 So I'm just like, what do you mean you're not gonna give them his royalties? I go, look, if you're not gonna reinstate the music, if you're not gonna give him access to his account, if you're, you know, that's your call as a private company, you can do that. But I go, you can't just keep the royalties. And I, you know, cite it to law and it's conversion, which is, you know, the civil claim for like stealing. Like it's conversion, you can just take someone's money. They're like, no, no, no, we're not gonna release his funds. What's up, what's up, what's up? I'm Brandon Shy, I'm Gordon. We are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us anywhere that you stream your podcasts here at the intersection of pre-dictimony and currency. Big emphasis on currency today, because y'all know when we do this intro, we have a very special guest with us. Today we have an attorney, a lawyer. I'm never good with the specific terms. Like somebody who really knows this legal stuff though, that we don't know. This is not our expertise, which is why I'm super excited. Cause we're gonna get game in a different way today, because Miss Crystal is with us today. Blessing us with our presence, Miss Crystal. How are you doing? I appreciate you. I'm good. I don't bless people with my presence very often. I'm certainly not when it comes to tune core. They would not say I'm blessing them with anything, but very happy to be here. Oh man, look, you kind of got straight to it. We have some really important stuff to get into because you are helping artists in a real way when it comes to tune core and the case that you're working on. So like we said, we use the term lawyer, like you're doing real time, real world work. We have that on stuff that we talk about on podcast, give our teams on it, but that doesn't mean anything's gonna necessarily happen. You know what I mean? We want stuff to happen, right? We feel like we make an impact on changing the world and the ideas, but like this is on paper. So artists, please listen and managers, everybody, definitely a moment y'all to follow this conversation. There's gonna be some really important stuff, but Miss Crystal, if you could please kind of just summarize the work you're doing, the case that you're working against tune core right now. Yeah, you got it. And this was a very unique opportunity in that I don't get to talk about my cases very often, right? Because I have attorney-client privilege. Anyone that hires me, I'm a real attorney, right? I've been doing this over nine years. And in this particular case, it just got so frustrating that my client and I were having a conversation and, you know, he said I had his permission to chat about it. And I've, you know, still redacted some stuff that we've been showing because I'm very like factual about this. And when I came to my platform on YouTube and I just was like, guys, this is what's been going on. And I took the followers through everything. And I showed, you know, letters, right? What actual text, case law citation, evidence, and you know, redacted just a few things like his email and his name and things like that. But it was an opportunity just to start the conversation. And what was amazing about it is that so many people have chimed in on this and people are just way more invested than I was expecting. But, you know, just to kind of give you a quick summary of this, because it's become the saga. If you go to top music attorney YouTube right now, it's like everyone's chiming in, it's all about tune core and distributors and royalties. And so the conversation has become much bigger. But here's where it started. Was our client had been locked out of his account. And I don't know if you guys have ever distributed through tune core, but like DistroKid is a popular one, Symphonic, you know, CD Baby. So this happens from time to time. And when there's enough money in your account as the artist, as the music producer, you know, that you're like, I got blocked, I got something happened with my music, I'm out of my account, I need help. You might go and contact an attorney. I was that attorney in this case. And we've helped clients with this kind of thing, right? And so it might be, you know, there was an alleged streaming fraud. I make like sleepy time music. So my music was getting a ton of streams. I was getting paid tons of royalties. And so they flagged it. They're like, ah, it must be, you know, a bakery. And so we go in and we draft, you know, a letter and we say, you can't just take an artist royalties, right? So, you know, if we go in and fight the good fight, we usually get the royalties released. We usually get the accounts reinstated and just, you know, go through the process. The unfortunate part about all of that is that an artist had to come to me to get that help. Not everyone can do that. All right. So in this case, you know, this was the first time we actually had dealt with Tunecore. So the client comes and just explains similar kind of thing. There had been alleged streaming fraud and he had been kicked out of Tunecore, blocked, all these things. And he'd been trying to get in touch with them for several years because there was like tens of thousands of dollars in royalties here. And so he goes, you know, finally, I'm just at this point where I got to get a lawyer. So we sent the letter and, you know, what was kind of odd about this is that over the timeline of what happened over several months and all the communications with Tunecore is that even right out the gate, the first phone call that I had with Tunecore in response to my letter was your client has engaged in streaming fraud. We have all this evidence and he's a big fraudster and, you know, we're not gonna give him his royalties. And I'm on the phone, you know, with essentially the glorified bang, right? We can agree that music distributors are distributing music, collecting money, taking a portion of that money and then paying you, right? Other than that, they're not usually doing anything. So anyway, and so I'm just like, what do you mean you're not gonna give him his royalties? I go, look, if you're not gonna reinstate the music, if you're not gonna give him access to his account, that's your call as a private company, you can do that. But I go, you can't just keep the royalties. And I, you know, cite it to law and it's conversion, which is under the law, it's like the civil claim for like stealing, like it's conversion, you can't just take someone's money. So this thing continued to escalate because we just kept hitting a wall and they're like, no, no, no, we're not gonna release his funds. And the way that they would speak about our clients was very rude right out the gate. He's not a real artist, we heard his music. I'm like, what are you talking about? First of all, that's rude. Like, it's not, you know, we don't really care about your opinion, but regardless. Like that has nothing to do with the law and the fact that you can't just keep someone's money. You know, so setting that aside, if I came to this point where like, I'm on the phone with Tunecore and we're being told this is an ethical issue. And Tunecore needs to, you know, plant its flag in the sand to make sure that these big fraudsters who are stealing royalties are stopped. And I go, setting aside the legal thing that you haven't actually addressed, right? So we go under the law, you can't just take someone's royalties. It's an impermissible penalty, all these things. And then I'm like, it sounds like you're just saying this is like an ethical and moral issue, which I've never dealt with when I'm talking to a lawyer in all of my years. And they actually just called him a scumbag and they were just not gonna release the funds. As a final ditch effort, we go, okay, if we can just prove that our artist, you know, cause they were like, he's not a real artist. He doesn't make real music. Like, what does he even mean? They go, if we can prove he's a real artist, we released his funds and they came back and led us to believe that they would. So we went through this process of just, you know, what would you do if you're trying to show that someone's a legitimate artist? They release music, they have videos on YouTube, they have a fan following, you know what I mean? And so we sent all that stuff, we've been sent them evidence that he had paid $25,000 in Facebook ads, which as you know, converts usually to a lot of traffic and may have resulted in, you know, the music getting flagged. And all of that was just ignored. So after all of that, which is expensive if you're hiring an attorney, beyond just being incredibly frustrating, they came back and they said, no, not gonna release the royalties. So anyway, we brought it to the platform. I kind of started the conversation and we did a final last ditch effort, which I read the letter on my channel and I showed that, you know, essentially we said, this has become like a bigger thing. Like people are saying they wanna make this a class action, which our client could. He could decide to try to get everyone involved because a lot of people are commenting, oh, this just happened to me yesterday. This just happened to me. And so I go, this thing is escalating. This is your final attempt. Release the funds. And if you don't, we're moving forward. And in fact, here's a complaint. So we actually hired a New York attorney and drafted the lawsuit. And so we sent that. So then we did in fact, received a response, which it was the last video that I released and it was the update on this from them. And I read exactly what Tunecore said because Tunecore came back and they not only just dug in their heels, but they said that they will countersue our artist if he moves forward to try to collect his royalties and they even threatened me. So it's been quite interesting. How can it threaten you in that particular situation? Attorneys do this from time to time. And they go, sometimes it would just be, we think that if you bring a lawsuit, it's frivolous and we're gonna sue you for sanctions. But in this case, I had said in my final letter, I go, we've brought this to our platform and it's just received a lot of support and all the stuff. So I wanted to make them aware of the fact that there is a conversation about this becoming a class action and it's a legitimate thing. And in the response, the Tunecore goes, we just became aware that you have used your platform to talk about this. I'm like, of course you became aware of it because I told you in my letter. But in any case, they go that not only do I need to issue a retraction, everything that I've said, but I also need to take down all of my videos. That's what I said. I go, hmm. And I just was like laughing about it. I'm just, well, what did it even look like? I'm like, guys, I showed you real evidence and real screenshots, but it turns out none of it was true. Like what? Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, man, this is interesting because especially the timing of it. Right, we're now in that time where Spotify made their big issue with bots, right? Putting so much on the exhibitors. So distributors are in droves creating situations with artists, blocking them from the platform, saying, I see all, I've seen a couple of letters that they sent artists where they, like if you continue to use the platform, they say you are agreeing that you're gonna pay like X amount per song or something like that. That has bots, like little, just different types of messaging where distributors are trying to figure out how do we protect ourselves in this new environment based on what Spotify just said, right? So because of that, there's been a huge increase in these types of situations happening that, you know, they've happened before, but like right now, it's happened, I mean, I've gotten a whole bunch of people mentioning this stuff to me way more than what they have in the past and not just to import like other companies as well. My multiple of the other distributors. So in terms of a class action, I'm imagining that it does still have to be to and core specific, right? In terms of like you gathering other people or y'all however that works traditionally, and then I guess like how long, what would that process look like? Cause I've heard of class action lawsuits before, even gotten random letters in the mail to my mom's house saying, hey, you guys should be right. I don't quite know exactly what it really looks like it means from a real world implication. Yeah, well, and let me clarify one thing. So part of the issue that this whole thing arose out of and it's the biggest issue, which is it's the terms of use, right? Every time you use an app, it's always like click here saying you accept. And if you ever actually click it, it's like a giant contract. And so for tune cores terms of service, it says if there's a claim against you for any of these reasons, and we read it together on my channel, there's like a giant block and part of it's streaming fraud, but it could be like alleged copyright infringement, alleged trademark infringement. I mean, that's just a huge list. If there's just a claim, not that they prove it, not that it's true, if they're just a claim, they say they can forfeit your royalty. So that was the mechanism that they were saying and what they use, not just for our client, but everyone else. So that's why that everyone else piece is important here. So to your question, so when you have a class action, you can get it when there's under the rule, it's numerosity, meaning there's a lot of people, right? Who are harmed by this thing. And so if you have not only a whole lot of people, but it's the same issue, it's the same question that has to be answered by a court, you can have one person that brings those claims on behalf of everyone. And so you have to get the courts okay to get certified as a class. But it's the same process that, you needed to sue someone and you fired me, like we're filing a complaint, whether it's just you or you on behalf of other people. So there's a step that you have to go through, but really it's like a lawsuit in general. Have you ever been sued or sued someone? Sued? We've had legal situations. I've never been a part of a legal situation, but I don't know, no, I'm not technically sued now. Yeah, okay, so yeah, and I'm like, you would answer that really fast if you had, which is yeah, because it's just like, it's traumatizing for most people whether you're like suing or being sued. It takes forever. I mean, I always give people the speech and I'm like, look, if you want to hire me and let's sue, I mean, I'm game, but I understand that these typically take like one to three years and it's probably gonna be like $50,000 or $100,000. And so, you know, you should be ready to go the distance. And sometimes you seem to settle early on, but that's really it, whether it's a class action or not. It's a huge investment of time and money. And for me, that's a little bit of my frustration on behalf of artists, I'm an independent artist. I have done music since I was four years old and I had to go through a lot of challenges. It's literally the reason I went to law school is because I wanted to learn how to protect myself. And so then I'm like, you know, when an artist is gonna go so far as to hire an attorney just to try to get their royalties, but now because Tunecore is saying, we're not gonna do anything. We're ignoring what you're saying in regards to like these penalties and this and that, that, you know, essentially the artist is now needing to sue and pay tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let me take a quick second to say, if you're looking for a music distributor that cares about educating their artists so they can get in a better position, you should check out Two Loss because every single Monday, they have office hours where they bring on dope people in the industry to hop on calls, give artists insights on the future of the music industry and answer some of the questions they have going on in their personal careers. So if you aren't a user of Two Loss or just wanna have a little bit more information about them, go to Two Loss on Instagram. That's T-O-O-L-O-S-T, Two Lossed on Instagram and it'll take you to everything you need to see and inform you about the sessions and more. Back to this episode. What do you think should happen in a situation when there are legitimate bots? Like, and it could be intentional or unintentional, I just dropped a video recently about a lot of artists that I've spoken to who are dealing with these bot companies who literally put bots on your profile as like a sales mechanism and hit you up and then say, you know, that was me, right? That wasn't an algorithm. Would you like more of this? Pay me, right? So, and then like one guy was like, he didn't want that he asked them to take it off and they, of course they didn't know how to take it off. They just expect you to say yes or no or you can keep moving, right? But in fact, there are real bots like now on its profile. Like, what do you think? So I know it's a really complex conversation but do you feel like there is a way that distributors should handle that? Yeah, I mean, I wish they would do more than just say we can't show you our proprietary methods of how we can see all this stuff. Cause that was another part of our issue with TuneCourt. They have not given us screenshots. They have not given us anything other than typing out words and like an email and being like, this is what it was. But you know, I wish, you know, there would be more transparency with that and an opportunity for an appeal process. You know, I'm like, what was it with Spotify? They made 13 billion in 2023. I think Billboard reported that. Their expenses were nine billion. So they were, you know, profitable like 3.7, I think US billion. So I'm just saying they're a big company, right? But I'm pretty sure that they don't have the staff that you would expect with like a Pepsi, for example. I think that there needs to be more people in place to actually try to help. And you know, and stuff happens. Like they're, you know, someone hires a PR company. You don't know what they're doing. They need to give results. And so that PR company or that marketing company pays for fake streams to try to meet a quota to get paid. And you don't know, but all of a sudden your music's taken down and your royalties are taken. Yeah, so I mean, you know, it's cautious, but look, let me give you one practical tip, right? So if you ever need to move your music between distributors, because, you know, one good thing is that they're all pretty much the same. Just make sure your ISRC number, which you get when you distribute your music, make sure you have that as far as your process. Like you can look it up on Google. There's like third party websites that can help you. As part of like whoever's listening to this, your administrative step of saving that ISRC number so that if your music it's taken down, go somewhere else. Distribute it, you know, the next day on Symphonic or CD Baby, do you know what I'm saying? Especially if something wasn't your fault. If we need to have a fight with the, you know, the original distributor, that's fine. That's a separate thing. But as far as just like your business, making sure your music is up and that's uninterrupted, like you can do things to self-help. And by the way, you know, just a reminder, like she's been chronicling this as she mentioned, right? For a while on her page. So talk music attorney, you Google that, you will find her page and just go through the videos and there's a lot of other dope information to help as well. But just transition a conversation a little bit that's similar but not the same space as well. There's been a, I don't know if you've seen that James Blake has dropped his own subscription platform. Have you seen that? Or do you know who James Blake is? What's the name of the platform? It's not like Vault. This was like four days ago as we speak. Oh, okay. Okay, no, I know there was another one. No, I haven't heard, but tell me about it. There's a lot of these, right? Platforms, right? And ones that existed before, the ones that are now like speaking, trying to like target the artist market directly. But it was just another one. And my point being is just, we've seen the idea of direct to consumer, like continue to like pick up steam, right? Positive in many ways, but then there's still just creating a new realm of options and when do I do this or not? And then the other side of that conversation is the anti streaming conversation. And there's this idea of, I can just get completely off of streaming though dark and I'm only live be direct to consumer. And there's like hybrid models, would love to know like where you fall in that conversation and why. Yeah, so I'm not fully anti streaming by any means, but I kind of love this in that, for those who are down for it in you have to become your own sales person. That's my whole thing. Tom music attorney is about helping people to learn how to get their music to six figures annually. And in order to do that, you think like a record label and sell like a rock star. You don't have to become a label, but you think like a label, right? So as we're thinking of ourselves as labels, we want to monetize our music. And so when we're like just getting really hung up on the fraction of sense that we're getting paid or not paid by Spotify, what else are we thinking about? What are we doing this year to merchandise, to do short runs of orders? What are we doing as far as our website? If I want to go hire you right now and you're a music producer, can I go to your website? Is there a resume there? Is there samples of your music? Do you have rates specified? Collaboration, scoring, like all this stuff to really think of yourself as a real music business. So going back to your question, for me, it's not so much like anti streaming, it's more just diversifying how you're making money and understanding that having one revenue source isn't good for any business, particularly in the music business and if you're just focusing on streaming. Where I think we could have some fun is we just say streaming platforms can be utilized for marketing purposes. And so for the marketing purposes of putting out a single, but then you push people to your website to buy your album. And then for example, also making sure your music is on social media, like man, audience, building for everything that you do is any kind of brand for your YouTube channel. Like you need to be hustling everywhere, making sure everyone knows about you. And so that's, you know, again, audience building, audience harvesting. And so I think just kind of, I'm somewhere in between for my next record. I kind of like the idea of maybe dropping a couple of singles that was going on the music platforms as marketing. I'm not expecting you to make money from that. But then for like the legit fans, be like, hey, if you wanna support me, come get the album and download it by CD, by vinyl. Where do you fall on that conversation? I love exactly what you just said. I mean, the beauty of music is, you know, you have this one product and it can be monetized multiple ways. And I think what the education curve is for a lot of artists is they don't realize direct to consumer streaming or not, right? Before streaming was even a thing, music always had a different value in different marketplaces, right? Selling on a CD was one specific value, the amount of money that you got from your royalties, right? On the radio and those types of royalties, a different thing, right? A sync could be a different valuation. And then a sync outside of like movies when you go to like a corporate company that doesn't really think about the music industry, those numbers could be even higher. And so it's really about the buyer, right? Or the medium that the music is being served through. That's always something unique about music, probably something similar for like, you know, other media content, but I didn't really know that as much about movies and TV shows and things like that. But that's always been a thing anyway. So using streaming where, yeah, you might make some money, right? From it, but looking at it as more as the marketing at the top of the funnel is right in line with that concept because the artists who have fans eventually will realize, right? As they try more of this, fans who are going to support you aren't not going to support you. Just because you have something on streaming platforms, they're going to support you because they want to support you. They don't buy because you took it away from them also to another platform in most cases. That's not the relationship that's built. That might work for like, some other form of digital marketer, but it doesn't hit in most cases quite the same for an artist to repeat that. Consistently, if they're still trying to grow and bring in new people, if you're just locked in and a smaller size of an audience and aren't as focused on growing it, then, you know, all, you know, love to invest to you because that can work in its own way. But yeah, I think the hybrid is the best of all worlds. In my opinion. Yeah, and I want to say I think where a lot of the current issues come from is, you know, I think streaming has kind of spoiled artists in a sense. And like, this is probably one of the first times in music, at least as far as I know, where it can be. The information in terms of what's being paid out is a little bit more common than I would assume it was in like, you know, past music years. And you can, I mean, sometimes you can even like do your own hard math. You can go look at an artist spotify and rough calculate like what they put together. So I think it's caused a lot of artists, a lot of artists seem to feel like this new model of building got multiple streams of income off of the music. It's like, oh, it's a, it's a, it's a sign that like the industry's falling off of music is in value. But like, shouldn't I say this? Like, no, like this multiple streams of income from the one source has always been apparent in music. You just got so caught up in streaming because, you know, since 2017, 2018, well, how long ago that was streaming that kind of got like pushed to this big saving grace and not even really by the industry, really by the artists, you know what I'm saying? Like artists kind of started to do it like that. And I feel like they set themselves up for disappointment. Like we put so much stock in this one thing and kind of disregarded everything else that now when it's coming back around that we need to be doing these other things that feels like a personal attack on this thing that I've been trying to build up for the last couple of years, you know, I've been like, no one told artists to stop doing all the other stuff. You know what I'm saying? I'm top of that. But I think that's what the market kind of like carried to. Oh, yeah. No, and I love that you said that. And I love that you guys also mentioned sync licensing. I mean, it's just like, I talk about it not only so frequently, but it's become like my, I don't know. It's something that I'm really focusing on. I even just launched a course about it. Like I'm so passionate about trying to help people with this because I have clients who make six, like multiple six figures every year just from sync licensing because they just figure it out. Like if you make the thing that you have now an asset, that asset is your song. And your song has copyright protection in it as soon as you make it. So it's very valuable. It's not just like, oh, now I'm gonna put on a streaming platform and I hope I get like a thousand plays. What's that gonna do? If we can go and take that song and we put it in a TV show, a game, you know, in a synchronization and get you like 5,000 bucks. And so because people aren't thinking like that, they're thinking about the pennies and they're not thinking about the one placements of 500 bucks, 5,000 bucks. And then all of a sudden now you get to those six figures a lot easier. And you know, sync, sync licensing is an effort just like anything else. Like if you want to be a big star on Instagram, you have to get good at marketing yourself. So it's like, here's a little category of like your efforts as a music marketer for yourself. Here's your category for like sync licensing. Here's your category for like, you know, merchandising and all of these things have to be worked on and everyone's different. You know, I've interviewed one of the owners of fixed records and they focus on sync licensing. Like they don't put their artists on tour. They don't care about touring. They don't care about music videos. They're like, that's stupid. We're wasting money. They're like, we do sync. And so everyone can be different and you find your own path. But I'm like, don't untap, like make sure you tap everything and figure out what's going to make money. What are you passionate about? Cause a part of this is like, use your skills. If you're a talented music producer, let people hire you. If you're a talented singer, you know what I'm saying? Like do at least what you love and make money from it. It doesn't just have to be your one project and your one song. And if it doesn't hit, you're like, ah, I'm giving up. No. You know, I personally think that's probably one of the most beautiful things about the current music industry is that, you know it's one of the first times in a long time where it seems like they're jammed when you're using a blueprint, right? It's like, you know, like, I mean, we still on our side, we have artists that have taken the traditional route and become successful. We have artists that sell courses, they sell services, they build side businesses up to you that they're jumping the sync. And I almost think like it's inspiring as that can be to a lot of artists. I also think it's very intimidating because what's that saying to the artists is like, hey, there's no longer a blueprint. Like if you, you know, if you were artists in the 2000s that you fell off the beat and path, it's very easy to kind of be like, okay, well, you know that's maybe not completely your fault. Maybe the system that works for you, you didn't understand the system, but now in the world where it's like there's no real right or wrong answers. So I can't truly tell you like what's the right thing to do and what's the wrong thing to do. I think it's very intimidating to artists. So, you know, I'm just curious to hear even from, you know, the artist side of your brain, like how do you figure out where it makes the most sense to put your energy into, you know, for building a creative endeavor? You know, how are you kind of the same between the paths that are going to get you to where you want to go and the timeframe you kind of have set up yourself and ones that you may need to come back to at a different point in time of your career. Yeah, that's a great question. And when, you know, what kind of inspired, you know again, like Tom music attorney and even when I started to actually do like the courses on like the kids who just want to like throw in and do the hard learning and all this stuff. I go, however you go about this to help yourself, it's all from how much time and money I wasted that has borne what this is right now. So just meaning I probably spend something like $200,000 like wasted $200,000 on just trying stuff throughout many, many years of, you know buying onto shows or hiring PR companies or hiring music marketing. It's in that I'm just wasting money and wasting time. And a big part of where the shift happened for me was what I was mentioning. I'm like, when you learn to think like a label. Now I did actually start my own label but I built an enterprise around myself and it wasn't because I wanted to sign other artists or do anything like that it's just because I wanted to take myself seriously and that's what it took. And so that's why it's been helpful for other people who have that mindset shift. And they go, I can figure this out for myself and what makes the most sense but I have to kind of go into that setting if I have to learn about the music business and then I need to make sure I have like contract templates. Right? Would you say it's fair to say that maybe a lot of the artists you work with probably do like handshake deals not really doing contracts. Yeah, I don't have to think. Yeah, you know, so there's different tiers of this. So I come in, I'm like, can we at least get a baseline here? Like you need to have, there's like eight, you know contracts you normally see over and over and over and over. And then when it gets to like your music marketing what are we doing to always be bringing eyes to because I'm like, if you're gonna go and hire a PR company and you're like, I just wanna be in some magazines, that's cool. What for someone to see like a hundred people to see you in a magazine versus paying like, I don't know, 50 bucks to have 5,000 people see you on Facebook. So just more being smart with your time and your money and actually setting goals. And so, you know, I was talking to an artist the other day and he, you know, I was like, so tell me like if everything when, you know, goes great this year, how many songs are you gonna release? Just a simple question, just to like see where he's at. He's like, yeah, you know, I think I think I could release like like three songs. I'm like, that's cool. Like I'm glad that's good. It's good to have a goal, but like that goal down is so down here. Why isn't it like I need to have my full record done? I wanna have like seven shows that I did. I'm doing a collab, like think bigger. And so that's, I, you know, it's not so much of like an exact what's the one thing that I should do. It's more of how are you thinking about your project right now? And do you take it seriously? Or are you just telling yourself that like, nah, that's never gonna really hit. Like this is a hobby. And I know so many people like this. I love to get in the studio. I'd love to, you know, work on beats, but I've like never released anything. And so it's just kind of like doing an audit of yourself of where you're at right now and what are your goals? And if your goal is that you want to make this thing like a real full-time gig, you have to act like it. Because if you and I were starting, you know, all three of us, we're gonna start a cupcake business. And, you know, like we have to sit down and be like, all right, so like, what are they gonna taste like? What are the flavors? Where's the location? Are we gonna have more than one location? There's so much that we have to discuss about. Then we have to talk about the name and the ownership. We have to have the contracts. So why can't artists do the same? And they have to. If you want to be successful in this business, you have to. Well, I'll add your percent. Well, I'll add your percent. I mean, I just love this conversation of the options and finding your path because I can't say it's something else. So I'm gonna say it again. Artists promote the idea of independent today, heavily, right? Everybody loves that idea. It seems like nobody, you know, rejects that. But independent means you're not gonna have a label. With that being said, why do most artists still try to play the label's game? So you're playing the same game, but you're playing it handicapped because they're viewing the game still. Okay, I need to get as many streams as possible. What are my first week numbers? Am I going to go on tour? And can I get in these big publications or get this cultural cloud? All right, that's pretty much the package. And people aren't seeing beyond that. And I think there's a conflict that people are having internally to be honest. And maybe you can speak to this and then you ever even went through it because one, they're not seeing that you could just do sync, right? The most magical thing in music to me because you're getting paid for your marketing and could legitimately blow up off of your music being marketed and you got paid for it, right? Or you could just perform or you could just write or you could drop your music to a select amount of people and you have these private events and make a decent amount of money like that. There's all these different options and paths. But what I think it comes down to is those paths, those new options, don't add up, they don't equate to the dream that people had when they were growing up and thinking about becoming an artist. And I think that's what a lot of the issue is. You were sold as what it looked like to be an artist. You bought into this and you decided that's what you wanted to be. And when you hear about these other things, although you could be free or right and create the music you want to create, have a legitimate, even a fan base and you wanted to go that route and focus on fans. But it just doesn't add up if I don't have the billboard number one or if I'm not like shmucking it up with Beyonce at the end of this road or something, you know what I mean? I think that's what a lot of it comes down to. But I would love to know your thoughts on that. No, you hit so many good things. Okay, first of all, you said option overload, right? So even in the cupcake business scenario, it's like, well, what flavors? Should we do fun Halloween stuff? It's almost Halloween or should we just keep it plain? And what should go on the window outside? And there's so many ways that we could do this. We could do a quick run and a discount. And when you have so much option overload in the music business of, heaven forbid, you come up with a huge list. And you're like, wow, I could make money because I could do sample packs. I could sell my services as a music producer. I even know about music marketing because I've learned how to market myself. So I could do packages for that. And you're like, to your point, maybe there's some of that stuff you don't wanna do. Cause you go, my dream was that someone was just gonna like find me and discover me and pay me lots of money. And I would just do stuff when I wanted to do it. And I'd be hanging out with Beyonce. And I mean, if we're being honest with ourselves, like that's probably what a lot of us creatively think and want. But A, and where I can at least speak from personal experience on this, the identity piece is important. It has to shift. It has to shift because the more that you learn and you're like, hey, I can actually help people, I don't know, by starting a YouTube channel. Maybe at some point that wasn't part of the plan. Maybe a podcast at some point wasn't part of the plan. But then you started to see why I'm actually helping people. And maybe someone wants to sponsor you to be on your podcast. And I can make a little bit of money from that. And you're like, okay, whenever I thought it was gonna be the podcast guy taking sponsorships, but cool, thanks money. But that also creates this existential crisis of like, is that what you wanted? Right? And so where I can at least talk about this is becoming an attorney. So I went to law school. I had no intention to become an attorney. I just wanted to learn how to think like a lawyer, learn how to protect myself. And I remember when I was starting law school, I was just like freaked out because I go, I just am so scared it's gonna change me. Because the worst thing I could possibly think of is being an attorney. And then I actually did get out of law school and I was like, well, you know, it'd be silly for me not to take the bar. I might as well just sit for it. And I sat for it, I passed it. And then some of my friends needed help. I was like, all right. So I might as well just start like a law firm and just kind of help them and this and that because, you know, I can. And then it just started to grow and evolve. And I really had to go through this identity shift because through it all, I never stopped doing music. I just started to become a legitimate attorney. My law firm started to grow and we've represented people all around the United States and all this stuff. And it's amazing. Like it's brought so many opportunities that I never would have gotten as, you know, a dark pop artist and that's okay. And but I, but that's internal stuff that I just have to deal with on who I've become because I just allowed myself to do things that I know and to grow. And so just for anyone who's maybe having a little bit of that, you know, that crisis listening to this and that you wanna go full towards your dreams, that does require sometimes that you grow in different ways. And it's a good thing. It's scary and it's uncomfortable. I think that for everything that, you know, anyone, either of us or any of us on this call, like anything that meaningfully you've done in your life was probably really scary. And you had to, you had to get uncomfortable to do that. Do you think that artists actually limit themselves from a humanity standpoint, right? Like there's still this idea that many artists don't seem to be able to cope with the idea that you also could be really good at bitchiness or marketing at the same time or have these other facets of yourself, right? Like they make it seem that you have to be this, this limited individual tunnel vision individual almost. Somebody who will reach up, that interview isn't out yet. This is bonus again. This is the cheekies popping up cause I looked at it today, pulling clips. But he, this is the artist and he says that artists get encouraged to be an idiot so far, right? Great at art, but not so great at these other things. And do you think maybe like it's just limiting it in general where maybe the idea is just saying, hey, I can be this and that this doesn't make me worse of an artist if that's what you're afraid of to be a good business person, I don't know, parent, you know, marketer or whatever all these other boxes are. That's what it seems like. What do you think about that? Yeah, we even go deeper than that. Why? So let's just take that as true, right? Let's take it as true as we are limiting ourselves because, you know, an ideal has been placed on us even by ourselves. And we're like, no, I'm supposed to be this thing. This other thing doesn't fit within that messaging. And so therefore I don't want to do it even if maybe it ends up helping or whatever. And we do limit ourselves because of that. But if you go deeper, why? Why would we limit ourselves in that kind of way? Why would I be like, oh, I don't want to be an attorney, that's terrible because I have an idea about it because it's based in fear. And I think that we all need to, as human beings, we need to kind of address that, you know? And again, why we don't get uncomfortable? Why sometimes we never go after our dreams and why we'll just regret it forever because it's better to fail than to not have tried it all, right? But I think it comes from our deep insecurities about being judged. And that's just like the baseline of being like an artist and a producer and a musician. Because if I'm here saying, hey, here's your five tips on music marketing, here's stuff that works for me and I have all these followers now, blah, blah, blah, blah. The reason why you're not gonna go do that for a lot of people is because you don't wanna put yourself out there. You don't wanna be judged. You don't wanna read mean comments. And that's all totally understandable. But going back to what you're saying on like, are we limiting ourselves in that I could actually be an incredible business person and I've never even just thought of myself like that. Yeah, I think that's what most people are doing in fact and that's why they're stuck. Yeah, I don't think artists when they're thinking about themselves in that box, they realize that this is just a human thing that many people are going through anyway, right? Like you said, like people just box themselves in for a lot of reasons, a lot of different limiting beliefs. And even the content thing, we had a conversation where an artist commented under one of the videos of like, well, y'all wouldn't ask a chef to create content. Yeah, right? Yeah. And it's like, well, no, if you look at Gordon Ramsay or like just any of these businesses, artists aren't the only ones who complain that they have to do social media now, right? There's a lot of like businesses that are now having to do social media and are losing business to businesses who are not as good as them but they have social media presence. Like this is just the way of the world. And sometimes like isolating it to just your own experience. Sometimes it's good, but then sometimes it's counterproductive because you're harder on your own existence. And it also might cause you to not evolve with just realizing it's the times not a specific effort against you, you know? Yeah. On the content thing, especially if someone says something like that to me, I'm like, are you kidding me? Like I literally have three brands. I have Ms. Crystal, which is my music stuff. I have top music attorney, which is to help music creators. And then I have my law firm Delgado Entertainment Law. And we're releasing like 30 pieces of content a day. And so trust me, I have the same neurotic thoughts about, you know, I can't do this or it's to this or it's to that or whatever. But I have to get through that myself. And I'm doing boring lawyer content and making it interesting and making it fun, okay? So if I can do that for the boring lawyer stuff, you can do it for your great fun music. Yeah, I'll never bubble, I bet, whatever, great. That's simple. Cause you're already supposed to love it. You're already supposed to be enjoying it. Yeah. But it doesn't make it easier, you know? And I share this with people. I go, you know, I didn't start taking social media seriously to like 2018, which was way the hell late, you know, into my music career. And I was like, just cause, you know, I'm like, ah, it's so stupid sitting there and taking vanity pictures, you know, in the car and finding one out of 200 because your face looks weird any other way. Like it feels terrible because of all your internal talk. But I'm like, at some point, like that's never gonna go away to a degree. It really never goes away. And so you need to, as a music business owner, which is how you need to think of yourself or a record label owner, how are you gonna put it? I know you guys have different branding on that. But either way that you are now executing and you're like, it doesn't even matter how I feel about it because all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put it out there. I'm gonna see how the market responds. So if you're like, I'm gonna try something new on the channel or whatever, your feelings or your guys is, you know, arguing about what's gonna be good or not good, literally doesn't matter. What matters is how it performs. And then you have a conversation about it. And so that's how you need to treat the music stuff as well, like try everything and even going back to like the option overload. That's good. If you're not sure, that means you need to try more stuff. Yeah, just taste. Look at it a lot more as a discovery process versus being so eager to like grow and find success. I think that's probably a part of it, right? Like just taste all these things like you said and, you know, maybe give yourself that I'm just getting into the game a year or so. I think most artists, maybe it's because of what you're seeing when people go viral and things like that. I mean, I know so many artists who come to me and it's like, I haven't even dropped my first track, but I'm already thinking I need to have X amount of fans in six months and potentially be monetizing in six months. And it's like, whoa, this is, I don't think you understand how this goes, right? That's nice. It would be very nice. But you probably shouldn't invest and look at the game that way. Oh yeah. No, I mean, the whole, I'm gonna give this a year thing. Then you're not, I mean, you're not, I'm not saying you're not a real artist, but like for me, music is like an addiction. You know what I'm saying? Like I've built a law firm and PS with all my social media stuff, even when I didn't wanna do it, I still did it. And I brought in millions of dollars through my law firm, never advertising once, but because I made it a commitment. You don't wanna do it, you just get your ass and make both content and you put it out and you do YouTube videos if you need to, you do Instagram videos if you need to, like you just do it because it's part of your job because you want it to be successful. And you have to have that same mentality when it comes to music as well. I forgot where I was going with that, but I'm just going back to it because I'm just passionate. It's like, you just show it for yourself. No one knows your brand better than you. No one cares about your career more than you. So stop waiting for someone to give you permission. I'm giving you permission right now. Like get to work. I love that so much. Because to me, based on said, I can't not do music. Oh yeah. That's what it is. So comparatively, but it's like I'm still, I'm always fighting back the success of anything else that I'm doing with I just, I'm trying to make music. I'm trying not to be hoarse from like yelling at stupid tune core all day. Like I just, you know what I'm saying? So I just know what I want for my life and I'm making space for it and just figuring it out. And no one's special. We all have the same challenges in different ways. Well, I guess to close it out, can you speak just more from a general standpoint of how you see yourself moving in your career? Maybe over the next couple of years, I know you said you want to do a hybrid approach on your next release. But I would love to know where you see your personal career gone. Yeah, so, you know, my show producer, also my music producer, you know, we're looking at starting a side project. I'm working on my next album. And so it's just kind of, you know, figuring out as I've gotten really close with my fans, if it makes sense of like, figuring out kind of works for them. And being centric with your audience is very important. Going back to the social media stuff, right? If you put your audience first, it clarifies everything a lot. Because now it's not about you. It's not about how you feel about it and your insecurities. You go, what can I do to like make my audience laugh today? What can I do to teach them something? What can I do to share something with them? And if you think about them all the time when you are making content, it makes it just a lot easier. But then that's the whole point of everything we're doing. We're like, ah, go hire, you know, a marketing agency to get you that interview. Why? So you can be in front of more people and make more fans. So the whole point of all of this, is that you're putting out music to connect with people who might buy your merch and come to your shows and support your stuff. Like make them a priority. And so for me and what I'm doing, you know, a lot of my objectives is really just with that end goal. It's like always, you know, challenging myself creatively, trying to grow my skill set, try to be a better singer, try to be a better producer, try to like learn more and the instruments that I play. You know, so that's myself for stuff. Why I wanna do it makes me feel really good. Make great music videos, work with creative people. Like I'm very obsessed with the process. And I've said this my entire career. I'm like, I'm gonna be dead one day. And like it's cool, people will remember my music for a while. But what matters to me are those two things that I enjoy the experience. And I hope they touch some people that cared about my music while I was here. Love that. Well, I'm glad. Perfect way to end it. Yo everybody, this is another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. I'm Brian Manchiong and I'll go first. Yup, peace. Appreciate you for watching. If you like content like this, you'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at NoLabelsNecessary.com and the cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some use that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. And you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at NoLabelsNecessary.com.