 According to the data from Nelson, Drake accumulated just under 16.5 billion global streams in 2022 and 75% of those streams came from his catalog. Not his new album. And this is when we get into the business. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brain Man, Sean. I'm Corey. We are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. Now, as you guys know, we love to break down case studies in the music industry, whether it's marketing, the business side. And today we got to break down one of the more prolific artists of our generation, Drake. And for those of y'all who care about the business, who aren't just looking for random tips because y'all are thinkers and y'all listen and apply these to y'all lives to get to y'alls back. This is going to be a great podcast. All right. So for y'all who just want the tips, keep moving, click off. For those who are actually moving in the music business and want to make career decisions, we got a lot of great information for y'all because this guy, Nathan McCartney, shout out to you. He writes for a publication, which I think is his own, called The Bag. And he did a great article where he presented a business review of Drake's business decisions over the years. We're not going to go over all of it. We'll link the article below. But there's some really strong points. Where starting off the gate, I want to start with the fact that 77 out of the 256 songs that Drake has commercially released on his projects are certified platinum. 77 out of 256. Yes. What's that like? 30%, 34%. 30%. Probably like a little over or whatever. But yeah, 30% of the songs he drops that go on platinum. That's crazy. That's a one in three chance to go on platinum. That's kind of crazy. That is crazy. So you know, a Drake feature must be nice. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Now we are making that kind of money because that batting average is pretty ridiculous as stated in the article. And you already know there's going to be some success that comes because let's imagine that's the primary how many of these are going to at least go even bigger. If you know that level of success is there, once an artist gets to that level of escaping the game and just trying to get some validation, they can think a lot more about the business. And we don't focus enough on the business decisions and how artists like him are moving so then artists can start to see options for themselves. And that's really what I want to get into in this conversation because it was reported that Drake had passed 75 billion streams on Spotify alone earlier this year back in February for various credits. He's been on obviously this isn't just his primary songs. These also do include features. 75 billion streams equates to $225 million on the low end. Set $225 million off of just streams. That's a crazy number. But here's the more important part for me. It says with all of those streams in mind, according to the data from Nelson, Drake accumulated just under 16.5 billion global streams in 2022 and 75% of those streams came from his catalog, not his new albums. And this is when we get into the business. So let's just stop here and think about the economy we're in. So artists are not only competing with the new artists and everything that's popping out. You're competing with old artists because people can listen to old music and you're competing with your old self. Sometimes people will prefer. And when people say, hey, if you want to owe me, they really can just go get to owe you and not stream any of your new stuff. And when you understand this though and really look at these numbers, that puts you in a completely different point of leverage. Because if I know that, yes, I'm going to find some new wins to keep myself relevant with this new music, but most of the business is being done on the back end, then you start thinking differently. And Drake had a comment where he said that he believes artists should actually get milestone bonuses when they do certain things on streaming. And the same way NBA players, my, oh, if I was an MVP that year, I get a bonus. If I won a championship that year, if I'm scoring champion this year, or even just score a certain amount of points, I get a bonus. Like, oh, if I get two billion streams, 10 billion streams, there should be bonuses associated with that over time. Because it also keeps them hungry. It incentivizes them not just for that individual song, but to keep adding to the catalog. What do you think about that point before we go any deeper? Now, I agree. I think it gives them a reason to keep pushing traffic to your platform, you know what I'm saying? Because if I know that, oh, if I get to your point, if I could hit 10 billion streams on Spotify and I get XYZ certification, I get XYZ bonus, I'm incentivized to push my fans to Spotify. I mean, even looking at this, man, if he got, let's just say out of 10 billion, like eight billion of it from there alone, man, that's, I can't even think of the math on that ad revenue, but that's probably at least a couple of hundred million, you know what I'm saying? He's making a couple of hundred million. That, I mean, they probably made close to half a billion off the ad revenue, or at least, you know, think about all the Spotify users that are keeping Spotify just to listen to their favorite Drake album. You know what I'm saying? Like, those are things that are hard to quantify, but you know are happening because of the numbers or the milestones that him and other artists that are hitting that achieve and the press that comes from it. Because if you think about it, man, it's really only like four of them that do those type of numbers. It's him, a bad bunny, a tell-it-swift. So it's like, how often do you as a Spotify or Apple get to even like, run that type of narrative, show that that's even possible? You know what I'm saying? So I do agree, like when it's hit, we shall all be celebrating this win, you know. That's true. Because it's probably not going to happen again for a long time. I like that idea. It's the pyramid advertising. No one most will never achieve it, but I can show as possible and do a couple of artists, right? And this is available to all artists. Look at what Drake did. But how few will actually get there. I mean, you know, that's obviously the the skeptic and cynical view I look at it from the labels and the companies, but it is, it just makes sense though. For there to be some level of incentive because it is good for all. Keeps the artists on your side, allows you to show proof of concept. Keeps you in the news. Keeps you in the news. Yeah, all that. I love that actually. Then also, so they fight that and bring up that Justin Bieber future. Dr. Dre, I mean Bruce Brinkstein, there's been so many people that sold off catalogs, right? Tiger, which many people were surprised about when that news first came out because it was like 70, 78 million, something like that. I got to interrupt this video real quick to let the artists and managers who are looking to grow know that I have a major announcement because as many of you know, we're bringing out J.R. McKee, who is responsible for selling over 160 million records literally, along with us, right? We want to meet artists in person. However, many of you guys said, I can't make it to that event, Brandon. I really want to make it. And I know that the information is going to be great because I got to see the growth from artists who went last time. Great. Well, we finally broke down and decided to allow artists to get access to a replay 30 days after the event. However, you have to buy your ticket to the event before the event. We're not going to give anybody access to the event or the ability to submit their music for us to listen to if they don't purchase their ticket before the event, before it sells out. As many of y'all know already, there's only 100 tickets available. So you will have the ability to get your music listened to be considered to have a free one-on-one call with me, J.R. McKee, and Jacory also be shared on our social media platforms amounting to over 200,000 followers and be put in front of our record label distributor and manager friends, the people who can help you grow. And if they want to reach out, we'll help facilitate that. So that's the quick announcement. October 15th, www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash DC will put the link in the description on YouTube. If you want your music considered, if you want to see this exclusive event that we're only showing in a private space, never putting out this information publicly online, go ahead and grab it before they're sold out. Peace. But Drake did something different, which I wasn't aware of this. So they said that after a little digging, it shows that Aubrey transfer the copyrights of his catalog to 23 Capital. 23 Capital is ran by a guy named Jason Chobb and is traditionally known for financing the transfers of European soccer players. And this is when he gets into his theory and I think it's pretty valid. Well, I don't know this to be a fact. I think that Graham, Drake, I'll just replace Drake. I'm going to say Drake all these times. I think that Drake pulled off another smart business move. If you're 36 years old and your catalog continues to be where the lion's share of your consumption comes from, 75% in Drake's case, don't sell it unless you need to. You're young and you still got a lot of building to do. You can increase the value. My guess is that he received a large sum of money that is paid off by the residuals from his catalog with some interest, but that he still owns ownership in his body of work. So what does that sound like? It sounds like he got some kind of advance, possibly. Instead of selling the ownership, I'm going to, what word am I looking for? Ah, refinanced. That's the word I'm looking for. It's almost like refinancing your own streaming in some, so to speak. It doesn't add up exactly, but yeah, I'm going to sell a portion of it and I'm going to just keep using it as a pull of capital to borrow against and then use that capital to pay for itself instead of selling out the ownership. That's actually a beautiful thing. Yeah, and it's smart because it's like, I know I'm going to make this money back as I can see it. So like, what do I have? What do I really have to lose in this situation versus doing it through a label who is going to, to the point of the article, want ownership of it? Because most of these investment firms don't really want ownership of the thing. They just want that money back and more. So yeah, I think it's smart. Yeah, I think that's something for artists to think about. Like, even if your numbers aren't doing Drake, Drake numbers, maybe you don't need as much money as Drake needs to borrow either, right? Or to exchange because it's not even, well, no, it is borrowing because if he's paying back money, so again, I want to say this concept is like, hey, I know my streaming is making a million dollars a month. Let's keep the numbers small and simple. If I know they're making a million dollars a month, I might use that leverage of bringing in a million dollars a month to then borrow 10 million dollars, let's say. Knowing I'm going to make that back in a year, I should be able to get that approved. And then with that 10 million dollars, I'll probably pay back a little bit more than that based on how the deal is set up. But I'm only going to use the money that my money is already bringing to me to pay it back. So one, I could pay it back. Maybe I pay 12 million dollars back. I paid some more money, but I paid it back in a year and I still own my music. And next year, I'm going to make another 12 million dollars off my catalog. Thinking like that, the financial engineering of all that is just something I feel like, again, artists should be aware of because we hear so many things about deals, but people fail to realize how creative and how differently you can work a deal. You just need to know who to talk to. Even on a smaller level, we just had an Adrian episode, right, that we dropped. And it wasn't necessarily a deal, but he had his financing together. He had his credit together. He'd have having those six credit cards and he was able to think, yo, I know based on the pace of my streams, I am going to make probably 22K off of the song this year, minimum based off of this pace. Instead of going with these distros who want to take ownership of my stuff and split profit share, inappropriate perpetuity, or even if they just want to split the profit and perpetuity, I could literally just borrow with my credit cards. So not borrowing from a bank in the traditional, I'm going to go sign and get a small business loan. Literally, I'm just going to run up the numbers of my credit cards, $10,000. And in three months, I know I'm going to make this $10,000 back, pay it. And I don't got to deal with nobody. I own 100% of all this. Yeah. I feel like that's the bigger side of it is creative financing. That's all it is. We talk about the label setup, I know the label side of financing. Financing is what Ari is used to, but I mean, even the article said, man, like Jason Trout's company is typically investing in soccer players. You know what I'm saying? Like that's his bag. We've seen other deals with people of, I mean, we've even had clients who's had investors that were like on fishing companies and just like the most random things, man. Like, Ari, you would be surprised at who wants to get into the music industry. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Like who looks at you as a vehicle into music? And then the number of tech nine, his investor and business partner that the OG who started all with him and got his business going to another level had like a furniture store or something. I know that. That's where he made his like millions that he had made at the time. That's what I'm saying. And we always make the joke about everybody wanting to get into music as an artist. But now there are some people out there who just wanted like a foot in it. They don't care how they're getting it. Can I give you some money? Can I can I buy your equipment? Investor XYZ Avenue and though there are more of those people out there than there are labels, you know what I'm saying? Way more, you know what I'm saying? And then as you can kind of see with this Drake situation, you know, we don't know all the terms of the agreement, but they're usually way more fair because like I said, whereas like labels and distributors and things that that typically want a certain portion of ownership for a certain length of time, most of these like independent investors just want their money back, plus interest. Like you said, if I give you 10 million, give me 12 million back in the opportunity to do business with you again. And I'm happy. You know what I'm saying? We're good. You know what I'm saying? We're good as far as I'm concerned. And that's what's great. That's what's great about it. Yeah. No, that's, bro, it's so big. And again, I know people might hear these numbers that they oh, well, Drake is Drake or an Adrian situation. Well, you shouldn't just go get a credit card. We're not advising anybody to do any of these things in particular. What we're advising is thinking. And I think that's what people miss. Right? So I'll make a quick comment about one of the guys who, well, not one of like multiple people. Sometimes when we talk about like shorting videos or things like that, instead of doing a conversational style like this, straight up, I know when we were making our conversational videos, therefore a certain type of person who's probably going to learn and apply. Like they're thinking they're strategizing on a whole another level because you can't get that in tips videos. If I just give a bunch of random tips, those are the people who are looking for it. Tell me what to do. And then the reality is everything we say doesn't plug and play into what your life is. We don't know you. We're just having a conversation here. We can talk about what's working for a lot of people or what's worked for some of our clients in a moment, but it doesn't mean it's going to work for you exactly. So we always try to advocate for you to think. So you're going to be like, oh, what's Sean told me this? Or did you Corey told me this? I mean, oh, my brother, you walked yourself. Yeah, yeah, best believe we will lead you in the best direction we can or a rabbit hole that you should explore and then make the decision for yourself based on what you find out, why you explore that rabbit hole. You know what I mean? But just because I said I found me some, you know, a nice set of shirts and bro, they had a whole bunch of larges. When I was there, when you go, they might be out of larges. The word might have already got out. So it's not for you. Whatever happened to market change. So I just want to say that because, again, the Adrian deal, the Drake deal is not about what they did specifically. It's about the thought of you being more creative in how you approach these deals because the label infrastructure gets people thinking that this is how it deals with it. This is the only way, man. It's just context. All we can do is give you context. Whatever you do with that context and the information is up to you. We have talked about it before, man. Y'all as the audience have to stop looking for reasons to blame the content creators that you're watching when most of them are just giving you information to make your own decisions. See what I'm saying? Nobody wants to make their own decision anymore, man. I see a lot of them don't position it that way. A lot of these content creators don't be doing that, though. They really use it. Well, you're right. We give information, you know what I'm saying? It is so you can ingest it, sit on it, while you eat your breakfast, while you drive the work and then think about it all day and then make your own decision on it. Right. Because I've learned a lot of artists want you to think for them so they can have somebody to blame and I'm not going to give you all the satisfaction. That is a fact. It's a fact. And that's why we started the podcast with Civic Episodes. Again, I'm scratching my mic. That's probably going to be bad on the audio. But that's why we, the pod-specific episodes are for those people where we are, the type of artists that we talk to and they give us commentary on the podcast episodes, we know it's different than the ones who watch the other episodes. It's not that there's no, never any overlap, but it's usually the ones who, you know, they're more thoughtful, they're more strategic. And year over year we see a little bit more growth in their careers, you know what I mean? Yeah. So with that being said, another gem that I think all of y'all would appreciate, particularly the pod-lovers is drakerelated.com. Oh, that's the merch zone? Yeah. Yeah, this one is crazy. Yeah. So he did a partnership with Spotify and if you go to Drake's website drakerelated.com, you'll be able to see he has all types of items and it's listed in the room. EJ, if you could put this on the video. He wrote a book? Yeah. What? Yep. He has a book, titles ruin everything, a stream of consciousness by Drake and Kinza Samir. And this is the cool part about it. What did you just hear Jacory say? He said he wrote a book. This is literally a way that people can discover what to buy from Drake. I just don't understand how as much as I stay on the internet, I never saw that. Again, we know, I learned this from just what we do. No matter what and how much we talk about some things, there will always be somebody who doesn't know. Yeah, facts. All right. That's facts. That's true. Like you just can't get all of your fan base to know because of the algorithms not showing it to everybody. People are busy. Everybody's not going to open every email. All that great stuff. So the way he has this website set up, right? It's a studio. This is the last but lack of better words. And again, we'll show a little bit of the picture on screen and you can go and you can just click random items. And our defective garment hoodie, $170. But it looks like that's official with Nike. Is that a Nike check on it? Yeah, it is a Nike check. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a little hard though. I can't even laugh. It is. It is. Nice little. You can go check out all the albums. Like literally this is just a comprehensive way for everything Drake related. Just straight forward. It's a beautiful setup in terms of just an e-commerce experiential way of letting your fans get whatever they want whenever they can. And I like the front page not being going straight to merch but being that room setup. Because again, it makes people want to click around. Like what is this? And again, we'll let y'all click through all that. But anytime you can make anything an experience, it's always going to be dope from a business standpoint when you market it to your fans. You already have them. But of course, he did this in partnership with Shopify. So the inspiration I take from something like this is how can I partner with the brand and leverage their platform to do something special? Instead of, hey, I'm just going to use this page. I'm just going to do a Shopify site now. And I'm going to do a leverage deal to then get like a sponsorship from them. And then I'm just going to talk about them in the ad. You know, like how can I make this deeper? Oh, I'm going to do it a whole experience that's cool to my fans, build my brand equity, makes me look even more like an artist, cool person, whatever you're trying to be. And then obviously the company has something to talk about too. Because you can market the fact that I did this experience versus if I just say, oh yeah, check out Shopify for your websites or hey, I got a Shopify store. All right, cool. There's another Shopify store. It's nothing for me to talk about or market or write art billboard articles on if I just do it that way. So whenever you can do something that's worth talking about and you can market and just get your name back out there, you're always going to win from multiple sides of the business. So yeah, now I like this before. We can't talk too deep about it because I feel like it's even better for everybody to experience and click on. Yeah, we can't be given spoilers. Yeah, it can give out too many spoilers, but he has all his partnerships. It's a really clean website experience. Well, I mean, look at that. As a quick aside, when we talked about it, I don't even think we should show it, but Travis Scott had his merch experience that he dropped to. Yeah. That's worth people looking at as well. And his was very good with the upsells. Mm-hmm. Nice little sales funnel field to it. Yep. Yep. It was like a day when you can click funnel sales. Oh, man. So y'all definitely check Travis's out as well because he's worth, again, just gleaning inspiration from. But back to Drake and his business decisions. Here's another example. Air Drake. In 2019, Drake received a free 185 million Boeing 767 from his long-term partnership with Canadian airline company Cargojet. Now, again, obviously, everybody might not be getting 185 million free jets, but there's a lot that can be gleaned from this, right, in terms of how you apply creatively. One, obviously, just having a jet is though because you're saving some money, right, instead of having to pay, right? So how can we flip a deal instead of taking on an expense? Maybe there's something that you want to do that is a constant expense and maybe I can find a company to partner with and get that for free. And now I'm advertising for them. Beautiful partnership, mutual, because obviously Drake is Drake and wherever he goes, being able to market that company is beneficial for them. But this is when I get into the things, when I think about how other artists can apply certain things like this to their own selves. Because Drake didn't just take the jet and say, I want to run, like, fly around. I got a free jet, whoop-de-doo. He said, yo, I'm going to get Virgil to blow to paint this jet. Yup, using his nothing was the same as inspiration. All right, so you see clouds just like the cover. One of the most classic, this probably the most classic Drake cover, maybe. Maybe Ty for, within the top two or three, for sure. It's easily top three. So we don't even get into that discussion. Let's just say top three. It's easily up there, all right? So Virgil Blow threw it, did nods to one. Then nothing was the same cover by having the clouds and things like that. We'll have this on the video for those who are watching. And then also across the bottom of the jet, as you talked about, Jacoria says, if you're reading this, we left. Written on the bottom of the jet, alluding to another Drake project, right? So one, he made it his. And this is just cool in general. But using an artist like Virgil will blow, all right? Even if you can't work with it, Virgil will blow, using an artist that has, that's just dope. You might be putting them on to the rest of the world, right? Or putting the rest of the world on to them. It's funny, I said that, given we're talking about Drake. You know what I mean? But we're like using the collaborations is something that more artists can do. And you don't have to be big for that. Yeah, yeah. Like just finding somebody dope and kind of A&Ring talent and making them a part of your campaign. All right? It's like finding someone else who speaks to the same culture of people as me, even if they're not necessarily as big as me. I just need the culture that I want to talk to to know you exist. To know you exist, exactly. And it makes me cooler, because even if they don't know them, I'm putting them on to this art. And it's far to that family. Oh man, like you said, oh man, it's crazy that Drake and Virgil work together. That's so cool to see. It's how fans think, man. Like they don't, in that moment, they don't think about size and status. They just think about, I know Drake, I know Virgil. It's nice to see them come together and work on something. Right. And again, even if you pull the artist on complete obscurity, I think you can get a lot of benefit from something like this just because one, you're going to have this creative design and packaging of whatever your product is, whatever you put out, whether it's your shirts that you did for yourself, whether it's a card that you ride around in and you had an artist do it instead of just flash in a regular expensive car. You could get a cheaper car and then have an artist do something interesting to it and now it sticks out more and it is more meaningful as a brand piece than just having a fancy car. Yeah, I do. That's kind of crazy. That's why I want an artist to be like, man, I do my own cover art. I do my own X, Y, Z. Man, you lose not on the collaboration, the power of collaboration, man. Like the brand equity, the extra audience that you get to tap into. The extra audience and extra perspective if it's an actual dope artist. Yeah, like all because you want to be selfish and cheap. Yeah, and it doesn't mean you have to do it for every project. Maybe you do every cover except this one cover. You know, you're very selective about it, right? Because you have the ability to do it yourself. So you're mindful of who you choose and now they can bring something extra and you all can market this collaboration habit. It was like instead of, I think a lot of times, people do these normal deals or they miss the opportunity to make regular actions special by not making it a collaboration, by not sprucing it up to packaging. How many times do we buy something and pay more money just because the packaging is better? All right. If I could add up all the dollars, man. If I could add up all the dollars. Same reason in why we talk about stuff. We will talk about something a little bit more than we would something else just because of how the whole situation got packaged. So again, when I see this type of situation, yes, you get on the server say, oh man, Drake has a lot of money and he has a lot of leverage so a company wants to do a deal with him. But you can also say, well, what elements out of this were dope that I can't achieve and the collaboration with visual artists is very, very achievable. Yeah, I agree. Probably one of the, now that she kind of said, probably one of the easiest to achieve a collaboration that any artist can do. Yeah, I didn't think about it that way. And if you do it often, you know, you can start getting a little bit of a brand that's somebody who puts people onto dope visual artists. Yeah, true. Make a little wave in the art world next thing you know, that little lane opens up for you. That's a good point, man. Opens, man. All right. It's just going down these rabbit holes and they all lead to new forms of business, marketing and ultimately an overall better creative world which is obviously what we want to be at the core of what we do anyway. So it's not just about that service level business. It's like, how do you do it in a way that it builds your world, your lore, and how people experience you creatively. Now, the last thing I'm going to talk about in Drake, what are these shoes? Because I was telling you, I wasn't aware that Drake had so many shoe collabs that he did or shoot so many fashion collabs he did in general. Let's read this. Oliver, one of Drake's partners said, we started creating product out of necessity. There was a lot of traveling and different clients so we needed practical versatile garments that looked stylish while also being recognizable to security as well as at business meetings. That's interesting. See, sometimes some of this stuff reads as like fake marketer way of why we created this fashion out of necessity. But the specificity of being recognizable to security but also at business meetings, I guess also it doesn't look too wild to be at a business meeting, that's interesting. That's interesting that he said that. But so using those type of things is just your inspiration. I like that idea because we do create a lot of stuff out of necessity in general. I'm not necessarily even a fashion brand or something like that, but we do. So he said, well, El Cateed at the helm, the OVO brand has done a number of successful collaborations and partnerships. Most recently, they've announced partnerships with major sports leagues like MLS, NFL, and NBA. Drake loves sports. So that's in his round. What is your round? This is in addition to collections with Disney, Playboy, Abaving Ape, and Canada Goose among... What's that, Disney? Did you say Disney? That's crazy. We need a Disney collab. I'm not, yeah. We got to see what this Disney collab is. I'm Drake. He just wanted to be in with Disney. Wanted to be able to say it. Sometimes you make the move for a later move. You do it just to say you did it. This move was made, but now I can say I did it. I did this. This is a bit Disney. And I probably built some relationships that are beneficial in Disney. Showed them a little bit of my leverage. That's what I better see this fast, which is a real move. Show a little bit of your leverage just so you can benefit further down the line. It also can work against you. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But most people aren't going to do what we did and actually go look at it. They're just going to be like, oh, you work with Disney? That's cool. And leave it at that. They're not going to go look at it and be like, oh, but that's what you did. It was whack. Just going to be like, oh, you did it. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I say they can work against you, so Diddy did the Sauron deal just so he can get leverage with Diageo. And he eventually wanted to own his own tequila, which he is with De Leon. But he didn't have any ownership. With, you know, Sorak. So he was trying to prove himself and he did. He did historical shit bringing that brand to, you know, what relevance basically saved them. But he didn't have any ownership. And now he's experiencing this monkey bar situation of just not being a profit share owner, but having a true ownership partnership where we're also benefiting together. And Diageo is like, eh, we're not really going to support you hire a body. That's what Diddy's saying allegedly, right? I think proving yourself as a good strategy, but also if you want to use that angle and call it that, but it's also the pain that Kanye, Diddy, and many of these other guys go through by not wanting to wait. Because Diddy himself said he was being a little impatient. He didn't want to wait to build something from ground zero. He wanted to take something that was already activated and then just use his marketing brain and blow shit up. A lot of times in music, people get so attached to the marketing side of it because that's what they do. And then they don't want to build things up. They want to get straight to it. And when you don't go through the minutia of building a business, it's all good because the money's good, the brand's good. But then ultimately again and again, we lead to these same conversations of Kanye or Diddy saying, yo, I don't have ownership. And I just did X, Y, and Z. And they should give me, I deserve it because I made them this much money. I don't know if it adds up that way. You know how many times did a business make or has an employee made money for a business? But that don't mean you should own McDonald's. You know what I'm saying? If anybody knows, Diddy knows. If anybody knows, Diddy knows. You should have leverage. But, all right, no, actually, I thought you were going a different direction. I see what you're saying. You're going to hold another thing. If anybody knows that, Diddy knows that. Yeah. Yeah, you go in that direction. If anybody know, allegedly, Diddy should know. And be aware that making somebody money doesn't necessarily mean that they will get ownership or deserve certain things, right? It doesn't add up that clean. I think sometimes maybe we forget that when we go into these other sides of business. But, I don't say that to take away from anybody who's done these deals. But, I don't think we should be shocked when people don't necessarily see us in the same light as what we see ourselves. Yeah, definitely, man. You're a super hero to everybody, man. Right. Right. Like, Diddy 100% brought the other leverage. It's a rock. But, yeah, you're just one of our brands. Yeah, man. You're just a successful brand ambassador. We appreciate you for that. Glad you did that. But, it was wild to me because a lot of people are just figuring that out. And, I read this years ago, but it shocked me when I read it. I was like, wait, Diddy's own, if I remember correctly the way I read it, I was like, wait, I didn't realize Diddy didn't own any of this. Because, and it wasn't saying that he didn't own it. I was just reading what the agreement was and I was like, wait, hold up. This is a profit sharing agreement. Like, he basically has exclusive rights and he has exclusive rights to North America. So, it's like, it's not even worldwide. Like, oh snap, he's blowing up the brand and he's letting me experience it in North America. But, when I go to, you know, wherever overseas, I'm out in Paris and I'm drinking Sorak, Diddy ain't getting that cut, which is crazy. Based on my initial perception of Diddy's position and with Sorak. So, of course, again, these, Diddy in his words basically said, sometimes you have to do deals like this as well, kind of just to get your foot into it. Again, just trying to show and prove. So, look, that's just the cost that you weigh. Also doing business. I do appreciate about Diddy, man. It's like, even though I don't own it, I'm gonna work it like it's my, you know what I'm saying? Which, you know, will take you far. Now, see, that's a whole other conversation. Because that's a real entrepreneurial person versus how a lot of these artists look at stuff, right? And how people complain. Because you're looking at a situation, I want to be done completely fair with what I've received fair to be from day one. All right? One, fair is a sliding scale, depending on who you're talking to and things change over time. But somebody like Diddy is probably looking at it, like, no matter what, especially with the marketing mind too. One, I'm gonna be able to sell this thing. So I'm gonna get more money just I'm gonna be able to sell it. Period. Like I'm getting the private share. That's great. That's part number one. We're just talking straight money. But then the entrepreneur is gonna go beyond that and say, me proving myself, even if Sorok, well, Diageo, the company that owns Sorok, doesn't give me a deal or do me right. I now have this in my portfolio, which extends my brand beyond oh, yeah, here's this hip hop guy within music. Oh, here's this guy who creates street products, like street clothes for hip hop artists, which he even talked about wanting to expand his brand beyond that. We should break down that video separately or whatever. And why he did suits and stuff like that because he didn't want to just be a street brand. It's, oh, well, so, okay. So this alcohol makes my brand a little bit more expansive as an entrepreneur and mogul, then just doing these other deals. So there's more value to just me owning as well. And then also I get to learn the business, right? So there's all these other points of value when you make a strategic decision behind just do your own. Because you would say, well, Diddy wasn't like a brand new artist or brand new businessman. This was in 2003 after the whole Diddy, I mean, Biggie, Mace, Mary J. Blige, all of that. And he had plenty of good business mentors behind him. So he knew quite a bit, right? This guy wasn't new to it. So why would he still do it if he didn't own? There's so many benefits beyond ownership. And sometimes we get short sighted with just the conversation of ownership, let alone the conversation between ownership and control, which are two completely different things. People don't realize it because you can own it. But if I control what you could do with it and I got to say, yes, no, maybe so, you got to run it through me first. Hey, sure. But you can market that you own it though. Go ahead and play and say what you got to say on the front end. Just know that, you know, before you do that, you got to talk with me. So like that, those are some of the things that this Drake, these apparel agreements and things made me think of. He did quite a few sneaker drops and things like that. We don't need to spend much time. If you're already interested in learning more about Drake and some of his business decisions, we will drop it again in the description of this video on YouTube. But also going forward, most of the full pods will be just on the DSPs. We're not making a switch immediately and we'll start talking about it for y'all on the next few podcasts. Just to remind y'all, we're going to drop clips on YouTube just for algorithm's sake, all right? Instead of full episodes and the way this particular demographic works. And then we'll have the full episodes for y'all who really want to get to it and get all the gems on Spotify and other DSPs. But again, this is just yet another episode. If y'all like episodes like this, let us know in the comment section as well. I'm Bram Ashon. Thank you for all you work. That's great. I'm Cory. I forgot what I was going to say. It's a difference. Never forget who I am, bro. What you mean? I know who I am. And we out. Peace.