entertainment, I wanted to be a part of it!

My best advice is to always cast a wide net, be open to opportunities and be willing to take risks. It’s amazing to have a strong vision of what you want, but sometimes you need to take advantage of the unexpected to see where it takes you. Often it’s a place greater than you could have imagined.

What does a typical day look like for you at Yousician? How do artist partnerships/relations work at Yousician compared to other kinds of music or tech companies?

My typical day at Yousician is similar to working in label management in the music industry. I still need to think strategically for the overall business goals and balance the priorities of the teams I work with. Only now, those teams are marketing and developing an app that helps people learn how to play instruments.

As I did in my previous roles, I’m always looking for ways to make the artist and label successful. At Yousician I’m creating opportunities with them to share their music with their fans who are passionate about playing their songs. We’re building the partnership program from the ground up, and have lined up some iconic artists that I can’t wait to share more about soon!

There’s been a lot of discussion in the past few years around how the economics of music streaming has created the need for musicians to diversify their income earlier on in their careers. To what extent is music education a sustainable way for artists to do that?

At Yousician we believe that everyone can be a musician. With 20 million users each month, artists and labels we work with can reach new and existing fans in a way that’s never been done before on any music education or entertainment platform. I think there’s something special about a musician sharing how to play one of their songs with a fan or inspiring another to keep going on their musical journey. It’s about tapping into that yearning to be a musician that’s in all of us — especially when we listen to our favorite songs. Who doesn’t tap their steering wheel or strum an air guitar when they hear their favorites?

Artists partnering with Yousician allows them to create a meaningful connection with fans, while offering fans the tools that are needed to learn and practice directly from their favorite artist.Imagine Monet giving you painting tips? It’s a real passing of artistry from one artist to a future artist.