On the Business of VÉRITÉ

Musicians today can be just as much an entrepreneur as any Silicon Valley tech founder. They are their brand and each creative decision must be melded with public demand in order to be a success. The life of a musician needs to seem glamorous, but behind the scenes are grueling hours creating, months away from home, and keeping up enough confidence to tackle haters. And like many who don’t win success via nepotism, they start with nothing but a dream and an insatiable hunger to be the best at what they do.

VÉRITÉ is one of those artists we’d consider to be an entrepreneur. Her career got its first big boost back in 2014 when she saved up enough money working at Applebee’s to self-release her first single, “Strange Enough.” After tireless hours cold emailing blogs, her debut reached #1 on Hype Machine and she was crowned Twitter’s #1 Viral Artist all within a week of its premiere. Fast forward a few years and the one-woman act is just fresh off her tour with Betty Who and already selling out her first solo tour before her debut album.

We were lucky enough to sit down with the rising star to talk about her beginnings, what drives her, and the ever-changing music business:

How did you end up working at Applebee’s?

I graduated from college and I worked full time through college. Then I moved to New York because it felt like it was a next step and I got a job. I worked at Applebee’s upstate so I transferred. And then I worked like I’ve always worked, which is a lot. I worked 50-70 hours a week when it was busy and just saved money. My family has raised me to be like a machine. We’re all just super intense hard workers.

The narrative in my mind was, “I’m going to work, I’m going to make as much money as I can and I’m going to save it. Why? I don’t know yet.” And in these cracks of time, I would write because that’s what I went to college for. I love writing music, and I just have a very compartmentalized mind. Eventually, I made this group of music that I was excited about and I released one song on YouTube as a video. I spent like $750, which was like way too much money and was feeling so guilty because of it. I think it maxed out at like 500 views and I said to myself, “This is not enough. I put $750 into this video, more people are gonna listen to it!”

I emailed every blog I could find, like 300 blogs, and one called SelfBlown finally responded. They posted that video to their site and it spiraled into a lot of emails from major labels. They wanted to fly me out to London and I ended up taking three meeting a day for a month. I also met my manager, Vanessa Magos, around that time and we decided to not sign and take down the video. Then we kind of planned a more steady release. I released “Strange Enough” and my first EP, and then kind of moved on from there.

Can you describe the moment when you decided you’d pursue a career in music?

I don’t remember the exact moment, but it was in this time period where I had a group of songs, that wound up being on my first EP. They were the first songs that I knew I wanted to release and I made the decision to invest my savings in it. I think it was like $2,000 and that to me was a massive deal just because I had nothing back then. I wasn’t going lose that money so I went all in.

Do you see a hole in pop music that you believe your music fills?

Definitely. I think my goal has always been to create a lane for myself and I’ve seen a lot of female artists do the same. I think Florence and the Machine, Banks, and Lorde are great examples of strong bad ass women who have risen to the top of their genres in a way that is very unique. And I think for me, my goal is to do that.