 So for your audience, I'm Jesse Cannon and we're here because I made a video on Facebook ads and we've been friends and colleagues talking about things for a while and the internet and you said you had some issues with it. I want you to introduce yourself before I get to it by self. Yeah, first and foremost, I just want to say it's kind of an honor that you refer to me as a colleague because I read your book when I was 20 and it like dramatically informed a lot of how I do stuff. I appreciate that. For those who don't know me, I'm Matt Bacon. I'm a music marketing guy. I work with a ton of different metal labels, ranging from like prophecy productions and urban music to like black light media, which is a subsidiary of metal blade. So there's a lot of ins and outs. I do a lot of independent campaigns. I just did that neck rock campaign that is doing really good. We're all pretty, we're pretty pleased as punch on that. So you know, I get around to do a lot of things like that. You might know me from my Instagram series, hashtag Bacon's Bits, where I do a piece of band advice every day. They could find you on Instagram at where? At bacons.bit. Great. This video I made got a good amount of pushback and a good amount of praise, but particularly I think what a lot of people do feel is that they've seen a lot of good come from Facebook ads. And so that was one of the things, one of the ways we know each other is you did a Facebook campaign on a book I worked with our mutual friend Mike Edison about the drummer Charlie Watts, which he did a great job on. But to me, that was it's a book or an established person. And what my main argument is that for unestablished people, in particular the people I talk to by YouTube show, which I like to say is under 10,000 fans, which I like to classify a 30 to 50,000 monthly listeners type place on the Spotify thing for most groups. But whereas like for an EDM act, that might be 50 to 70,000 since you get so much engagement in that genre compared to others. It's a tangible number that I like to say, but the point being, I just think that there's a bad waste of effort and strategy in that. And I think it's the biggest lie that a lot of musicians are sold because when you're on Reddit and message boards, even this morning I woke up and I saw somebody say, what do I do? And every answer was Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ads. And so that got to me and I made a video. So what is your umbridge with it? I agree there's a lot of wasted effort. I agree that the tool is very difficult to use. I agree that the boosted post thing is basically useless, unless you know like precisely what you're doing within the context of the back end. But that you have to know precisely what you know what I mean. Because really all the boosted post thing is it's running a very specific type of ad in the context of the back end. You know, so if you don't know exactly what that is, you're definitely wasting money. There's a lot of tools out there that that simplify it that are in fact probably oversimplify and just aren't good really. You know, I like the general idea behind a lot of these tools, but I think they I think especially for like if you're an unsigned band who really need like a very particular subset of fans, it's not going to work for you. You know, so I think all those things are true. I think that man cannot live on ads alone. And I also think that, you know, a lot of these guys, you know, and I myself have tried to break down how you run effective Facebook ads in 15 minutes. And while I can, you know, while I can explain the strategy pretty well, I can explain the strategy pretty well in under a minute, but you know, but I can't I can't really show you the nitty gritty and then the like weird little like for those not watching, I am pretending I am working on a car even though I've never done that. You know, if I think our mutual friend Al Levy and I were talking this morning, what we were talking about is that like the problem with teaching tactics to people, and I could say a Facebook ads tutorial, is that you can tell what to punch in data-wise with some variables, but the problem is, is that the real expertise and the reason somebody hires somebody like you is that then there's the pivots when things are going well or not going well, that really optimize things. And knowing what to do when X happens is the biggest real. Yeah, exactly. And you know, and there are really good podcasts and sites based on this social media marketing world and social media examiner is really good. This guy Phil Gorman has one whose name I will look up right now. Yeah, I'd be very curious because I'm always trying to listen to this stuff. There's definitely a few that are truly, truly excellent, you know, but a lot I think are next level Facebook ads with Phil Graham. Fantastic. One of the most in-depth brainy podcasts, you know, social media marketing with Michael Stelsner, really good. I think what you do see is you see a lot of like how Gary Vee is sort of his own worst enemy. But why don't you explain that first? Because I like that a lot, but I'm curious what your take on that is. Because I like Gary Vee a lot, right? Sure, sure. I mean, I watch them reluctantly. And I get a lot out of what he's doing. And I definitely, even though maybe it's less for me now that he's moved more to like motivation, although I understand why, but, you know, ultimately, I think it's what you said, it's the teaching tactics thing. And I think that, and again, like a lot of how I built my business comes out of him. But I think it's two things. One, he breaks down very simply what he does, which is, you know, create a fuckload of content. This is how I run my ads. This is how I do my things. He breaks all that down. But he also, and he makes it sound pretty straightforward, but he's also, and this is important, this is what differentiates him from a lot of these other people, is that he's also the only guy who's like, this might not be for you. This is really hard, you know, like, like, I'm talking to you for 30 minutes in a very raw, raw way. This is not going to fucking do it. But this is like how, you know, just so that you understand. And so like, for some people, you know, for myself, I was able to be like, oh, okay, cool. And then pull back and pull back the layers and learn, you know. But I think it's led to this sort of like entrepreneurship bubble, especially with COVID, where there's a lot of like businesses starting. And I'm like, this isn't like, someone who's run a few successful businesses. Like, once you see how they fail, and you've watched it for a few years, you're like, you know, when somebody's got it and when they don't. Yeah, exactly. So the point being Facebook ads. Yes. Some of what I will say is like, I think like, one of the things I did think get lost on a lot of the people that got mad at me about this, and particularly like, there was this one company that sent their legion of fucking sick fans that like, after me, I'm going to do that to you next time. I mean, it's actually funny because like, I feel like the debate, I'm like, I'm happy to debate. I mean, why would I say very seriously? And I'm happy to think more about I've been wrong many times. But the point being Facebook ads are the biggest lie today because so many of the people who are selling them are selling them as a miracle when they don't work. And the big thing that I spent numerous minutes on is the main reason they also don't work is there's no law in this world that makes a bad product sell. There's just... Yeah. And that's definitely a big part of it. You know, one of my buddies, Francis, from the band, Old Man Wizard, and also the band King Gorm, really, really talented guy, you know, said to me the other day, you know, the problem I always find with music marketing is that you are trying to sell a product that people don't need and they don't even know they want. Well, and even if they learn about it, oftentimes don't want it. Like, I think of how many groups. There's like numerous acts I want to like because would make my life easier. You know, it's a great example. My girlfriend hates the 1975. They're my favorite band. There's no group I hate more than Vampire Weekend. That's her favorite band. It would make both of our lives so much easier if we could come around to the other person side, but nothing will do it because we don't emotionally respond to it in any which way. And you want to like it. But with music, even when you want to like it, it still doesn't work. Yeah, of course. Yes. And now I feel like you can teach yourself to like things, but that's a separate Well, yet again, separate Susceptible to that. But some things, it's just a bridge too far. Yeah. So there's a couple of things I want to point out, right? I do think if you are an unsigned band, I do think if you create a, you know, first, and so this is another thing that you didn't really touch on, as I recall when you talked about susceptibility, which was not just the quality of the song, but the quality of the content you're pushing in general. I think you and I before this, we're talking about how like, you know, you have sort of your static videos where it's like Albemart maybe shakes a little and the song versus like a video video. And, you know, when you have a video video that always does better. And I think that really impacts the susceptibility, you know, because if people are going to watch, it's going to work, you know, and I did something like this with my guys in Fermanator. And, you know, and they had a really good little video and they're like a unique band. They're doing like two piece instrumental thrash and because the video was good and we were just, and our goal wasn't to get sales. Our goal is to just boost awareness and we got a ton of meaningful shares. We got a ton of meaningful comments from strangers who were like, wow, this is up my alley, you know, because the content was there, you know, and now they have an audience of people who they can retarget later on and hopefully sell some stuff too. So I guess that that is like one of my main qualms with a lot of Facebook ad strategy is that I find the investment of faith in the awareness thing to be wasted time. And it also is this thing, like, so psychologically, there's like that book, The Organized Mind by Daniel Leviton that talks about that, like, when our brains think a problem is taken care of. And so the problem being that most people think once they've run these ads that the problem is now taken care of or that some piece of the puzzle is even checked off. And what I find is that putting any faith in those, instead of putting faith into community building things and making great content and taking every time you're losing an opportunity cost that could be spent better on more effective means of promotion instead of that. And every dollar you spend can be spent more effectively on better forms of promotion. Yes and no. I think, yeah, I think that the community building is really important. I think that the creating the content is really important. I think all those other things are incredibly crucial. And I also think that awareness ads don't stand alone unless your goal is just for people to see your video, which is sometimes people's goal. Yeah, but my argument is that's a bad goal. I don't disagree. But I'm just saying you have to have that follow-up retargeting step if you want that to do anything. And even then they probably won't do that much early on. Furthermore, I think, you know, it's also a question of hitting the right sort of people. And that's an incredibly difficult thing to do, especially, and I'm not even talking about like local like audiences or whatever, although I think that's obviously important. But I think there's a lot of other like hacks, like something I'm really fond of is doing the sort of needle in the haystack technique where it's like, if I want to find someone who's going to like my underground death metal band, I'm not going to say someone who likes morbid angel or cannibal corpse or obituary. I'm going to say someone who likes morbid angel and cannibal corpse and obituary. And so for people who have no idea what we're talking about here to a more diluted genre, if you were really in the metal genre, those groups have massive distinctions in the audience, but to anybody who doesn't know those groups well. But if you're like with pop music, if you're like a singer-songwriter, you don't want Taylor Swift or Carly Rae Jepsen or Katy Perry fans. You want someone, first of all, you want to go smaller. This is also a problem a lot of people have when they run ads is they run two Taylor Swift fans, and that's like the broadest possible audience. Whereas you'll get a lot further along by marketing to like secret sisters fans who are like also doing like country infused pop song writing, although I guess Taylor Swift doesn't really country infuse anymore. But you know what I mean? Like that's like a poppy singer-songwriter duo who like fans are a little bit more aware of new music. But then by using the and also method, you're able to sort of be like, okay, so people who like secret sisters and I don't know, give me one. I'm not really in that world at all. Sure. Small pop group. God, now I'm going to not know. But people get a smaller pop group that does that. Taylor Swift is this, I think, the last time I looked at the seven biggest artists in the world. Now we're talking about going down to let's say the 107,000 largest in the world onto the 507,000 largest in the world. Like 507,000, 100,000. So, but yeah, you want to focus lower. And then the big issue is that Facebook kind of goes, we don't care about showing you what focus is. We'll just, you know, until, I mean, what is the smallest like amount you usually see on a page? I feel like it's for me, 10 to 20,000 is the smallest I've ever seen. In terms of what? Like how big a page size is that they let you focus? Oh, yeah, like 10 to 20. There's a few like weird anomalies with like 700, but like broadly speaking, and even if I find a 20,001, I'm always like, Yeah, shock it. Like cephalic carnage is on there. Okay. And I was like, hell, yeah. Those are my guys. But so particularly like, you know, like one of the genres I'm really into now is like hyper pop, which, you know, like the biggest groups have maybe 15 million streams on Spotify. And as well, they're all engaged by younger kids who are not engaged on Facebook very much. And so it's like, it basically becomes absolutely is because you're for that you're not even able to target anything that's going to be useful. Yeah, a hundred percent. And that's also part of the problem is like understanding where your audience is, you know, at a low level, Facebook ads can be good, but you have to be thoughtful about the execution. And I think being thoughtful about the execution is really hard. Explain though, when it works good for the smaller artists. So give me a thing where you've seen, I did this thing, the artist was smaller than it got much bigger from that. Is there good examples of that? So like, for example, with Ripple music, we've had quite a few, you know, Stoner Rock label. First of all, that's an, you know, you have to know the audience. So we know, like, oh, okay, like these are mostly older dudes on Facebook, right. And most of these bands are have under 5000 Facebook fans, you know, it's a very boutique label, which means that people who know us really give a shit, right. But you know, you have to operate within that framework. And I've actually built a really good ad strategy there, where what we do is we get the music video as the first thing. I put about $100 into it just to get views, get engagement, get some people checking it out and test my different audiences, you know, and make sure that I'm like hitting the right people. And also that we're maybe using the best video, for example, High Priestess, who are one of my favorite bands in the world, had a bunch of different videos. So we had to test several different videos, right. Then from there, we go and we go, okay, well, these are the videos that perform best, either the audiences that perform best, these are the texts that perform best, right. And then we go and we just went and retargeted a bunch of people, you know, the people who'd already engaged. And also we sent some sales ads to just people who sort of were in the world, because there's like this thing called the dark funnel, where like, there's maybe people who didn't interact with my High Priestess ad, who read about them on the obelisk, right. You know, which is like, yeah, it's like the main stoner rock block. So there's always a lot of awareness, you know, and that's something else I think that's important with ads is it kind of ties into that advertising rule of sevens, like people need to see something seven times to act on it. And I think, especially in music, especially in underground music, where journalism is still very valuable, you know, sometimes just seeing that name in your feed, that extra time, gets people to press play. This is the thing I never argue with, because that is a 100%. A real thing, and that is the best thing about it. But it has to be in conjunction with your other stuff, right. We couldn't have had High Priestess success if it was just me. I mean, maybe because like they're truly fantastic, but like, you know what I'm saying, like we couldn't have like really moved the needle as much if there wasn't eight other things going on with the rest of my team at Ripple, who I really love and respect. And, you know, in some cases, handpicked, because, you know, these are people who get it, who believe, you know, who some of them I've been friends with since high school. So then we're retargeting, we're just optimizing, we're perfecting. And ideally, what you can do is you can make sort of a machine that feeds itself where you have one ad that you've made your perfect getting new fans ad that gets people viewing. And then you have another ad that just sells to them, right. So it's like, one is like the intake funnel, and then the other punches with sales, right. And so that's where he starts to get really interesting, you know, something like that. Same, we did, we just did the Cyclone campaign, they did a ton of videos, and they were all like super into the like bearded dudes with motorcycle aesthetic, you know, which is very much what they are. And we were able to help this like relatively small band from fucking Leeds. Oh, Yorkshire, I'm sorry. Don't, don't hurt me, Phil. But like, we were able to help this band like move a bunch more units and get a bunch more traction. Like, they sold out of basically everything at this point, I think. I think there's like eight copies left or some bullshit. But by doing it consciously and having it be part of something larger, you know. Yes. So but I guess like what my thing is, is this is a great thing to do. And that rule of seven thing is a great thing to do when you have lots of other things fire and you have enough catalog for people to engage with. And when I say that these days, it gets very weird because, you know, so many people are releasing so much content and not as much, let's call it highly susceptible songs, dash quality songs that that people are going to be able to build a bond with that if you don't have that already. So I imagine like high priestess, for example, had a full length record when this. Sure. So that's enough to build a bond with. You have merch, you have a record to sell all these things that could be back. But when people are doing this and saying, I want to get my first thousand listeners and they have two singles and one is just meh and one's okay, a little bit better than meh. That's where the fail is. But let's say even one of them is highly susceptible and it's really is a banger, let's call it. Then when they don't have anything else for people to bond with and go in and really listen to and get more addicted to, it just does nothing. And then as well, the prospect of making back any of that money, like you get a nice reinvestment with this label when people buy into that is one, the label gets more cloud. So the rising tide brings up all the ships. And then two, the group has enough for you to keep staying with a bond with. And, you know, the other thing I think that's very interesting is the genres you're talking about, you know, to get to the like Daniel Eck thing like metal is a world where people are very used to bands putting out records very slowly. And whereas nearly every other genre now, maybe I'd say punk is the same as metal, but like let's call it outside of heavy music, people are now getting used to an output of artists that's been unseen since the 80s. And you know, when I say this, people often forget that the biggest alternative pop rock bands in the 80s would often put out records in just about nine months, a very regular basis. When you look at the big bands that area, there was even just that Go-Go's documentary, they put out a slow amount of music compared to most of the groups they made that comparison at one point. But there is that thing that the thing that gets overlooked for so many of these groups when they're thinking that the ads are going to work is the reason that stuff works well is there's stuff to dig into and build a relationship with. And people aren't checking that box first. I mean, yes and no. Like I think if it's literally just a single, then like yeah. But I think if it's like either like there's already something to be said for maybe you've got the single in the music video, right? And then like your open funnel ad is like just 15 seconds of the big hook, you know, and then you have a secondary ad that's either the full video or a little bit more. Something like that I could see working around like one single, although it would still have to be like good enough for people to actually give a shit, obviously, which is the crux of a lot of this. I think then maybe you could start to get somewhere, but like outside of like getting streams, what are people buying around a single? You know what I mean? Well, and that is the problem. But then what we see is we see it is really common now to have a lot of groups who are doing extremely well, who maybe only have vinyl and two t-shirts and are doing that thing or even less. And I do think that there's this thing that when most of these people I think really do care about as much as like I demean the awareness thing that they're like, I just want people to hear us. And I'm like, that's a bad goal. You want people to build bonds with you and get enthused about you. I often point to and people often love to throw this argument at me as the group hundred gecks who I love is that like they were probably the most word of mouth by just making crazy songs act of the last year. And that when people hit play on that record, they're like, I've never heard anything like this. What the fuck is this? And they didn't really have much aside from that record to build a bond with at all, especially like when it first started getting traction. There was three music videos and really nothing else. That's the exceptional thing. So you're not going to be exceptional though. You need to have so much more around you to do anything good. So I think there's also that reality that what everybody doesn't take a look at when they're looking at these things is saying, well, I'm good. I'm going to get better. Well, then you have to have a lot of other things going for you. Well, yeah. Well, it's like there's the Gary v thing of like comparing yourself to LeBron. Oh, okay. I didn't know he does this because I hear sports. I just I don't know what's happening. Oh, well, yeah. But I think that idea is really valid. And it's something I personally struggle with a lot is I think that it's very easy to look and be like, oh, well, how come that guy is the most notable amazing person doing this? And I'm not. And then like, I don't know. And I say that as someone who's like a little bit convinced he could be the Michael Jordan of this. Sure, sure, sure. I believe in myself extensively. You know, like I think it's also different when it's, I think you and I, to a large extent, are practicing like kills that are sort of a little bit separate from like raw talent. You know what I mean? Well, you know, it's interesting because I've always subscribed to that thing that talent is like people telling a half story that like there is a natural propensity sometimes to some things. And some people have it definitely. I mean, it's complicated. But I basically I think that, well, OK, rather what we're doing is a lot more hard skill than, you know, making music, which is much more soft skill. And it's, you know, and it's very hard to figure out why Kesha's song clicks and yours does not, you know. And I say that fully convinced that Kesha is the greatest pop songwriter for generation. First two records. Oh, dude. Yo, I'm so glad. My favorite stuff. Oh, my God, I had this entire tour where I would make the band come out to Kesha because we were there was a lot of drama. Part of my vengeance was every night they'd come out to TikTok. It was great. Nice. But yeah, I mean, so I do think you need to believe you're something. You're not going to also put yourself out there. Like, you know, Reddit is filled with just people going like, I'm scared to put myself out. So the thing though, being that when you do what's the most effective way. It's like what I was talking about before was like the opportunity cost. Sure, sure, sure. Is like, I feel like here's a good example. Like what I'm trying to build right now is my YouTube channel and then this politics podcast that I'm working on, we have to work on building that every day. And so like, I only, especially since my boss at the politics podcast is only going to pay me a certain amount of hours a week. So I can't cut straight out of that or else I'm just going to lose money. So I have to think of the most effective ways. And I just, I can see that if you've made the most amazing video and you have the back out, I'll get everything that's the right place. Ads are going to be there. Maybe the better way of me saying what I could have said in that video is what I said and get more fans. My book, which is that ads are the last piece after everything is going great. That should be put in place. And maybe that I guess like that's the thing is maybe what my real umbrage with what everybody is saying these days is they put ads way before what should actually be happening, which is you have the best content. You've built up your community so that people in your community are telling you when a good song has happened. They've already gotten you some initial listens because your community is happening. And you understand where to put yourself in those blogs you're talking about and all the things. Sure. I think if you look at a bit like the neck rock campaign, it worked because people already give a lot of people already are somewhat aware of that band. So we're able to, you know, so them seeing it again is like, Oh, okay. Yes. Of course. This is for me. Yes. Sign me up, you know, makes, you know, there's a lot of people even in the broadest facing audiences saying, Oh, fuck. Yeah, I saw them on such and such a tour and it was fucking sick. And that definitely, definitely helped. And I also definitely, definitely think that there's a lot of other pieces that need to go into the puzzle. You know, I think saying it's just ads is oversimplistic in any business, but especially music. Yes. You know what's funny thing is I will even take umbrage with any business. Like, you know, it's a funny thing. I'm a food nerd. And I buy like boutique, spicy truffle mayonnaise purely off of Facebook. I don't think they're even doing anything else to market, aside from that they made a nice video to show the fucking truffle mayonnaise. Yeah. You can do that when it's truffle mayonnaise and you're going to make literally like a three to 400% profit on it. You're making it for a dollar. You're selling it to me for $17 because I'm a fucking idiot who will buy this. And you're making a great profit. But for music, the ad costs more than the streams compensated. And that does not work. And the only way to make that money back is to have repeat listeners, right? Because then it can get interesting because then it's like, but even then like when you really break those numbers down, like let's say you're getting new followers at like $0.10 a click, which is really good. For them to stream 20 of your songs. Or tell 20 friends because they learned about you, which is the other hope. Yeah, that's still like $0.10. Like I think anyone would say $0.10 for a new follower is like real fucking good. Sure, sure. You know, I've seen people brag for getting people like $0.15 a follower. You know, I'm happy when I get under $0.50. But to make that money back purely on Spotify is hard. That being said, if one of those people goes and buys a shirt, you're already covered for a bunch of stuff. So I guess just my thing then becomes that one, what we were getting into before is that the tools are so bad. And then two, the other thing that obviously, since my YouTube channel is so focused on Spotify and what I see Spotify doing so much more fan building for so little effort for so many people that the ads can fuck that up if you're not targeting down low enough. And that was what we were getting into. Yeah, that's that's a huge part of it. And I also think like it's not the same between different genres. And I get the impression. And I'm also biased because I have three feet of hair. Grew up going to punk shows and ruining my life. You know, I get the impression that a lot of people watching these videos are more on the rock side of the spectrum broadly speaking. You know, it's just it's rocking a lot of pop and not as much EDM. And I think those videos exist. I've seen those videos exist. My friend Lady J is really, really good at those, you know, in the hip hop world. And she's going over very similar content, you know, but I definitely think I think that that's something people don't address is that it's a very different ballgame for rock and metal and indie people. Yeah, versus hip hop and EDM, which have wider audiences and much different audience behaviors. Yeah. And that's something people don't address wildly different audience behaviors. And I think that's a really crucial piece, you know, and that's also why you see sometimes these formulas that just rely on stuff that doesn't necessarily work. And then other times, I think you see really good formulas that just require so much work and nobody, nobody processes that. Give me a more gray or thick, because I'm not getting the picture. Okay, sir. So like someone like, so there's two in particular, right? One is like Leah McHenry was a really amazing school for marketing. Billy, you believe that it's funny because I see somebody complains about the school. Okay. Well, and then there's also like modern Musician Academy. But ultimately, my friend Lindsay Schoolcraft from Cradle of Filth or wasn't Cradle of Filth, sorry, has had a really, really, really remarkable success promoting her solo career across a variety of projects, using Leah McHenry's tactics, right? And in with her fucking harp record, her black metal record, her like... But it can be argued while she's using those techniques that you were also in a band that at one point was selling out 3000 seat venues. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. But still, you can't name any of the other fucking side people in that band. I mean, I can't name anybody. But yeah, but I'm saying like your general metalhead, like if they're going to know a member of that band who wasn't her or the main dude, you know, like she was... You know the singer and her. Yeah, you know, and she was only in the band for like six years. You know, for her to have no other side person for a metal band on that level has their Indiegogo make 20k in a week, which is what she did. Yeah, that's impressive. You know, like that's impressive regardless of the scale, especially as a sideman, you know what I mean? So, you know, and I know the numbers behind some of her other material and it's really like really impressive for someone doing it on her own. However, she's like one of the few artists who I would legitimately say probably understands more about the music industry than I do. And she's someone who fucking like works and bleeds. And like when I see how much stuff she does, I'm like, like when we have around the pod on my podcast, Dumb and Dumbest, once every couple months basically, I'm always just like, yeah, yeah, you get it. Like, you have to listen to her episodes. Yeah, I'll send them over to you. You know, but like she's someone who, you know, but I think and I think those methods work, but I think it's just fucking bleeding and understanding where they go with that. You know what I mean? But it requires, it's not like do these four steps and then you're done. It's like work 14 hours a day for two months and then you'll probably, it'll probably work out because you follow this formula that basically makes sense. Yeah. So I mean, so this is getting back to the more of the thing that I think we're putting together of this equation is that one, you're living and breathing to know the dynamics of the thing that you're participating in the game you're playing. Yeah. Two, you're making the great content and doing that. And then once you have all those things, sure throwing some awareness stuff to spread out, it could be a nice piece of the puzzle that makes you go further. But yet again, the issue is, is that most people just go, the ads are the solution and that's not going to work. Yeah. And you can, I actually disagree that I think the ads can be put a lot earlier than you're saying. If the content... What good does it make? Because, because you're getting the retargeting audience. Sure. Because if you have, if you have a good video that people are watching 10 seconds of, then you have already an audience who you know, like kind of give a shit and kind of know about you when you have new things to do. But you have to be able to follow it up. Right? So then you need the consistent sustained promotion thing. Yeah, exactly. But it's like any other promotion, you know, it's like if you get written about in consequence of sound every two years, that doesn't really help. That doesn't help at all. I mean... Okay, if you get written about in Jesse's favorite publication, Rolling Stone every two years. No, but the point being, if you get written about in a major publication every two years, that's not really going to move the needle for you. But if you can kind of, you know... The thing I talk about, consistent sustained promotion. Yeah, exactly. You know, but it all ties into the same thing. So if you're consistent with it, it's going to work. If the content is good, if it's something people are going to give a shit about, then it's going to convert, you know. And you can get really good at it and you can find ways to do it that are really good, you know, like I literally have a type of content that I run once a month for my company that's never made me less than $750. But so... But also I spend a lot of time building up my brand. And it's also not music streams that pay 0.67 cents. Yeah. But still, like there are ways to do it that it's just going to convert. So but there's still the thing though that I feel like that doesn't get answered in this. Sure. It's like you have the great video but if you're starting from none, I still just like... But yeah, but I'm agreeing. You can't start from none. There has to be other reasons for people to give a shit. And in all the most successful campaigns, there's other... And that can even be, oh, they're on a sick label and they have an amazing looking product, which is the case for some of the bands whose very first records are on prophecy productions, which is like a product facing label, right? Even if it's a new thing, you know, we have the power of our brand. We have the power of having delivered amazing products. We have the power of a 25 year legacy of greatness. You know, some people are going to go like, oh, maybe I haven't heard of this, but I know the LP is going to be fucking gorgeous. And I know that they haven't put out really that many in my opinion. There haven't really been any bad prophecy records and I've heard everything. Yeah. And but this is the funny thing is this is one of the main comments that I saw in my video that I didn't discuss in it. I technically exit out because I was like, whatever. But that people are like, I respect ads from bands on labels. It's the same thing. The one other thing that I do encourage ads for is when people do features in collaboration. So if you are metal band that just happens to be friends with the big singer in the other metal band and you get that big singer on track, putting a fucking ad with that singer in the video. Yes, that ad works fucking great because big cosigns. And just as you're saying, like a label cosign and showing people that you're on that, that works great. But when it's just you don't have any of that cosign or anything. Well, because it's it's a secret to virality, right? It's familiar plus unique. Yes. And I would argue like, you know, I really do cosigns isn't always the best term. But like what I really like to say is, is it's like the validation thing of a respected anything. You know, it's like a very funny thing. Like I actually the one lie I actually tell people these days is like, you could pretty much make up a quote from anything and put it on a poster for your next fire for your show. And you could just say in fuck sound says the best new pop punk band on the scene today. No one's checking if it fuck sound looks exists. And and just for the record, that's some of my best ads is like pulling the pulling the best quote from the biggest article. I could see that totally being a thing. Sometimes even you have to like read carefully because maybe the biggest article wasn't very nice. You pulled the movie trick string two sentences together with three periods. Exactly. You know, just delete all the bad stuff. You know, it might be this album is not very great. If you put this album is great. Yes. The classic. You know, not not ashamed to admit that man. I mean, listen, I'd be lying if I say I haven't done it. Sometimes you work really hard to put out a record and work really hard to get it on the right place. And that guy doesn't like it that day. This is true. And but there is the thing of what really matters actually is contextualizing why you should know this group. Exactly. And making people feel like and that is the other thing is like here's why a lot of I think ads in general fail is that just as like I tell everybody like with the Spotify pitch, the main thing you're trying to do is you're trying to say I'm worthy enough that if you put me on this thing that I'm not going to let you down, that people are going to be interested because I'm going to be other places. Whereas, you know, like when I do a podcast episode description my whole goal is to create curiosity. But with ads, one of the main things that you can do that creating curiosity could be great, but really is the ad should make people feel like I'm late to knowing about this person. I should get caught up and learn about this person because everybody else knows about this person. And that's part of how having a good video can really help because if you have a pro looking video then it's like, oh, wow, this band is actually doing stuff. Yes. And it's also why what I also say is like the consistency of like when you're releasing signals at the time or you're doing cool shit all the time, people are like, I see this band. I should know this because they're a part of the conversation. You know, and if you can communicate, and if you can communicate a level of swagger, you know, one of the best performing ads I've ever run, my favorite ad I've ever run was for Necrot. And it just, which is a death metal band, obviously. And it just said, and the song was called like, You're Hell. And the ad copy was just press play, die. Well, because I knew who I was hitting. Yeah. And I knew they would say that was funny. And that's one of the things that like, we were talking a little bit about these music academies is like, they always make these like success roadmaps and stuff like that. And the thing that I always find fear is like, the success roadmap is always so broad because your micro genre is going to have something that works totally different for everything. Like, you know, the hyper pop stuff I listened to now, it's, they're literally is the thing of like, if you made a glossy video, you're going to get laughed at. I disagree. I think that, I mean, yes and no. I think that all content, all content that gets popular is marketed with the same strategies. The micro tactics do have to change. Yes, and I do agree with you there that there's a macro thing, but the problem is, is that just knowing macro is not very helpful. And that's the problem a lot of bands have, right? And that's sort of what I try to do with Bacon's Bits, where because I have, I definitely have like hip hop people or EDM people hit me up and be like, Oh, your stuff's useful. Can you answer this? And like, every once in a while, I'll do a Bacon's Bit about like buying beats or something. But like, I really want this to be for like, dudes in metal bands. I think 95% of what I say is broadly applicable. But like, there isn't anyone who's, there isn't anyone who slept on the floor of the pariah and woke up to Scabies doing a line next to them and then had to fucking clear out the basement so that their friends' band could play that day. Gotcha. And Scabies was my friend's name, just for those of you who are familiar with Crust. You know. It's funny because like, it was the same thing we were saying a little bit before, is that you need to be so, this is why I think the community thing is so familiar. When you are investigating your community, you're always seeing the little subtleties that are accumulated. Yeah, you understand how to show you're a part of it. Yeah. And it's even like the thing of like, when people are like, how do I start talking to people on Reddit? And I'm like, well, you're going to have to watch for two months. Like you're going to go on every day and start seeing what works for people and what they do and then figure out how your personal thing fits in there. You're not just going to imitate, you're going to put your own spin on that too. And like, that's why the community thing is so important. So many people get, especially like young this morning, I was answering somebody who was like, I put the last two months of the community thing and I still don't get it. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe you got to keep doing more, more time. Yeah, no, like there's definitely times where I'm like, it's not that you're bad. You just don't have any social skills. Yes, yes. That's exactly. That's exactly. Like I'm not trying to be an asshole, man. You're just, you just suck. You're not picking up the language that people use. It's a very funny thing. Like, you know, I always tell people, like, you know, like three of the biggest bands I've worked with the men's singers, man overboard in transit. Like what are their greatest skills? Is those guys could see five minutes of how someone interacts and it'd be very familiar to them because they already had a personality that worked very well in what is good currency in that genre. And what I mean by that is like, for example, like the men's singers were so young when I started working with them, but they already knew how to talk, hanging out, punk drinking and politics better than most of the people 10 years older than their age. And that gives you an insane damage. 100%. And they under, you know, as a sad guy from Pennsylvania, when I found out about them, I was like, oh my God, it's more sad guys from Pennsylvania who worry about getting older. Oh my God. Yeah, there you go. Same thing with like, band like Modern Baseball, another band. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah, really. You know. Understood the community. And what's funny, I was listening to a record actually today. Oh, fuck, I can't, it was like, but it's like a record about a particular island on the north of England. Except it was so good because it was so honest about being a part of, begging about that island. And like, when you have that level of authenticity about that thing, other people can connect to it, like fucking Fleetwood Mac rumors, right? It's like an extremely authentic record about a relationship situation no one else has ever experienced. No one has it, but they were able to. No one else has been in a relationship situation that stupid. That's a great point. You know, but everyone can relate to that record because it's so honest. Sure, yeah. You know, and that's why you have fucking kids in China who are still into like fucking Crosby Stills National Young. I think that that is a good point. And I think deja vu is the best record of the 70s. Is that a Crosby Stills National Young record? Yeah. Okay. I'm just surprised. You gotta remember, I don't listen to any music that's more than three years old. Oh, okay, fair enough. Well, you should listen to that music with them. Okay, okay. Do we have any other points we need to go over? No, I mean, I think that kind of gets it. Like there needs to be other stuff. You can't just run and add and expect, you know, it's not like... I think that's what we dialed down to. And I think the problem is, yeah, that a lot of people, a lot of internet marketers, not just music internet marketers, but in general be like, you know, like, you're just one funnel away. And it's like Russell Brunson, your fucking tool took me and my buddy eight hours fucking leading to build it. And then it took me another three hours to make it like good, good. And then it was still hard. And his tool works. But you know, we should say his tool is click funnels. His tool is click funnels. And it works, but it's, you know, like these things are hard, but they will work if you take the time. The thing is, they're hard. Yes. Yeah. All right. Cool.