Soft Palms release In Echo with a free royalties playbook: “help people get their money”

On June 19, Soft Palms released their second album, In Echo, via Everloving Records. The surprise is what comes alongside it: a companion book, How to Be Self-Reliant in the Music Business, where the “most important chapter is the royalties chapter” and that royalties chapter is free, in both audio and physical formats.

Julia Kugel and Scott Montoya are explicit about the incentive. Montoya frames the book as education that leads directly to money, saying their goal is to help people, and to help their friends get their money. In plain terms, they are treating royalties like an unclaimed asset, the kind that can sit there if artists do not know the steps to get paid. Kugel calls the royalties chapter a “gift,” the product of years digging into concepts that are not intuitive, including the work of getting catalog together and understanding how royalties connect to the right systems.

If you run companies in music or adjacent creator economies, this is more than an artist POV. Independent musicians have been struggling to make a living as the cost of touring and the production of everything from music to merch rises. Soft Palms say they hit a wall in conversations with other musicians, especially peers who are talented but stumble when the work becomes administrative: spreadsheets, catalog cleanup, metadata, SEO, and royalty mechanisms. Their book is essentially an attempt to compress “thousands of dollars” worth of complexity into something a working musician can actually follow.

The duo’s credibility comes from their workflow, not just theory. Kugel and Montoya have years working at labels, owning a studio, signing multiple contracts, doing live sound, handling social media, and performing in many bands, including Southern California rock band The Growlers and punk trio The Coathangers. The book is not framed as a magical cure-all for every corner of the industry, and they acknowledge a 100-page format cannot cover everything. Still, it covers practical advice on the music business and lifestyle, including touring, recording, music royalties, etiquette, streaming, merch, and even the more human side of running a career like mental health support.

That “human side” matters because Soft Palms also point to a different kind of cost: reputational damage. One chapter they highlight that is not covered often is touring etiquette. Kugel describes green room etiquette as a topic that makes musician friends visibly excited, because everyone has a nightmare story about bringing the wrong vibe on tour, then never getting asked back. Montoya adds a harsher truth: there is “nowhere” for young musicians to read guidance like, “Hey, maybe you should leave people alone before they play.” The implied second-order risk is that bad tour behavior can destroy opportunities before an artist even fully understands how fragile networks are.

Under the hood, the royalties push also intersects with how rights and payments get administered. Kugel mentions helping friends register their music with performing rights organizations. She describes a pattern: their friends can be “genius people,” but then get overwhelmed when the administrative tasks show up, and their blind spots persist even after years in the business. Soft Palms call this out directly by shifting focus to concepts that are usually too expensive, too technical, or too opaque for a DIY artist to tackle alone. Their approach is to make those steps teachable, including a template for getting a catalog together.

And then there is the branding tension executives should notice. Soft Palms are selling the book, they have an album drop to promote, and the royalties chapter is free. Montoya still stresses that royalties remain the central priority because it is money sitting there. Kugel frames the book as physical action in response to what she calls “madness,” pairing the album’s poetic themes with a measured, structured guide for real-world decisions. In Echo, the album released that same day, tackles themes of surveillance, over-stimulation, over-saturation, and coping with the current political climate, while the book takes a “reaction” stance by building autonomy.

For decision-makers, the strategic stake is simple: when costs rise, the winners are the ones who help creators convert attention into payment with fewer mistakes. Boards and operators should take note of how Soft Palms are pairing cultural output with operational empowerment, and using a free, high-impact royalties chapter as the entry point. If you manage label services, artist platforms, creator tooling, or publishing-adjacent education, this is a reminder that the next distribution advantage may not be another release calendar. It might be turning the hardest, messiest payments plumbing into something artists can actually use, early enough to stop money from going missing.