‘Songwriter Soup’: Laura Veltz’s Insider Podcast About Stability in an Unstable Gig
Categoria: Musica
In this week's Country Update lead story,
Por Billboard | 13/10/2026
Songwriter Laura Veltz (“The Bones,” “Speechless”) grew up in a family band that didn’t make much money. Thus, when her passion for songwriting was about to generate a big paycheck, she suddenly realized she didn’t know what do with it. Related Top All-Time Country Songwriters Revealed In New Record Research Book Hilary Duff to Receive Outstanding Pop Tour of the Year Award at 2026 Billboard Live Music Summit Judge Rules Woman Accused of Shooting at Rihanna & A$AP Rocky's Home Mentally Fit to Stand Trial “I had a hit song and, basically, a panic attack at the same time,” remembers the five-time Grammy nominee. Fortunately, her publisher — Big Machine Music GM Mike Molinar — put her in touch with Music Row Wealth Management advisor Tracy Hackney , who gave her a three-step path to follow as the money started coming in. She followed that simple plan obsessively, and roughly 18 months later, she was in good enough shape to become a client. Veltz and Hackney ultimately established a podcast, Songwriter Soup , that focuses on the business of songwriting. In tandem with its fifth season — which launched Oct. 5 with guest Joybeth Taylor (“Choosin’ Texas,” “Empty Words”) — their side enterprise is now a 501(c)(3) organization, allowing them to dive into the content without getting bogged down over growing a business. “As a songwriter and as a financial planner, Laura and I both have wanted to give it away,” Hackney says. “That’s the mission. It’s like, how do we scale what I do, the knowledge I have when it comes to working with creative people and money matters? And what she does — how does she share that and just literally give it away?” Given that they’re working for free, they’ve been able to attract an impressive series of Nashville creatives willing to share their professional stories,their experiences with the money side of songwriting and their emotional battles with a job they love that can end in a heartbeat without a warning. Taylor, in her episode, delves into the commitment she made by tying her creative future to Ella Langley when neither of them was commercially successful, and into her Zen-like attitudes about hits and misses. In a previous episode, guest Ashley McBryde loosely recounted the career moves she made as an artist and songwriter, highlighting the financial aspects and work conditions that drove her decisions at each point as she transitioned from a creative with a day job into a full-time music-maker. Soup guests have also included Lori McKenna (“Humble and Kind”), Luke Laird (“Head Over Boots,” Luke Dick (“Burning Man”), Jimmy Robbins (“half of my hometown”) and Andy Albert (“Somewhere Over Laredo”). The guests are pros who’ve mostly succeeded in a business full of misconceptions, many of them a direct result of the mystery around how music is made. To master their craft, they frequently spend little time thinking about money. While their focus on the next hook or improving their guitar skills may pay off in the