 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 wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of the creativity and currency. And you know, when we do this special intro, we got a special guest today. We have a music manager and artist manager. His artist has over 40 million streams on Spotify alone over the last 12 months. And they are currently on Spotify alone doing over three million streams a month. It's going to be a lot of game in this video, a lot of real work and they're indie. So there's some great conversation I want to have. Welcome. Appreciate you being on Chaz Bateman. What's good with you, Chaz? So Chaz. Everything, man, everything. Honored to be here. Thank you guys for having me on for real. I'm excited. Yeah, appreciate you, man. Hey, for sure, man. You know, we've been linked for a while and, you know, what I've always loved about y'all is y'all do the work. That's what it comes down to, you know what I mean? You know, we we we we we first started working. We all came on as as clients. This has been probably like two years ago. All right. That's crazy. It's been three years. You know what I mean? I know, right? But if you but once you like we stop, like we stay connected because like you're actually doing stuff, we're actually doing stuff, you know, and it's just good to know people and always try to tell people, you know, sometimes you can people try to I don't know, just try to build relationships in a in a weird way and overthink it. But sometimes, man, you like you just work with somebody, do a good business and if they make sense and they're really doing something, man, just build a real relationship after that. That's a good filter sometimes. It's like, oh, man, that's a trash person. I'm glad I didn't waste time becoming friends with him. That's how I think about it. 100 percent, man, 100 percent. I mean, a lot of it for me comes down to it is someone authentic and being genuine. And I think just where I'm at is how can we help each other? Like how can we help each other build? I'm just on a mission right now to just literally help as many people as I can. For sure, man. That's definitely something we'll get into because, you know, a lot of people say stuff like that. But I take you and able seriously when y'all say that. We're really doing it, bro. We're really doing it. I take y'all seriously. But let's let's rewind here. I think it's a great place for context. We're not going to go too much into TikTok specifically heavy, you know, for for those who who are like, man, I heard so much about TikTok. I don't want to hear anymore about TikTok, but I think it's good for reference because coming in, there was a I want to say quite issue that able had that so many artists had. But it was just like, yo, I don't know about this TikTok thing. I don't know if this about this content creation thing for real, for real. I know how to create great music. This is what I do. Like Able's want to produce, you know, create music and not just like, oh, I produce a little bit like artists come to him who got a legit career come to him to produce and I make my music like I'm in a high quality. Why should I demean myself by creating these reels, these TikTok videos? Right. There's a sense of that. However, you know, there was a process of going through it. Can you as somebody like who's very successful at it right now? Like I would like I would say in the tops in terms of indie artists and legitimately indie who are doing it from a content standpoint, especially as small as your team is, like, what was that process to go? Like, was it easy? Did y'all both like, even as from a management side, like, yo, is this worth our time? Can you kind of walk people through that? It was so worth our time, man. And I really appreciate you. I mean, you were a big part of our journey getting into that space like I didn't do it alone, you know, in working with Able. Like you and I worked alongside Able to help him get into TikTok and really build our strategy, like you and your team. So like shout out, like we probably wouldn't be in the same position if it weren't for you guys. And I think that's a real testament to the work that you guys do and the knowledge that you put out there. And it's been awesome following your guys journey, the content that you're putting out all the game that you guys are sharing, the school community that you're building. I'm super inspired by. So I just wanted to first, like, acknowledge you guys for everything that you guys are doing, so much value that you guys have brought to us. And I'm excited to share that experience and how we used a lot of what you taught and implemented it and we're a living testimonial of it really does work. As far as the resistance towards doing TikTok specifically, like Able and I have talked about this a lot. And this is actually why I wanted to partner up with someone else that was already familiar in the space because, you know, time is money. And I feel like time is our most precious resource. And in my head, I could be like, hey, I see, you know, this person over here doing this style, TikTok Able, like, why don't you do that and see if it works for you? But at the end of the day, you know, it's going to take some time, at least on our experience, it takes some time to find your formula. There's a lot of personal development. I think that happens as you're figuring out your style, what you're comfortable with, what you're not comfortable with. And it's funny now because I'm going through it myself as I'm starting to put out content now for myself for the first time. So I'm going through all the stuff that I was, you know, coaching Able through or suggesting or however you want to phrase it. And I get it. I get the resistance. I get the being self-conscious and the fear of being judged and how this is going to proceed be perceived. And whether you're an artist or just creating content, I think a lot of that same stuff can be applicable. But speaking specifically to artists and my experience in working with Able, I'm trying not to speak for him, but I think his resistance around doing TikTok specifically was, you know, he had been producing music and had been in the music industry already for over 10 years. And at the time, I guess it was two years ago, man, that's crazy, like looking at the date. But two years ago. There was a big shift happening on the platform. We were starting to see artists like Jake and Connor Price and Nick D. I was starting to see these artists break on the platform. And I was seeing how their careers were taking off because they were taking advantage of the short form formula and staying consistent and finding a way to be genuine and authentic. And all of them have, you know, done it in different ways. But I was like, hey, man, like we either need like a $250,000 marketing budget or we got to start making these like short form content videos to put this music out there. And I'll get a little bit more specifically into our journey and how Able and I started working together and what we were trying before TikTok, because I think it's important to mention. But specific just to TikTok. I think as far as creating a little urgency around doing it was trying what Able wanted to do first. So we were doing long form music videos. We were doing photo shoots. We were doing what I would call more like traditional music marketing where, you know, setting up a pre-release and he wasn't on TikTok at all at the time yet. And so he had like a core Instagram following some people that are pretty close to him. But I think the resistance around TikTok from him came from, I don't want to compromise myself as an artist project. I don't want people to, you know, think I'm a content creator or that, okay, if I'm going to do some comedy type, something to get some eyes on my project that they think my music is a joke. Because at the end of the day and, you know, a couple of years into our short form creation journey, like we do have a lot of fun with it, you know, and it's really not that serious at this point for us. And there's been such a process of letting go, I think on Abel's side and also mine. But I think the resistance around, okay, there is a way that we can find a way that you're comfortable in doing this that fits your style. I think that's like a real big takeaway. Like you don't have to do the same exact type of videos that other people are doing that you might think is corny, but there's probably a lane where you can find what feels genuine and authentic and then also use some of these formulas which we can talk about in as much detail as you guys want to get into. But you can use the formulas and the things that are working for them and then find your own way to do it. And I think that's right where our paths collided and we started working together was you were providing suggestions on like, hey, look at this video style, maybe, you know, talk with Abel and see if there's a way that he could find a do it in his own flavor and the journey began. Yeah, man. I'm happy to hear you say that stuff because I think the big thing is it truly is all about your style. And I feel like when people see a platform work, they think that the only way they can attack it is the way that they see people doing it. But why do you think that when it doesn't work like that for music, right? Otherwise it's like, well, the only way you can make music is copy the formulas that everybody else has created their music, right? It's the same thing. It's just a creative canvas is no different. And at that time, one of the big things as we kind of touched on was just like certain level of quality that he wanted to project. And it's a lot more now in terms of like using higher quality cameras and approach to things. But at that time, it was still like not that common at all. But the fact that he was able to do that and then make it work and go like super viral to the point where people are like, I'm tired of seeing this guy. The way that Abel was popping up on people's screen, people would have thought like a record label was pushing it. Like, oh, they're pushing him in my face. TikTok has him in my favor. Like he was everywhere to a specific audience. And we got it out of control. Yeah, and look, it was not even like it was in our hands. You know what I mean? We're not choosing who the algorithm shows it to. But you're talking about six million, five million, like all with that was specific around the music. Let me take a quick second to say, if you want legitimate one-on-one help to build a custom strategy and infrastructure you need to get to the next level, no matter if you're an artist, manager or label, we're now opening up availability for one-on-one work. Now these spots typically go fast. So make sure you go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash gold to apply and schedule a call. Yes, this is something that you have to schedule a call for, speak with us. We don't just let anybody in. You can't just go to a page and pay for it. This is our one-on-one process and breakdown. We want to make sure it's only serious people. If you are not serious, right? If you have zero budget or ability to actually focus on your music, then this is not for you. But www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash gold. It's a space to go. If you want to get to the next level and want legitimate help for people who've been there, done it before, again and again. Back to the video. That's the thing is, so you did, obviously, y'all went through some things that were like, some things that were a little skid and there were other versions, right? Of content that y'all touched on. But the ones that really, really took off with Able, which I think is another reservation that artists have, were actually the music. Specific ones, not doing anything crazy, not like doing a skid, not dancing or, well, kinda a dance on one of them. But that's a different situation in other videos. But that's why I appreciate y'all's journey so much because I know not only, there's some people who have those reservations from the beginning, but they're not doing the amount of work and they don't have as much of experience and accolades to stand on as Able had at that moment. Like, so it's even harder because you do feel like almost like, there's a certain crowd that knows me, right? And I don't wanna look corny to that crowd that's like almost like some peers. I know that kinda thing can go down in your head where you feel like, it's almost like I have a big exec job and do I really wanna start over and start my own business and it's like just a rib shack or something. You know what I mean? I mean, 100% and I do think that was a part of it. You know how you're being perceived by your peers and I can relate to that cause I worked in the corporate world for 10 years and I was like a different person in corporate America than I was like in the streets or like outside of those walls. I was like, and I didn't really realize it until after I had left that I was like, oh my God, like I really compartmentalized like myself in so many different ways, you know? And I think on TikTok, I think what really hits or at least what really resonates for me is when I feel like someone's being genuine and authentic and I'm like, okay, like I can see what this person's doing. I can see what they're about and then I'm buying into like them as a person and then if the music is good, then I'll stick and stay and dive into the project. You know, but if someone gets my attention and the music isn't good, like I'm out, like that's just like me personally. So it's sort of the balance of both of those worlds like finding a way to express yourself in a genuine and authentic way. And I think the conversation could go really deep depending on how deep we went down this road. But I think Abel and I have both been on like a really deep self-discovery personal development journey of like, who are we really? And then I feel like how Abel has shared his story and shared who he is has drastically evolved over time. And, you know, I've watched videos lately of people talking about how to develop your personal brand and being an entrepreneur and sharing on social media. And this seems to be like a common theme for a lot of people's journey, whether they're an artist or they're a content creator, there's these like cycles of kind of getting into the game and talking on the camera. We were kind of joking about it a little bit before the episode, but you know, Abel and I do a weekly podcast now called the Full of Heart podcast and the first 10 episodes we did behind a paywall community. And my intention behind it was, hey, if people want to jump in and support, you know, it'll be a way for people to give back and support the project and we'll have a space to give them value. But honestly, I was a little feared up about, you know, getting vulnerable and having those kind of like heart to heart type conversations and just having it be out there for everyone in the world. And like I was telling you guys by episode 10, now I'm just like, let's, let's upload them everywhere. You know, so by the time that this episode airs, you know, all those podcasts will be up available everywhere, Spotify, YouTube, but we're gonna continue doing that weekly. But that was me working through my own fear and to be honest with you, like I still struggle to just like put up the phone and press the record button and talk right into the camera. I just simply don't have a lot of experience doing it. And this is something I've been talking with people about lately because my old story was, oh, I have this imposter syndrome. You know, like I can go into meetings, I can do certain things, I'm operating, I'm moving at a certain level. But then in my head, when it's time for me to sit down and record a video, I was all these doubts and fears and judgments. And what I heard someone say lately and it really resonated for me was like imposter syndrome is just like a natural reaction to things that you don't have experience in doing. You know, and it can sound pretty simple, but it was kind of profound for me because the more I do these different things, like these podcasts, like I can jump on, I'm comfortable with you guys, chop it up, talk about whatever, take these clips, share them on social media. I'm just in the flow state with all of that. But it's something about putting the reps in and then bringing that back to Able, that's what he was doing. And he talked about putting the work in. I'm grateful to work with Able to your point. You know, for a variety of reasons, he's a close friend of mine, but his work ethic and his dedication to this is like extremely focused. So he was like full time figuring out TikTok for like six months when we were all working together. You know, and you and I were talking like every few days and we were working with your team, but he was willing and he was open minded to try all this stuff that he didn't want to do. You know, he was in a closet, you know, singing acapella cover songs, you know, he was doing production videos to Lizzo remixes, things that he would never traditionally want to do, but we were just like trying different video styles at the time. And even though we had one of the highest quality cameras that you can kind of get as like an independent filmer, he was still propping up his cell phone on all these different other people's porches on the sidewalk all around LA and just lip syncing his songs. He was doing all of these things that he didn't want to do. And I think just continuing to put the reps in and for a long time, man, like, I don't know how long it was, but I would say it was probably like at least like four or five months that he was posting two to three videos every single day, including the weekends and they weren't getting more than 200 views. It was about the 200 part was probably about, I would say 30 something days, right? In terms of like just 200, but then it became more like 800 to 1400, right? Yeah, and then I remember, it was around there still about day 91, I would say. And I remembered it so vividly because I don't know if you remember like the closeout call for, you know, that system. I said, yo, Able, like, you might not see results for two months, like, you're doing the exact right thing. Even though the TikTok isn't like giving you the output yet, like you are doing the exact right thing. Just keep doing this. And I don't know if it's gonna be two months or maybe longer, but the shit's gonna go crazy. And then like two days later, y'all hit me up and like shit was going crazy. And I was like, dang, I mean, I knew it was gonna happen. I didn't think it was gonna happen that fast. But I think, but I always like to remember that and even emphasize that to artists because this is why it's so hard to blow up when you don't have experience especially because it's not an immediate feedback loop. There's actually a delay where you can be doing the right thing and not seeing the results. So you're thinking, oh, I'm doing the wrong thing. I'm gonna stop or I'm gonna do the wrong thing and I switch up. You switched up from doing the right thing because you didn't understand. And that's one of the few places where I could clearly say like, you know, my experience or anybody who just has seen a lot of it is so valuable to an artist who hasn't seen that much because why would you not think you're doing the wrong thing when you're only getting 200 views? It's like, no, bro, that video was amazing. TikTok just don't know it yet. You know, like that's kind of what it is. I mean, for sure. There's a lot of things that you just touched on there that was our exact experience, you know? And I think as far as just putting into perspective people with just timelines and how hard Abel was going and for how long, like we were trying to do the TikTok thing for probably like three or four months before we linked up with you. So just as far as like total time in, but Abel, I would say really started to like do multiple videos a day and stay consistent when we started working together with you and you guys were sending over content ideas. And also I was going all in on the project too. So I was working with him and offering suggestions and like have really believed in Abel's project and just him as an artist, you know, for a very long time. Like him and I grew up together, you know? So when he was out in LA, he was out in LA for like six or seven years, like producing and ghost producing for some other people. And he had just gotten his artist project up and off the ground and then within a year or so after that, like he had put out some records but then COVID hit and then he came back to the Philly area when LA shut down and that's when him and I reconnected. But my point being like before Abel was even doing the Abel Hart project, he was actually doing a lot of electronic music production. But even like before then, like he was doing these little demos where he was like downloading beats off YouTube and then has some skull candy headphones in his closet with a little blue microphone and he was just singing and like riffing and doing these melodies over instrumentals. And this is like way back, like this is over 10 years ago. I actually still have some of those songs like private on my YouTube channel and I always joke about like I still got those songs and he's like, they'll never see the light of day but they were good, man. Like they were good. Like he was like riffing, he was like singing and he, you know, just sound like he was trained. Like he was just kind of like freestyle and flowing and just like coming up with songs. So I saw that in him and even back in those days, this was like, I mean it's gonna date us a little bit but this is almost like when YouTube and like people were like being discovered on YouTube like this is like before like Drake's come up really, you know this is like kind of way back. I'm like, hey like do this cover of this song and let's just like put it on YouTube. But he just wasn't ready then, you know the doubts and the fears and all the insecurities that come along with like, I don't think it's it shouldn't go like, what's the best way to phrase it? I don't want to downplay how difficult it is to be vulnerable enough to just put your stuff out there on the internet, you know the music I think is for sure a deep layer of a vulnerability. I don't want to say putting yourself out there on video is like a more drastic level of vulnerability but you're really putting yourself out there if you're, you know, being on video and you're speaking to the camera. And I think that journey is different for everyone but I think to your point kind of tying it back and I just wanted to add enough context there but staying consistent without results. I think is the, is a huge key factor but I think there's also like a balance and this is where it's like different for everyone where I don't know if you wanna really be doing something that's like not working or not producing any results for like years and years and years. And I think that could be like a good conversation to talk about but like it's the balance of that, right? Like if you're putting out like bad music and making like bad videos that like aren't like resonating, you know, really with anyone and you're doing that for so long. I think that's where it can, I think that's where it can be beneficial like we were talking about in the beginning to pick up different formulas from other people, other artists that may be working for them and then see if there's a way that, you know, you can make them your own but no matter what, Abel talks about this a ton is you need to find a way to, enjoy and stay consistent doing that. Like if you're not enjoying the process at all through it or you have such a heavy resistance towards making videos and that's like always there, you know, trying to have that perspective shift or try to find video styles that you enjoy doing knowing that it's such a powerful channel right now to have people discover who you are is making this short form content. For short, man, you know, and I like that we're just talking about video, anything you hear on TikTok, right, can be translated to video in general. Like this is just really all about video and I think the biggest part, people have to understand every, all of it is mental. Like to start, that's the biggest thing because you really don't know anything. Any of our reservations aren't real, all of our assumptions aren't real that you have to do it this way that it's gonna be corny or it's against my brand. Before you actually get started is just all mental and some level of insecurity projecting. Now, once you start, right now, you have legitimate feedback, you can learn and make decisions based on knowledge, right? And what you said that I love, and we're gonna switch subjects completely right after this, but what you said that I love is basically it just comes down to the references at the beginning, right? You can copy people at the beginning, but that's the same again as what you've probably already did as an artist copying other artists at the beginning, whether you knew you were trying, all right, you have some styles that you like that fit you, and that just gets it going. And over time, you find you. And I think not looking at it as a process to get there versus, oh, this is just what I have to do. And thinking that's what you have to do forever is probably the gap that a lot of people run into. You know what I mean? That's true. I think it can be that daunting, like this is what I gotta do forever. And I think that's such a good point. And I think that's why Able speaks so much on what we speak on, like in our podcast, in our community, and just like the type of topic that Able speaks on is all around really like personal development and life and mental health and finding different ways to stay consistent and being mindful of your energy and who you're surrounded by. Cause I think, you know, for a lot of people, whether you're an artist, entrepreneur, mix both of those worlds together, that can be considered an unconventional lifestyle to a lot of people, a lot of people's parents, a lot of people's family members, grandparents, like whoever in your life might be guiding you. Like, bro, like, okay, like we get it. Like you think you're an artist, but like, what are you really doing? You know, like, what's your job? Like how do you actually survive? And I think that's one thing that I'm so grateful for. And I think about it like every day that what we've been able to build allows us to live as full-time creatives and live in a way that feels like a fulfilling life of abundance and being able to do, you know, what we love to do every day. The Song of Week strategy, y'all killed the game. We talked about the fact that you're doing three million streams on Spotify along a month at the moment, all right? So the Song of Week strategy is something that you were doing. And then now you said you're switching up or just switched up to the Song Every Other Week strategy. We'd love to know as someone who's made it work, right? A team that's really like benefited from it. What made it work? Like, are there any tips that you can give or insights you can give from doing the song a week successfully? Yeah, for sure. I think there's a couple of different things worth pointing out as to like what we're focused on now and why. I think Spotify, especially since we've been going more all in on it in the past year and a half or so, at least for us has become a lot more of a discovery tool than I saw it as in the beginning. And what I mean by that is now we have access to Spotify Discovery Mode, for example, where after a song's been out for 30 days and it's done enough radio play, we're able to put it into Spotify Discovery Mode and then Spotify now in exchange for a small percentage of the royalties that the song wouldn't have gotten anyway. Spotify is showing that song to more people that it thinks it would like. So believe it or not, like the way that we were creating our short form content strategy, we started to apply a lot of those similar strategies to how we were making the music. So if you listen to a lot of Abel's music, a lot of times there's like a catchy phrase, like right in the beginning of the song or we'll just put the hook right in the beginning within the first five seconds. Cause I don't know about you guys, I use Spotify and within like the first five seconds, I'm like next on a song or not, you know, if I haven't heard it before, like almost like right away, I can kind of like feel if it's something that I'm gonna be vibing with or not. Sometimes I give it a shot. Sometimes if it's halfway there, I might like skim halfway through and see what's really going on. But I think, you know, now that Spotify is putting the music in front of newer people, we actually adjusted our music strategy to make sure that we're catching and hooking people in the beginning where it makes sense to do so. And I think one thing that I've really been looking into and we've been focused on is the actual number of followers that you have on Spotify. And this is just my understanding of how it works. But you know, when you put out a song and you, like a lot of times also as far as people that are actually artists listening to this, like the release radar pitching it out, like however many weeks in advance, we were doing that for so, so long and doing like four weeks out and then like waiting and then trying to get content to pop. And I can go down like kind of a rabbit hole of what's worked for us and what hasn't worked because all of it kind of answers your question as far as release strategy. But like I was saying to you guys a little bit in the beginning, after having multiple major label conversations, after releasing a single or two with different distribution partners where it was like back and forth and lots of meetings and conversations with release strategy. And at the end of the day, Abel and I are pretty much a two man team. You know, we have our attorney, Matt Busser, like shout out to Matt Busser who holds it down for us. But other than that, it's just Abel and I and we really have everything that we need between him and I where he creates all the music. He can even create most of the videos all himself at this point. He edits the videos. I'm really there to help provide some guidance, holds in space as a friend, provide ideas and handle some stuff as far as uploading the music and different people that are reaching out in different collabs and what have you. But as far as release strategy on Spotify, a big thing that we're focused on right now is growing the number of followers on Spotify. So that was a metric that I wasn't even looking at until just a couple of months ago. Now I'm like laser focused on like, how is this follower count increasing? And the reason that I'm so honed in on that goes back to the discovery mode piece where at least my understanding of how it works is the people who follow you on Spotify, that's the primary audience that's gonna see that release radar release. It'll have it even, even pop up when you open Spotify new release from Abel heart. Like shout out to Spotify. Like they're hooking it up. They're doing that for free. And I have different people send me screenshots where they're sending like push notifications to people's iPhones about new releases. Like we're not paying Spotify to do any of that for us. So Spotify is helping the people that already follow us see our music and come listen to it. So growing the followers. And I heard Nick D talk about this as well just as far as his release radar strategy and the number of followers that he has like he has a couple hundred thousand followers. So when you're dropping songs and we actually tested it a couple of releases ago but we were almost seeing for the first week of a release we were getting almost the same amount of listens per day as we were on songs that we were doing a pretty heavy content strategy for at least one to two videos a day. So I think that's like a really interesting kind of like turning point in our trajectory right now. And again, I follow, you know, Nick D have like a lot of respect, you know, for him and listen to the conversations that you've had with him and listened to his book. And, you know, we have some mutual friends through the platform that we're building our communities on. And once he started talking about a lot of this like I really doubled down on really growing the Spotify base. And then I think as far as release strategy one thing that I noticed as far as timing just to kind of answer your question that you asked initially as far as a week versus every other week. And before we used to do a month and before we used to do pre-release strategies but at the beginning of this year once we realized like, hey, these songs are doing you know, 10, 12K streams a day for us which is good, like right out of the gate with minimal promotion. Let's just stack the catalog kind of like Nick D talks about let's just put out like as many songs as we can each of them gets 10 to 12K and then let's just keep running it up. And so that's why we were doing songs each and every week. But one thing that I just kind of noticed and why we're gonna shift to every other week A, to have it be a little bit more sustainable for Able just as far as like staying creative and you know, making new music and putting more music in the bag to have stacked up. But I noticed like after a song was dropping let's just say we dropped and we tried all different sorts of days we tried Monday night we tried Wednesday night we tried Friday night and we've just found like gone back to where we started where we just dropped Friday nights at midnight. So essentially on Thursday nights we just see like that's the best results for us even though that's when like traditionally a lot of labels or whatever are dropping around that timeframe. But anyway, I started to notice like on the Spotify for artists after a new song would come out the song that just came out before that the streams per day would like plummet like they would drop like less than half like consistently on the past like four or five releases and this is me just kind of theorizing but I do think it is worth it to kind of go deep on some of this stuff and I'd love for anyone to like reach out that's like, you know kind of, you know or if you guys like have some game on this but what I think is happening is there's one record that Spotify is like really pushing for us and really pushing for us means it consistently has been getting like anywhere between 30 and 40,000 streams a day for over a year. So that's able song called Too Good and we had no playlists on that it's never been editorial playlisted. We honestly really only had like one video get over a million views. So it wasn't even like a viral video either but somehow this song has put itself in like a really good position with Spotify where it like consistently gets 30 to 40,000 streams a day which is really good for us. But what I think might be happening is when someone's finding that song and Spotify is pushing it to lots of new people at any given time then people are coming over to Abel's profile maybe to see some of his other music and then there's like the top five songs on Spotify but then there's also newest release. So when someone comes to his profile I think that while that newest release is up there that's how those songs might be getting you know like I was saying in the beginning like 10,000 streams a day even though we're not promoting them. So I'm getting kind of like deep into it in some ways but I'm about to get a little bit more clarity and now switching to the bi-weekly because I want to see if we let that song that's up there as the new release ride out for two weeks does it maintain that 10,000 a day or is it still falling off after week one and is it associated with some release radar type situation or something like that? That's interesting man because I've seen that too. I never thought about it having something to do with it the position of it on the profile. I kind of looked at it like you know Spotify seems to kind of operate like regular social media platforms you know like the algorithm kind of moves in a way and akin to a way that kind of reminds me of like YouTube right like where YouTube is a very much so like a slow building platform it's not uncommon to put a video out you know that does a thousand views and then you look back on it 10 months from now and it's like 120K or something crazy like that. But yeah I'm just personally interested in kind of seeing how that test comes out but the big takeaway I got from it that I do want people listening to kind of really stick on is you mentioned earlier about going to or not really wanting to go to the editorial right like the process and how long it kind of takes and I don't think a lot of artists realize that you can kind of build this almost like your own release system right like if you're watching the behaviors of your audience on the platform and like you're kind of doing focused on building some of those hard numbers at the bottom you can kind of break yourself away from some of those slower elements of the streaming side that sometimes are even detrimental because if you guys were so editorially focused then you would have lost a lot of momentum like having to wait that three or four weeks to have along to keep putting stuff out and even though you may get the look overall it's a bad strategy because of how your audience likes to consume Abel Hard's music. Yeah man for sure and I think you're right as far as Spotify getting a lot of data on some of these records and then deciding how it wants to handle it like I can see that in some of the data of some of our records that we have had out and that have been in Spotify discovery mode for like five or six months you know and it's not until month five or six that they get this kind of like random bump and you know but I also there's well like we've been putting out like daily content for like I guess it's been two years you know we don't do content on the weekends not at least right now at least not consistently so it's hard for me to tell and I try not to get like too like heady with some of this stuff because I'm not always like also constantly scrolling back through like the thousands of TikToks that we have at this point and there could be like one that like jumped up from like it had like 20K for a while now it's got I go sometimes I'll scroll back and I'm like oh my God like that video has a million now like that video wasn't doing anything for like six months so I think TikTok at least when we first started working together two years ago it was like okay if this video you know didn't get a couple hundred K you know in the first couple of days it's just gonna fizzle off and die but I do think even TikTok now is collecting more data on these videos which like from like that dopamine release perspective when you're putting out stuff we're almost kind of in some ways sort of back to where we started in some sense I'll just speak on like the past month specifically we've been staying and posting consistent and doing a mixture of video styles that we've know have worked where even like when like something isn't popping for us and our baseline right now I would say within like the first few days if a video like I would say the baseline is probably around like 40,000 views is like a baseline view for us right now on TikTok and I always even just me saying that out loud like continues to bring me back to gratitude you know because like I was saying man like there was like six months where we were doing this and getting like a couple hundred views you know and again some months before working with Sean and we first started working with Sean a lot of the stuff that we were implementing was upping our view count but I think staying consistent with it was a huge thing but we haven't had a video like pop off and get a million views like in the past month or so and even as long as we've been doing it it can start to you know be like oh like should we keep going as hard like do we still need to keep doing this or trying to find different ways to say innovative and keep it fresh but my point is like I've looked back now and some of the videos that are two or three months old that you know like we're one of those 40 or 50,000 videos now have eight or 900,000 and TikTok is starting to circulate it so as I'm saying a lot of this bro I feel like some of this stuff you can start to be like a data scientist with like trying to figure out like what's working on your project as far as looking at all this data especially when you're going hard and you're putting out a lot of music and you're putting out a lot of content I think this is why Able and I's relationship works really well because I like to look at a lot of this type of data and see what's working and you know Able stays working on the music and him and I stay having life experiences together I think that's a big part of this too like going to the beach and driving cars and traveling and like living life like continuing to you know stay inspired which Able wasn't really doing much of that like when I when him and I first linked up and started working together a couple years ago like he was very focused on like I'm in the studio I'm working on music like anything else you know is a waste of my time or isn't in alignment with my purpose which I you know could understand and respect but me at the same time like I never adopted that you know like I was already married at the time like I had my homies like I was living life and you know I just like okay like you be in the studio and like let me know when you want to link and we'll do some videos and you know so I think bunch of different things that I touched on there but I think my point was there is a lot of data that's involved with this and again this is what Able and I talk a lot about on our podcast and if anyone's interested in checking that out you could go to heartfam.com and learn a little bit more about what Able and I are doing because I could talk about what I'm about to say for like a whole other hour but I won't but I think a lot of it what it comes down to for us is being in alignment with the universe and what's meant to flow through you at a certain point in time and a lot of these belief systems that Able and I have come from doing meditation and breath work and following like neuroscientists like Dr. Joe Dispenza and listening to channelings of Abraham Hicks and like these people that are I guess you could call like more in like the spiritual realm or space but we've been on that tip for you know a while like I've been on my spiritual journey for over seven years at this point and Able and I talk about this stuff a lot and it's crazy man like I just picked up the creative act a way of being by Rick Rubin I'm not sure if you guys have read that yet but he's talking about all the stuff that we talk about you know I'm only I've only read like the first hundred pages and it's kind of like a it's the best way to try to describe it it's kind of like a Schell Silverstein book or like a Dr. Seuss like it's like these little like segments you know it's not like a novel you're not reading like a story you'll read like two or three pages on like a specific topic and you're just like at least me I'm like damn like that really hit but I would say in just the first hundred pages and kind of tying it back to what I was saying already Rick talks a lot about what I was just saying and what Able and I have been talking a lot about why we talk so much about life about being you know an extension cord or like a conduit for this like higher power or like entity or whatever out there that exists and as artists you know all of us being creators you know like the three of us like we're all creating to some degree like we might not be putting music out on Spotify but we're all creatives at the end of the day and at least my belief system and a lot of what Rick is talking about is like we're channeling through something through us you know like the information like me talking right now it's like where's it coming from you know it's just like kind of flowing through me and talks a lot about as an artist you know being conscious of staying on that vibration of creativity and continuing to find ways to be inspired and then when you have an idea you know acting on it and feeling into it and using those times to create because you might be being guided in that way and then vice versa if you're sitting there like I gotta make this music I gotta be in the studio like and nothing's coming through you that might not be the vibration that you need to be on to you know be creating you know what needs to come through you in this moment and also like I won't speak for Abel as well but like a big part of my story is struggling with substance abuse you know so my spiritual journey really started back in 2017 when I decided to get sober like using substances took my life to a point of unmanageability but even back then like our homies like we were making music like we had freestyle like you know Abel was producing we had other friends that were making music like all of us basically had GarageBand and USB mics like we were all like playing around like making music and then for me back then you know I would tell myself I needed to be on something to be able to be making music but I think now like tying it back to the point that I was making I think the substances that I was using was really just taking my like anxiety away or like nervousness or like I just didn't care you know like I just hop up in there and just get on the mic and it was like you know in that moment again not condoning people using substances to get in those states of mind to create because I don't think that I mean again I've been sober at this point since 2017 so just to make sure that I'm not confusing people or encouraging people to use substances I think my point being when I was in those states of I didn't really have that angst or that worry I was able to just let things flow through me and create and since I've been on the spiritual journey I think that continues to be my journey each and every day finding ways to center myself whether it be with breath work, meditation going on a hike going on a drive you know going for a drive in my car seeing my parents going out on a date with my wife doing some yoga like whatever my practice is when I'm feeling aligned and centered and just feeling in a good space and then not taking up all of my energy with whatever other type of life stuff shows up whether I'm pursuing this or another business or stuff with Abel like if my energy is fully maxed out like I'm not living right and what I mean by that is like the past three to six months I've been super conscious of this to like have a couple hours each and every morning where I'm like just practicing you know with myself, breath work, meditation and like the more that I do that where I allow this space to exist and not taking up all my energy better and better things just keep happening in my life and I just ultimately feel happier and the people who come into my life and the things that I start to attract it's just been too many coincidences man I think there's really something to that so I had to take it there to some degree at least put it in there a little bit especially since you know Rick Rubin is talking a lot about this but I think my main point I think out there for people is continue to find ways to you know stay creative, stay inspired stay in the flow and then when you're on that vibe you know find ways to create and ultimately man have as much fun as you can Do you think it's do you think we need to find frequencies or allow things to channel through us? Oh, let's go you guys trying to go down this path? That's why we on it I don't want you to say all that stuff and not touch on like a little bit man obviously it's a legit conversation we would go way further but like just for real you know like there's frequencies and like are we trying to go find these frequencies to then tap in like oh I need to be you know like ghost it's almost like a spy movie right you got to go in this particular cafe and stand in this corner get in a telephone booth and then you found a frequency there it goes or is it like yo they're all coming right at me and I just need to move the hell out the way you know what do you think it is? Oh man I think it might be a combination of perhaps a little bit of both but I do think this can get pretty deep and I do think a lot of this is perhaps like subject to someone's belief systems and spirituality so anything that I'm about to say is really just my experience and you know not necessarily factual and I encourage everyone to tap into ultimately like finding themselves and their purpose and there's a lot of really powerful techniques that are out there for doing even like simple meditation and breath work so if anyone is listening to this and doesn't do like any meditation or breath work like come through and just check out what Abel and I are doing and in the community we post a lot about this type of stuff in great detail the different practices that we're doing on our episodes we talk a lot about how these practices are benefiting us but one thing that I think is and I'll try to answer this in a way that's not overly heady and also so I'm not just going off for like 10 or 15 minutes because I could easily do that and I don't want to do that I want to be conscious of our time here together and making sure I'm delivering value and you know get into the questions that you guys have but there's this doctor this neuroscientist and I talked to him a little bit in the beginning his name is Dr. Joe Dispenza and if anyone listening to this hasn't heard of Dr. Joe Dispenza it's been really fascinating listening to the work that he's put out and he has tons of stuff that you can watch on YouTube back when I was first having my spiritual awakening like around 2017, 2018 one of my homies put me on to a program that he put out and it was on this app or this platform at the time it was called Gaia and the show was called Rewired and if I were to try to summarize the show and some of the major takeaways and ultimately tie it back to answering your question Dr. Joe talks a lot about this quantum field and starts to talk a lot about how a lot of these things that have been talked about in different spiritual worlds religions, ancient philosophies what's really dope now about being in 2024 is a lot of this stuff is starting to be proved by science which I know at least for me was important when I was starting on my spiritual journey because a lot of people have a lot of different belief systems and again not everything that I believe in right now can be proved by science but when we're talking about rewiring our brains and rewiring our DNA and vibrations a lot of it is now being studied by science and I think down sort of and actually Rick talks about this in the beginning of his book but when we talk about vibrations and frequencies there's this concept that everything is a vibration and including light and then there's this whole concept and Abel and I talked a lot about this on our last podcast because he talks a lot about how he feels like we're in a simulation and him and I have different perspectives on that and I don't throw that word around lightly because I think we are here on this human existence and we can't respawn and like for me this is like you know there might be some elements of this that are sort of game like with different decisions the phone booth like you're talking about a knot but I do think at least for me like this human experience and the example that I brought up to him and it and for me a mindful of kind of overly talking about the simulation in that way have you guys ever seen Inception the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio? You know what happens is the Leo's wife in the movie because she's lost touch with reality, right? So for people that haven't seen it you know they're going into dreams within dreams within dreams and they're going consciously into dreams and they have different ways to find out whether they're in a dream or not but she goes so deep into these different levels of dreams and in order to come back from the dream you have to kill yourself or be killed and that's how you come back to your like real life. So she becomes so out of touch with that she isn't actually in a dream she ends up you know killing herself and there's no coming back from that and I think I've had really deep experiences you know with my mental health and I've been in different states of mind and you know also experimenting with different substances where I think it's important to just I try to just be mindful when we're talking about all this stuff with that word specifically simulation but what I wanted to kind of say was and Rick touches on this too and Dr. Joe talks about this a lot but if we think of light you know at the core of it being a vibrational frequency and like we are perceiving this reality like through our eyes like we're converting light into everything that we see into our bodies in some way you know we're kind of creating our own reality and at the core of it much of energy and light and much of like this existence could be considered you know operating on certain vibrational frequencies and you can kind of feel it right when you go into certain environments and certain situations you know like you talk about like oh like the vibe is like often here you know I think that's a real thing and I think that can also make it a little bit more tangible for people to grab on to because some of the stuff if like someone could be listening to this right now and just be like what is this bull talking about you know like I could just be like so far off of like someone's way of thinking or their experience you know but a lot of what I'm talking about is has just become my understanding of this reality and in the last episode of Able when I talked about a lot of these like choices and like what to do in my life didn't really start showing up for me until I jumped into the entrepreneurial world full time like when I was working in corporate America you know I did that for 10 years I worked at the financial firm Vanguard for over 10 years I worked in IT I was a senior project manager like I was going hard in the corporate world climbing the ladder but what I realized is so much of my life during those times was like on autopilot like operating under my subconscious you know and it wasn't until I think just in recent years jumping into this entrepreneurial space where there's so many different choices and so many options out there you know and I think a lot of it could perhaps at least my understanding of it is the universe presenting me different opportunities different relationships different people us connecting us knowing each other I don't think it's by coincidence you know I think the different people that I'm meeting is for different reasons but to kind of throw a lot of context out there and go back to me saying I'm not going to just pop off for like 10 minutes on you guys like that I think and what I realized for myself is I have the ability to really regulate my emotions a lot more than I realized or I lived throughout my whole life so as a man in just the way that I was raised and my dad's dad was a very like you know don't talk about your emotions like stuff it down like I'll give you something to cry about type of mentality you know so like I wasn't raised like in an environment like where I was like super in touch with my emotions or my feelings you know and what I've realized in doing a lot of this personal development work is that with these different practices and I think to ultimately answer your question I think we do have the ability to control our own vibrational frequency like the vibe that we're operating on and for me what that looks like is that daily practice that breath work that meditation me thinking of gratitude pulling these feelings like into my body in the morning thinking of things that I'm grateful for and feeling it in my body and what I've realized is when I'm like in tune with myself in that way I'm just attracting different things into my life and again I said like I've been doing this for you know long enough now where there's way too many coincidences where I'm attracting other people will just say that are on that vibe or on that way or our creators or entrepreneurs or people that I think are here for me to you know kind of co-create and partner with so I do think we have the ability to create and adjust and control our own vibrational frequencies and I think everyone around us has a vibration and I do think that's a real thing and to kind of like make it in its simplest form like when you're just like with two people and you guys are just like vibing together it can really just be that simple you know it's like okay like I vibe with this person there's a vibe there you can feel it a lot when you're creative you know you go to work with someone the vibe just isn't there you know a lot of I think that vibe can really just be sort of just that or you can uh go down all those roads that I was talking about with vibration frequencies but it's something that Abel and I you know are really big on and like six or seven of the songs that he put out last year were tuned to certain frequencies uh frequencies that are like he was actually like tuning you know a lot of the elements in his production to certain frequencies