Brett Wachtel didn’t start off as a rock fan; he struggled to even listen to it. Though he made many attempts to connect with the genre, he never really rolled with it – hardly the start you’d expect from someone who now dreams of reviving rock music. In fact, Wachtel didn’t get into classic bands such as Pink Floyd until he was around 15 years old.
Back in middle school, Wachtel’s go-to genre was Hip-Hop, tuning into artists like Biggie and Tupac and their hypnotizing tracks.
“It’s funny. I actually liked hip-hop before I even liked rock music,” Wachtel said. “I listened to—it’s ridiculous, but—I loved listening to Biggie and Tupac when I was in sixth grade. It seems funny.”
Music was never merely background music for Wachtel. It was only in high school, however, that Wachtel came to an epiphany that his love for music was a passion he’d like to turn into a career.
“I think that it’s always been there. I just didn’t really, I didn’t know about it, probably, until I really got to high school,” Wachtel said. “When you listen to music and you love it and it, you know, it raises the hairs on your neck, that was like, always there. But I never identified that until I got to high school and started to sort of get into the history of music more.”
Wachtel said he intended to start his platform partly because he wanted to become a music journalist after college. However, Wachtel didn’t have many samples of his journalistic writing to break into the field because he wasn’t a journalism major.
During the pandemic, when everyone was at home on their phones anyway, Wachtel decided to use his time to kick start “fngoodmusic” on Instagram, and he was quite successful despite worries about his on-camera skills.
Wachtel is a music writer first, influencer second. In fact, he rejects the term. “Honestly, at first I was really resistant to the idea of making camera facing content and being an ‘influencer’. No, I’m a writer, I’m not an influencer.” Wachtel said.
Wachtel’s passion for music and his authenticity is what grew “fngoodmusic.” He hopes that his audience’s can use his platform to connect on their love for music.
“I guess at the heart of it, it’s always just been a place for people to discover music and connect over the music that they’re discovering,” Wachtel said.
For Wachtel, it’s not about being the most knowledgeable music expert in the room; sometimes, it’s the music that finds him.
“Sometimes I’m discovering music that I’m writing about, you know?” Wachtel said. “Sometimes, I’m not just showing people music to discover it. Sometimes it’s like I just started listening to this artist, and I have a lot of thoughts on it because, you know, whatever it is, I find it very inspiring, very groundbreaking.”
When he first started, Wachtel didn’t tell anyone about his brand. He thought people would find it weird so he waited until he had a few thousand followers to finally start telling more people. Just three months into creating his platform, Wachtel reached 10 thousand followers. Now, his follow is now over 99 thousand
It’s no secret that Wachtel is an old soul. When asked about his dream concerts to attend, he went back to the lively music of the 60s and 70s, “I would have loved to see, like, the Velvet Underground in like 1967 that would be like, probably the the or maybe like Bowie and 73 or like the Ramones in like, ’77 ’76 you know, I mean, I could go forever.” Wachtel said.
With “fngoodmusic”, Wachtel has collaborated on several projects. He helped market “Midas Man”, a biopic about The Beatles manager Brian Epstein. While Wachtel makes videos on bigger bands like The Beatles, he prefers to inform his audience on more niche bands and artists. He also makes quite a bit of videos on music history including historic concerts and venues.
Wachtel has stated that there are still many things to come out of “fngoodmusic” such as releasing a podcast down the line. Wachtel doesn’t want to be paid to promote music he doesn’t like, as he isn’t motivated by money, but he’d like to find new ways to collaborate with artists.
As for the music itself, Wachtel laments that Rock music has taken a step back from the spotlight to make way for modern artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and others. It’s a shame there aren’t more popular rock bands and artists selling out venues, but Wachtel would love to make it happen.
“I would like to be part of bringing rock music back into popular music and making it, you know, making it big again,” Wachtel said.
Wachtel’s persistent contributions to teaching his audience about music shows that this is more than work to him, it’s a calling. We know that his determination will take him far, and we’ll be rooting for him at NYC Tastemakers.
