 Artists, today is a cautionary tale about the people on your team, how to pick them, how they can ruin your life and your career. Everybody says they want a team, but these are real tales told by artists themselves that will change how you see things and will tell you some of the things we've seen ourselves as well at the end. There's two really great clips, but first, what's up, what's up? I'm Brandon Shawn. Now I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels and Necessary Podcast. As y'all can see, we are in a different location this time around. Look, I got the flu. I'll be straightforward with it. They want to bring Corey into the premises, you know what I mean? Appreciate it. And I still got it. I'm actually sweating a little bit right now, hopefully. Hopefully it just looks like shine, just makes my skin look good on camera or something for now, but yeah, I'm having a flu game. We gon' get through this anyway. Let's get straight into the first clip though of an artist telling a crazy story, a crazy story that lost him literally over a million dollars. Nah, cause I really went from being offered a million dollar record deals to 600 likes on a post. Let's talk about it. Anyways, it starts around this time two years ago. If you were on TikTok around that time, you might have heard this song. I ain't been previously past tense him up. Anyways, that song blew up and I had some major labels, you know, reach out. My first time ever dealing with this. I was letting my manager at the time, I fired him now, we'll get to that. I was letting him handle all that. Anyways, he tells me there's one label that's really interested. My story's short, they fly me out to LA, had a bunch of meetings, had a bunch of studio sessions. It kinda turns on a 1.6 million dollar record deal for two projects. Fly back. All right, I'm just gonna start right quick. One thing I advise artists, like when y'all first start blowing up and y'all have managers and stuff, don't just let the manager handle all that. Like we're about to get into the story, but like even if this story turns out amazing, y'all should like be aware and stay in conversations. I know too many artists are like, yeah, I'm just gonna stay in studio mode and let the manager handle all that. I'm not, personally, I'm not for all that. I feel like the artist should like be in conversation and be a lot closer to it, especially for their first few deals or like their first few conversations. I was gonna say, even if y'all wanna do any work, at least be there to learn. Be there to learn, literally. Be there to learn. Anyways, he tells me there's one label that's really interested. My story's short, they fly me out to LA, had a bunch of meetings, had a bunch of studio sessions. It kinda turns on a 1.6 million dollar record deal for two projects. Fly back home feeling on top of the world, I call my mom and I'm like, mom, we did it, we did it. A week goes by, I get a call from my lawyer, which pretty much went something like this. Hey, Dom, just got off the phone with the label and I'm reluctant to tell you, I didn't go through. But they love the music, they said keep it. Which resulted in me making that song, didn't go through. I like to backtrack a little bit so when I put out Ben Himmler, literally the day it went viral was the same day I got kicked out of my crib. Any stability foundation I had in my life, out the window gone. So I was really banking on that moment and that situation to like really, really change. Bro, that's gotta hurt. It's really gotta hurt. That's I in my life. So obviously when that shit didn't go through, mental health took a massive decline, like drop zone. But with that and like losing my stability, I just like took a step back from social media and fucking with it. Anyways, fast forward a year. So like last year at this time, I get another call from my lawyer. He tells me the real reason that shit didn't go through. Remember the manager I said I fired? Remember how I said I let him take care of that? Apparently he wasn't supposed to do that. He was supposed to let the lawyer negotiate. And for whatever reason, he didn't, wouldn't budge on who got control of Canada, which resulted in the label not wanting to do the deal anymore. Boy, it also tells me that at the time I had nine other major label offers. Nine, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine that I didn't know about. He didn't tell me about. The lawyer told him he had one or two deals, right? Only one or two on the table, right? He was a manager, yeah. Told him I'm a manager. He had a manager and he had nine. Now being a year after the fact, it's too late to go back and try and land those deals. I took that very personally. I was offended. Could have really changed my family, my future family's life because some nigga wanted to control everything that ain't happy yet. I'm a very loyal person. So I talked to him and I give him another chance. Fast forward to February. Wild. No other chance it should be had, sir. I don't know if you knew this dude since you were like a child. Maybe it might slightly change things, but still no, that's wild. Hopefully none of y'all agree there. There's more to this to be played, which we will play. But like this alone, the first thing I hear is like, all right, obviously he's just straight up blind to the artist, which is wrong. So there's no way the skirt has that. But I've heard situations where, or I've been around situations where they're not lying to the artist. They're telling the artist what it is. But in terms of the negotiations, they handle it with like straight ego and say, nah, we need to have this. And they want to play such hardball and in those hardball conversations, they come with an energy that everybody's like, nah, we just gonna move on. Exactly. And like that's exactly what it sounds like. We're like the manager for whatever reason didn't want to budge on Canada. I know that Dom is from Canada. So I'm thinking the manager may have seen it like, nah, this is our like, you know, our, our territory, you know what I'm saying? Our market, we don't want to give it up. But grand scheme of things, that's crazy. Cause you got this artist who is, you know, taking off having a moment. So he's probably, I wouldn't say probably in that moment, reaching well beyond just Canada. You know what I'm saying? Yup. I mean, he's, you would legitimately have a viral TikTok artist at that point is global. So now I'm trying to figure out in my brain like what the manager could have been saying they'll make him go that hard for that specific thing. You know what I'm saying? Cause he didn't mention anything else. He said, no, he wanted Canada. They didn't want to budge on, you know, labels want control of everything in the territory for those that are listening that didn't know that they want to everywhere in perpetuity throughout the galaxy. You know what I'm saying? Or whatever that, whatever that word is. I'm trying to, I wanted to be devil's advocate and give the manager the benefit of the doubt. And I came out brain can process like where he was at with that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And you can't let people off of, off of that. My, I don't know. It doesn't seem like the deal should be able to like fall apart just cause of that. Especially when we were talking about there were nine on table. So what, what kind of conversation did you have with those other eight? All right. Exactly. Like exactly. Like what were you not, what did they want that you weren't willing to give up? Cause of this one, you know what I'm saying? And it's a good lesson for everybody, right? Like especially in the moment, cause you think about dumb, then he's hot. Like example, like he had one of the more viral songs on TikTok that year. So if you can imagine what it's like for, or not even imagine, but if you can, you can learn a lot from the way the major label system treated him in the deal after that. You know what I'm saying? I'll say that cause I know a lot of artists like to talk about this like building up leverage and, you know, making sure you have the leverage in certain situations. Not only can the leverage be blindsided by a bad decision of another individual like we're seeing, but also that leverage has a time limit on it. You know, if we've been real, real about that. Exactly. You know, just because you got 20 million streams last summer, cause the music industry is the industry of what have you done recently. You know what I'm saying? Within the last like three to six months. That's crazyer than that. Really? I mean, well, no, you got it better when you said three. Like, I've seen artists, like what's it? Last year, the particular conversation I'm thinking about, this might have been early last year, one of the artists that was in our program that we helped. No, I'm thinking about it one in 2022. Who was in the TikTok boot camp, stuff started going crazy and multiple labels that were having conversations. And, you know, took a minute for them to figure out what deal they wanted to go to between the distributor and label and people just started backing off, right? And, you know, I think they made the right decision or it's to their favor that they didn't do a deal, but it's always feels nicer when you walk away versus when other people walk away. So that's just the reality of it. So, all right, let's play it like this. It's the stock market. They're trying to, you know what I mean? They're trying to buy on the uptick and then they feel like it's peaked. Nobody wants to buy on the peak so everything just drops after that. That's all it is. Person. So I talk to him and I give him another chance. Fast forward to February of this year. And Hema gets nominated for a Juno. If you're not from Canada, you don't know what a Juno is. It's like the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy. So again, I'm on top of the world. I'm hype. First nomination. I want to bring my whole family out. I'm flying like 20, 30 people. The way it's set up is on Saturday, they do like 80 awards and on Monday they do like eight awards. Like a month before the Junos, I asked my manager, I'm like, hey, which day is my shit on? Cause I'm flying like everybody out. Tells me it's going to be on a Monday. Perfect. Everyone's flights get booked coming on Sunday. Two days before the Junos, I get a call from this guy. Hey, so apparently there's like a scheduling error. Your thing got moved to this Saturday. What? It's too late to rebook my shit. Most of my family missed it. I ended up finding out there was no scheduling error. He just didn't do his due diligence. I'm pissed. I just decided to enjoy the weekend. You know, there's nothing I could do now. I handle it when we get home. Get home, I ended up firing him. As of majority this year, I've been completely 100% independent. Now being independent, I gotta book my own show. I'm getting less shows, making less bread. It's a new year and I know you want to go to a new level in your music career and luckily for you, that's what we do here. Help artists grow, get more streams, grow their fan base, do shows, get connected with people who can help them and have direct conversations to help you build out your strategy. These are the type of opportunities that we provide for free at knowlabelsnecessary.com. But the thing is, it's not always open to new people. But at the beginning of every year, we get a little loose. We say, all right, let's go ahead and let a flood of new people in. And once we hit our new registration cap, it gets a lot harder because we gotta slow down on letting people in off of the wait list. So apply now at knowlabelsnecessary.com because the faster you apply, the faster you get in. Absolutely free. Back to the video. Man, you know what the last part sounded like? It sounded like he hit the manager like, yo bro, let's make sure we lock in this date. And the manager was like, all right, I got you. And then forgot to probably do the follow up and ask the Juneau award people could he do whatever day? Cause you know, award shows have multiple days. Usually most award people watching, most award shows usually like a two day thing, at least, you know what I'm saying? And then he's got to send that message and rebook it out. And then here we are. Now I got to scramble and put it on them. That's crazy though, man. Yeah, I like them. Like I don't know them personally, but I watched him blow up on TikTok. I caught him very early on. He could check his emails right now and see an email for me reaching out about a marketing campaign, I promise you. But I gotta, you know, I gotta send them on on that second decision, brother, that double back. Cause if the first issue was an issue of logistics, for the most part, right? It's an issue of things not being tracked and communicated properly. Yeah. I can't, I feel bad, but I can't be mad that you hit the exact same wall again in a different way. But basically the same issue. Another issue of logistics and information and information. It's like, brother, at the end of the day, man, that's a very important skill set for a manager to have. If nobody else on your team is organized and in that way, the manager needs to be, you know? That is the point of you. So there's no greater room. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And before we even get into this second story, the way you pick your roles is understanding the responsibilities that are required in those roles. And then those key responsibilities, there is no real room, right? Like the artist needs to be artistic, you know what I'm saying? Like the manager needs to be able to manage stuff and have some level of organization, right? So like, if you get a videographer on your team, they need to be dope at that. They might not be somebody who can write well or whatever, but they can really do video, right? The manager can communicate, negotiate, et cetera, but I don't know, they can't cook or whatever. Like there's all kind of stuff that they could not do, but the things that matter for that particular role, there is no wiggle room. It's like having a editor for a magazine and your editor isn't good at grammar. So it's like, how are you going to check everybody else's grammar? Is there anything you're good at? You know what I mean? You have to be good at that. So when you understand that, one, of course, you pick people better because you understand it's just about what's important and you don't think about all these other things that might matter less. And then, two, you're a lot harder because it's like, whoa, there's slip up in this area. This is the thing that I need in this area. So it's only going to translate to something else, right? It's not going to stop. He just showed me bad communication. Like you said, Corey, to me, like I said, that sounded like outright lie. He told me that it was only one deal. There was nine. So communication to the temp degree bad. One day and it was on Saturday? And then that again. So those things are going to continue to reflect. And you can, in certain areas, you just can't play with. But let's play this second clip because all this is going to tie together as well. And by the way, this clip is an artist by the name of Kirk Franklin, gospel legend, by the way. But just check out the clip. You will be surprised. My very first recording contract at 23 years old, the label I signed with, they took 100% of my publishing. Huh? 100% of my publishing. How you let that happen? Because I didn't really know any better. The people that had represented me didn't know. It was new for everyone. I didn't know what an entertainment attorney was. The attorney that I had was probably like a real estate attorney, didn't really know who to reach out to. This was 1993. Right. I'm living in Texas. It's not an entertainment space. I didn't, you know, and then gospel music has never been privy to a lot of agents and attorneys. All right. That's the most important part of all this to me. Yes, it's another person who got screwed and taken advantage of in terms of like a horrible deal. Right. But the most important part is he said, yeah, I had an attorney. But it was probably like a real estate attorney. And I see this all the time in music. People think, oh, yeah, well, I'm just going to get my homie who he studies law. Like lawyers have specific skill sets and things that they study. Like, yes, there's a general knowledge, a base knowledge. But like being a tech lawyer, all right, being in, I don't know what they call it, like, employment, doing corporate mergers, music. These are all different categories. All right, so a lot of people will just assume just because they have some of these basic sounding roles that people can actually do a good job for them. So that's that's number one. All right. Number two is if you can't find somebody, well, I actually think we're going to find less of this today, just because there's so much more knowledge out there. Even somebody like, let's say you're a lawyer outside of the music industry. You kind of can feel something doesn't sound right at least, right? But two, I think that knowing whether or not you're giving 100% of anything, that should cause for question. Like, OK, you have 100%. Like, what does that mean? Or it might be trickier because it just might say, hey, yeah, we own this and it might not specify a percentage. So maybe you don't see a percentage on a contract. I don't know if that's a thing that you can do in that way. But maybe so you don't catch the, oh, wait, they have 100% because 100% hits a lot harder when you see 100% sign versus, oh, yeah, we own this and you own that, you know? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something there. But I guess it just goes back to the point of having somebody in the specific side of the trade that applies to you because there's all this specific knowledge even beyond publishing contracts that you're going to benefit from a lawyer, whether it's knowing to put a sunset clause in or what options look like or just getting creative and being able to negotiate better for you because they understand both sides of the table and things. Just like in other industries, there are some things that are just really specific and you wouldn't know the nuances unless you really knew. You'll miss out by not having somebody that really is in your space. Outside of having a bad deal, let's just say you end up getting a decent deal. You don't get screwed over. There's a lot of advantages that you're missing out on based on the knowledge they've built up from the past artists and deals that they worked. Yeah. And the network they built around themselves, like I've heard so many different people that a lot of times the most powerful person on your team will be your lawyer. You know what I'm saying? A lot of because of what you said, there's someone that is typically in the center of the table between a bunch of different parties, which means that not only do they have the knowledge of dealing with these people from these specific places, like you were kind of saying, hey, I know what the person on the label side wants. Just like I know what the person on the publishing side wants. I know what you want. So I know how to navigate through all of this and make it work for everybody. But on top of that, they know everybody. They know everybody in these different places. Like there's countless stories of lawyers that connect the artists from point A to point B, right? Or like I say, I've just heard it numerous times that a lot of times the lawyer will be powerful for you beyond just the knowledge that they can extend you for your contract review or whatever you're having them look at. And so you miss out on that. Even if you have this gung-ho lawyer who's willing to go read everything about the music business and he's willing to scour for hours on Google reading through mock contracts or whatever contracts he can find at least, that still isn't going to fix the issue that this person probably doesn't know anyone in the industry to be able to maneuver in the way that the industry calls for, you know what I'm saying? Which is very, very important. Like every, we talk about it a lot, right? Like every industry has its nuances that can kind of come into play on where the coin kind of lands on the flip. And I just feel like someone who's entering the industry with no knowledge is at a severe disadvantage. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not even, in a way like they might not be in any other industry because of, you know, maybe certain legal protections or unions and things like that, but music doesn't have that. And you have to be thinking about those things when you're walking through the battlefield, you know what I'm saying? Yup. So to have another, not even a soldier, a general, you know what I'm saying? God, you through this battlefield, they don't understand, there's a death trap. Bro. 100%, 100%. And I mean, this makes me even think about the situation that we just talked about. Like that lawyer was supposed to be doing the deal, right? The manager handled it. The lawyer probably would have better managed it because he probably had relationships established from doing deals with these labels before for past artists, right? So that would say a lot. And there's also a lot of late, the lawyer knows why the deal didn't go bad because maybe the manager didn't even know why things didn't go. Or I mean, I guess the manager would know, hey, yeah, they didn't want to budge on Canada. So we didn't do the deal, but maybe he didn't realize how much of a folk hall he made. So my thing is like, we hear artists talk about needing teams, wanting teams, all right, but it's more difficult than just having these people on your team. And I hate that I know so many situations where artists are so desperate for just having somebody on their team. They'll damn near have a cold body, a dead body on their team just to feel like they got somebody in your team. And I just, I encourage y'all to be patient because that junk would be way more painful than you would think. I know multiple artists trying to get out their deals with their managers just like they try to get out deals with their lawyers. All right, I can think of some who have been in and out of management deals, probably like five managers within two years. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So slowly roll, I know it sounds nice to have these people on your team, but you're trying to have the right one, not anyone. Exactly, man. Hitting on the head. The space will be better off unoccupied than occupied with the wrong person because you move slow with nobody, but moving fast paced with the wrong person just moves you fast in the wrong direction, you know what I'm saying? I fucked shit up faster. Exactly, I fucked shit up for this thing. And that's it for this episode. By the way, should have been said this, but we would love if you would subscribe to the channel. We want to see continued growth and continue to post for this pie, drop all this free information, these gyms and these conversations. And it really warms our heart when y'all subscribe. So if you can just hit that button, you know what I mean? No need no money, just hit the button. And that'll be it, peace.