How Jim Roberti, Professional Musician, Adapted His Career Post Streaming Services

Author: Lily Roberti

(Photo from https://jimroberti.com/)

Jim Roberti, a professional musician based out of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, has had a lifetime career in music performance with over thirty years of professional experience. Born in ‘66 and raised in Lords Valley, Pennsylvania, he grew up playing many different instruments and singing. He started playing local gigs as much as he could with his older brother, Tommy, at 14 years old. Then, in college, Roberti was in a band that played gigs at frat houses and other social events. 

Roberti graduated from Muhlenberg University in ‘88 and entered an already-established band called Adrian, Priest, and Grimes. Playing drums and singing, he was a member of ADP for about three years. 

In ‘91, Roberti left ADP and broke out doing his own solo gigs, playing guitar and singing. He was in a few other bands here and there, but the solo gigs stuck, as he found the most success there. Eventually, he formed his own band, The Maybabies, and is self-employed to this day, playing gigs both with the group and solo. 

Roberti shared that he has always recorded demos. “I had a four track machine in my apartment that I recorded music on,” he said, “and in ‘95, I released my first full album, called Yellow.” Subsequently, in ‘97, he released his first disc, Maybaby, and in ‘99, a second CD, Blend. 

“I made CDs and sold them at gigs, and I registered them with CD Baby, a distributor,” Roberti said. “When streaming started around 2000, CD Baby streamed all of my music by distributing it to different platforms like Amazon and Apple Music.”

The last CD Roberti released was Soul Kiss, in ‘02, under the Jim Roberti Band this time. An investor paid for Roberti to fly to Atlanta, Georgia for five days to record, and he finished off production at his band member, Gary Wehrkamp’s studio in Allentown. “This one was a CD, too, because a lot of people still wanted to buy a CD,” Roberti said. “But after ‘02, people kind of stopped buying CDs– if they wanted to listen to my music they went to YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or Amazon instead.”

When streaming started, Roberti said, “All of my music became available anywhere that you could stream.” He would download digital files and forward them to CD Baby, who would distribute them to all streaming services. He also explained that he would copyright all of his music; he had the rights to it and it was his property. “If I wanted to put music out now, all I would have to do is record it and send it to CD Baby,” he said. “I’m already registered with them, and they would take care of the rest.”

YouTube and other modern streaming services also changed the way Roberti learned and organized music. “I downloaded my entire 400+ CD collected manually onto Amazon Music, and then I could plug in my iPod and download all of those songs,” he said. Cataloguing music digitally made it a lot easier to sort through a very large library of music. 

Roberti described that before YouTube, he would sit and listen to a song over and over in order to learn it himself. “Nowadays, when I want to learn songs, I can go to YouTube– there’s everything on there. For example, I’ll search ‘‘Take Me To Church’ guitar lesson,’ and there will be a whole bunch of people showing the chords and how they do it,” Roberti said. “They’re not always correct, but since I have an ear for music, I know when they’re not right. It’s usually just a guy like me showing somebody how to play a song. It’s a shortcut, but it saves time.” Because of this, he is able to learn more songs a little bit faster. 

Another unexpected impact of YouTube, Roberti shared, was greater exposure. “Back before YouTube, when I played a gig, like a wedding or private party, I always had something in my contract that said people weren’t allowed to record or videotape without permission,” he said. However, once the smartphone came along, this became impossible. People film wherever he goes and post the videos on YouTube or Facebook. Sometimes this annoys Roberti, because live music never sounds the same over a phone. However, he acknowledges that the more exposure you get as a singer/songwriter, the better.

Ultimately, YouTube and similar streaming platforms have drastically altered the way that Roberti makes and releases music, learns new music, and is able to promote his business. Though there are both pros and cons, YouTube has changed the music industry for artists in an irreversible way, and musicians like Roberti have had to adapt accordingly to succeed in an ever-technologically advancing field. 

For more information on Jim Roberti, please visit his website at https://jimroberti.com/.