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Inside Music Valley
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Description
Most music professionals are told to choose. Chase the stage, or chase a steady income. Play for love, or play for a living. That choice is a myth, and it's cost too many talented people their careers.
The industry runs on people who've turned their craft into a career. Artists who tour and teach. Producers who build studios. Coaches who mentor the next generation. That's the real path, and almost no one talks about how it's built. The industry is fragmented, and the old education models were never built to bridge the gap.
Academia teaches theory, DIY leaves you to figure it out alone, and neither gets you there.
Welcome to Inside Music Valley, where artists are made and careers are built.
For over 17 years, I've been building one of Australia's leading music businesses from the ground up. Now I'm pulling back the curtain. The wins, the failures, the systems, and everything in between.
I sit down with my team, artists, coaches, producers, and music business leaders for raw, unfiltered conversations about what actually works. How they built sustainable careers. How they monetise their skill, knowledge, and experience.
What they'd do differently if they started today.
No filters. No fluff. Just real people, real stories, and real results.
If you're a musician, artist, producer, coach, or business owner, ready to build a real career in music, and our mission and values resonate with you, I'd love to connect. Connect with me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/steve.jaz and let's explore ways we can work together.
Thanks for tuning in.
I'm Steve Jaz, Founder and CEO of Music Valley.
Let's get into it.
Ready to find your path in the music industry?
Book a free call with Music Valley https://musicvalley.com.au
Recorded at Music Valley Studios, Point Cook, Melbourne, Australia.
The industry runs on people who've turned their craft into a career. Artists who tour and teach. Producers who build studios. Coaches who mentor the next generation. That's the real path, and almost no one talks about how it's built. The industry is fragmented, and the old education models were never built to bridge the gap.
Academia teaches theory, DIY leaves you to figure it out alone, and neither gets you there.
Welcome to Inside Music Valley, where artists are made and careers are built.
For over 17 years, I've been building one of Australia's leading music businesses from the ground up. Now I'm pulling back the curtain. The wins, the failures, the systems, and everything in between.
I sit down with my team, artists, coaches, producers, and music business leaders for raw, unfiltered conversations about what actually works. How they built sustainable careers. How they monetise their skill, knowledge, and experience.
What they'd do differently if they started today.
No filters. No fluff. Just real people, real stories, and real results.
If you're a musician, artist, producer, coach, or business owner, ready to build a real career in music, and our mission and values resonate with you, I'd love to connect. Connect with me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/steve.jaz and let's explore ways we can work together.
Thanks for tuning in.
I'm Steve Jaz, Founder and CEO of Music Valley.
Let's get into it.
Ready to find your path in the music industry?
Book a free call with Music Valley https://musicvalley.com.au
Recorded at Music Valley Studios, Point Cook, Melbourne, Australia.
38 Episodes
Reverse
Two key staff departures. One brutal hiring grind. And a founder pulled straight back into the trenches when he'd spent years building past that.
In this episode, I break down what actually happened in May when a staff member gave notice sooner than expected, and why the timing hit harder than it should have. I get into why hiring in this industry is nothing like a normal search: the timetabling puzzle, the gig economy reality, and the irony that the best candidates are busy trying to build their own practice.
Around the same time, my offshore rep of two years also finished up, and I had to step back onto the front lines myself: sales, follow-ups, enrolments. That pulled me away from marketing, the actual lifeblood of this business.
I walk through how I patched the gaps, what I learned about building resilience into the team, and why no single person should ever be the one point of failure in your business.
No filters. No fluff. Just real people, real stories, and real results.
Ready to find your path in the music industry?
Book a free call with Music Valley www.musicvalley.com.au
I built Music Valley without a business degree, without a mentor, and without anyone telling me how to actually run the thing once the music stopped being the hard part. Turns out, playing your instrument was never going to be the hard part.
In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on the gap nobody warns you about — the one between mastering your craft and actually building a career from it. I trace it back to my own Conservatorium training, a double life split with a full-time telecommunications job, and the moment in 2014 I had to close a second studio because the systems underneath it weren't strong enough to carry the growth.
This also marks a different kind of conversation on the show. Some weeks it's just me. Other weeks, teammates like Martin, Gene, and Leon join in, bringing whatever they're actually living that week to the table.
What's actually on your mind in your business right now?
Drop it in the comments — it shapes what we dig into next.
No filters. No fluff. Just real people, real stories, and real results.
Ready to find your path in the music industry? Book a free call with Music Valley www.musicvalley.com.au
20 years. One student to eighteen staff. Lorenzo built his academy (www.musicea.com.au) from a shoebox with no piano to a studio he painted himself, with his dad and son beside him. Steve sits down with an old conservatorium friend to unpack the ultimatum that built his work ethic, the cancer diagnosis that gave him his why, and the free trial system that's driven growth for two decades. They also get into hiring, letting people go, and the one skill that matters more than talent.
Ready to find your path in the music industry? Book a free call with Music Valley at www.musicvalley.com.au
Mark toured arenas across South Africa and Botswana with Planet Shakers. He's produced gospel and jazz for major artists, studied at Berklee, and rebuilt his career from scratch after moving to Melbourne. In this episode he gets real about what happens when a client's vision and a producer's creative direction collide, the grief that led him to write his album Free, and why no musician makes it alone. From arena stages to late nights in the studio, this one covers the whole journey.
No filters. No fluff. Just real people, real stories, and real results.
Ready to find your path in the music industry? Book a free call with Music Valley at: www.musicvalley.com.au
Ready to find your path in the music industry?
Book a free call with Music Valley: www.musicvalley.com.au
Leon went from college graduate to Instructor, to Operations Supervisor & Assistant Trainer at Music Valley in under two years. He was just 23 when he earned his third promotion.
In this episode, Leon opens up about the moment he had to tell Martin, the mentor who taught him to love music, that his scorecards were not good enough. We break down the weekly KPI system that keeps a music team accountable, why musicians who never played team sports struggle with hierarchy, and the mindset shifts every serious artist and musician needs.
Key takeaways:
Drop the ego. No one is coming to manage your career for you.
Learn the business language of the music industry before you enter it.
How to responsd to feedback. It changes everything.
No filters. No fluff. Just real people, real stories, and real results.
Ready to find your path in the music industry?
Book a free call with Music Valley: www.musicvalley.com.au
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