Reese Posten is a musician from the Bay Area. After falling in love with music from a young age Reese has now been recording and publishing music for five years. His aspiration is to approach the music industry with a refreshing departure from the exclusively electronic-based music that has been adopted as mainstream, all while remaining marketable and enjoyable to the general public. With that in mind, Reese Posten’s music could be described as a cross between John Mayer, Elliot Smith, and Omar Apollo.

In this interview spotlight, I chat with Reese about the latest music, challenges, technology and more.

Full Q&A along with links and music below.

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

I’m from the Bay Area in California but I’m actually at school in Boston right now. I grew up on a lot of rock music and in high school I got really into playing the blues. The music that I write is usually more laid-back and I try to make it easy to listen to. I guess my style would be contemporary indie pop with some blues guitar influence. 

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?

I started playing guitar when I was six and fell in love with creating music and learning new things. I started my first band in the fifth grade and I think that was what gave me the confidence to keep trying new things and continue down this path. As a lot of musicians know, natural motivation comes kind of rarely (at least for me), which is why you have to find ways to motivate yourself and it usually stems from loving music and loving the creative process. I have always wanted to write and record music and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?

This new release, to me, feels better produced and a lot more though out than the other ones. For “One Less” I was kind of going for a more R&B feeling (even though I am not at all experienced in that genre). I felt like I wanted to experiment with different sounds and feelings so I did and I think it turned out alright. I was mainly just trying to write something new that I enjoyed listening to and I feel like I accomplished that.

Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this over saturated, digital music age?

There are so many barriers to success for independent musicians but I’ll single out the ones that feel most important to me. The first would be streaming services. It’s so easy to get your music out in the world now which is great in so many ways but it’s also like trying to talk at a concert. Anyone can release music and that’s just the problem. There is so much noise that it’s almost impossible to find your way and establish yourself. The second would be the disaster that is record labels. Before it was possible to expose your music to the world from home, musicians had to be lucky enough to be offered a recording contract. Because of how dependent on the industry artists were at the time, these contracts practically took your money. But along with this your records were financially supported and musicians didn’t have to worry about paying to record or promote. Now that artists are deciding to independently support themselves the issue of money has made a strong comeback so now were all gambling on the hopeful success of our music. 

How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?

Technology is a blessing and curse to the largest extent. I love that I can record, mix, master, and release music from my room now. It’s given access to anyone that has recording software and cheap equipment. Regardless of how this causes substantial saturation in the industry, I love how much music is being creating today.

What was the last song you listened to?

The last song that I listened to was Vampire by Dominic Fike who is, in my opinion, one of the most talented songwriters of today. 

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

I love the way Vinyl sounds and I really love the feeling of listening to the first half of an album and then getting up to flip the disc (I don’t know why, but I do) but for efficiency purposes MP3s are definitely easier to navigate.