 What's up, what's up, what's up? I'm Brandon Shawn. And I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us on any streaming platform here at the intersection of creativity and currency. And you know, when we do this intro, we got a very special guest with us today. Today, we have the CEO of bands, Rameen, Satar. What's up, Rameen? What's up, fellas? Man, I appreciate you guys having me here today. Excited to be here and excited to have a discussion with you guys. For sure, man. It's gonna be dope. It's gonna be real dope. Like, what y'all are doing right now, you're about to change the game in terms of artisan when it comes to money. And we'll get into a lot of that later on. But the fact that you went from like the tech space to the music space, like, can you kind of give a quick background and how this all came, how you got to this point? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I started out in the tech space for about 15 years focusing on revenue growth strategy for a number of different tech startups. My last company led to an exit. And so after that exit, I moved down to Los Angeles and I wanted to get into music. So started my own management company because I wanted to learn more about how the financial side of music was operating. When I got into the business, I was working with independent artists, really focusing on helping them grow their careers and helping them understand their finances. Now it's kind of my core as we started to grow out the management company. This is perfect, man. This is actually really perfect because there's two sides to this that I want to touch on. You came from tech to music. You didn't just get indoctrinated into this as like a young, young man, which means you came in with experience in a way the world does work. When you came into music, were you a little shocked the way things worked when you started looking at how the money moves or just how the industry moves as a whole? Yeah, I think great question. I think from my perspective, when I got into music, one of the main things I was doing is I was buying and selling records. I was buying small mid-tier segment records and selling them. And there's really where I learned how the financial side of music was and how it was built and how the money moved and how these different revenue streams essentially operate. So it was a little bit of a shock. Coming in and understanding that the business, it's such a big business. It's billions and billions of dollars a year. There are so many intricacies with the way that that money moves in the industry that money can get lost and you may not be able to find money. And so yeah, it was a little bit, I would say, not really shocking, but it was eye-opening for me, but also exciting. When I got into it, I was excited because I knew that there was a lot of challenges and a lot of problems that could be solved. And coming from tech, I felt that no better way to solve some of these problems rather than through tech solutions. And so yeah, it was a little bit eye-opening and taking back a little bit, but also exciting because of the opportunity. What's the biggest difference between marketing a product and marketing an artist? Because you use the word exit. That means you were doing well in terms of helping grow your role that you were playing there. What's the difference? The product is the individual at the end of the day in the music space. And so I think there is no huge difference other than the audience and the market of music being much smaller. So I think that's the biggest difference is like your audience, the smaller industry, things move faster, word of mouth moves faster. So in addition to the traditional marketing channels, the paid media marketing channels, you know, the organic growth within marketing, you know, I think that's the biggest difference. Got you. Yeah, it does. It does. And you know, it makes me think, right? Of course, bam, you blow something up and then next thing you know, you're having a success. You have legitimate fans. You can go on the road. Your music is taken off on all these platforms. And then we get to that point where you said, like money, where is the money? Because so many things happens and are happening at once, right? A regular product, you might find one channel and kill it on Facebook ads, maybe a couple of others, but it's very clear where the money's coming from, right? But music is so many places and then it's broken down into other countries. You almost go global overnight. Like success makes you almost instantly global versus a lot of other products, even online products, right? We're still usually starting off domestically per se. So you mentioned, you know, it's hard to find the money or it's a little bit more difficult. That's where you come in with a solution with bands. Can you tell me why that was the solution that you decided to tackle out of everything you encountered? I think like just being in it real life, like, you know, starting out in the mid-tier segment, working with artists hand-in-hand day-to-day, you know, at our management company, seeing sounds, I learned a lot. You know, the main thing that was evident was that all of these artists have the same problem. They didn't understand their finances. They needed help collecting uncollected royalties because they weren't registering their music property, right? So those were two things that stood out to me and really it's like boots on the ground. I'm with the people that are living it day-to-day. I'm working with these artists hand-in-hand. And so understanding that was the core problem. You know, that was essentially a part of my job to help solve it, right? It was like, hey, like, let's like keep track of all your money. Let's make sure you know where it's coming from. Let's make sure you know how much money you're making in the future such that you can plan better. And also, let's make sure you're registering your works properly so that you're collecting all the money that's owed to you. And that's really, I think, where a lot of my experience came from is just like being with the people that have the problem. Let me take a quick second to say, if you're looking for a music distributor that cares about educating their artists so they can get in a better position, you should check out Two Loss because every single Monday, they have office hours where they bring on dope people in the industry to hop on calls, give artists insights on the future of the music industry, and answer some of the questions they have going on in their personal careers. So if you aren't a user of Two Loss or just wanna have a little bit more information about them, go to Two Loss on Instagram. That's T-O-O-L-O-S-T, Two Lossed on Instagram, and it'll take you to everything you need to see and for me about the sessions and more. Back to this episode. Me and Sean had a conversation about just, how the mindset of the artists can be changed and kind of impact what artists are looking at in the future, right? So from our side, as marketers, views, likes, and comments are king, but for a long time, we've been pushing to artists like, the true KPI should be when a dollar hits your bank account. You know what I'm saying? Like that should be the demand KPI you're looking at because all the other stuff can kind of build on top of that. And I know what's been hard for us is one, having clients that are, their mind is in that area, because like I said, views, likes, comments are king, but then also having a place that aggregates all that data to a week or even from our side, be able to accurately see how we spend $1,000 on you. You know, your one song went up 4% in valuation so we can assume that if we put another, whatever, this should keep growing and you can get the eggs here. Like that's been something that like for years, we've wanted to do, but because typically the payment debt is so spread out. And like Sean said, I mean there's, you know, at least as marketer, there's sometimes debt like we can't even get. You know, like the distributor won't let it go or the publisher won't let it go. So like that was immediately what my brain went was just like, oh, like this could genuinely change marketing for the better because it could get to a position to where artists are now looking at their marketing KPIs in terms of money instead of kind of like the top line stuff and hopes that it translates to money. Historically, and even now, it's super hard to attribute to actual, you know, specific areas of growth in an artist's career or maybe even financial growth, right? I think where the industry's headed is there's solutions coming out for that to be able to help streamline it a little bit more so that you actually can understand the impact of your marketing campaigns. I think most importantly, what it is, is as you grow your career, however you decide to grow it and however you have support to grow your career, you're right, like what allows people to understand how you're doing is, you know, obviously streams. So it's like, how much money are you making off those streams, right? It's like, the more you stream, the more fans you have, the more money you're gonna make, right? It's evident, right? So it's like also a part of the tool is like in a part of this ecosystem is for those that are the marketers out there, for those that are the labels out there, the distributors out there, they need a tool to be able to, how do I say this, run a risk analysis against the deals that they want to do, right? So the business that they wanna engage in. So it's like, if you know an artist is making, you know, a certain amount of dollars off their streams or a certain amount of money you understand the finances, you can make licensing decisions based off of that, you can make deal decisions off of that, you know, record deal decisions. There's all kinds of different things you could do based on that information. But it empowers you to know that, hey, if I'm gonna put some money out there and I'm gonna front this money, I'm gonna advance this money because I believe in this individual and I wanna help them grow their career. It also gives you that vision and that transparency into, okay, when am I gonna get my money back? No, that's huge, man, that's huge. To me, you know, I think some people take something like this as, I don't know, artists doing, I don't know. As if it's a weapon or some people might even look at this as like, yo, you might mess some things up. I think in one way is really just looking at it as artists being able to do regular good business. It's been hard for artists to do good business in the past and because typically your business, if you're running it right, you ever understand of what it looks like to bring sales and you understand what your profit looks like and if it's time to sell or do something like that, you can do regular modeling. But without having that information, is all guesswork. But even when you have that information, it comes down to a couple of things. One, all right, do you wanna stay in this business? That's gonna determine what you negotiate. Two, what is somebody willing to offer you? We could say it's worth this within the app, right? And that could be your real value. However, you still have to base it on real things and it could be worth more to me if I buy your stuff because what I have in terms of my resources than it is to you because I have ability to expand on the value of your catalog. So that's what regular business is like. I think we're not, when we talk about this conversation, like artists having this type of information isn't something like that's unheard of in other verticals, in other industries, I would say. 100%, yeah, it's not unheard of. And I think my co-founder and CTO, Shiv Ancel always says it right. He's like, if you're trying to run your business, you need to understand your finances, plain simple. That's really kind of the core of it, right? It's like all of these artists, if you're serious about what you're doing, you're serious about being a musician and you want that as a career, then you have to understand your business side. Artists like Russ, super successful. You go ask Russ anything about his finances. I guarantee you he's able to tell you anything about it. He's fully in tune with his money, right? You have to be. There are so many different ways you can grow, so many different ways you can invest in yourself, so many different ways you can partner with other companies, other businesses to grow your career and all of it stems back to understanding your finances, right? So I think that's like a pretty important component for, you know, if you said anything, any business. Everybody should be their own CEO. Everybody should run their own business because at the end of the day, nobody's gonna do it for you and no one's gonna do it better than you would do it because you care more, you know? And so like the way I look at it is like, especially in the US, man, everybody's on their own. You know, sadly enough, like there are some good ecosystems out there in communities that help and support and I think those are out there and it's evident in the music space especially, but ultimately it's on you, you know? And I think you have to be empowered to have these tools at your tool belt to be able to go do that. I would say like one of the biggest useful aspects and features of that, you know, has been supporting these artists, producers, writers and engineers to be able to go get the money they're owed. Makes sense, makes sense. So I mean, I wanna just end it here for, you know, artists that they wanna use this tool, right? Getting clarity on your money. Just do a quick summary again as far as like, why do I care to see this now? Other than, oh yeah, it's nice to see that there's some numbers and my money is floating. Like just actionably, what should I, what does this information give me that I can put into action to improve an outcome in my career? Cause I know there's more than one use case. Aggregating all of your revenue streams in one place so it's really easy to understand, you can pull it up on a mobile app, you can see it there real time, right? And then also go get the money you're owed and let us make sure that everything else that you've registered is actually properly registered. Oh, well, I appreciate you hopping on, man. No, I appreciate it, man. I appreciate you guys having me. For sure. Yeah, us as well. You everybody, this is Rameen Satar. I'm Brandon Shawn. No, I'm Kobe. And this is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary.