 All right, first and foremost, let me pull this up. I see Matthew F, and once again, people ask your stuff in the Q and A, all right, just makes it way easier. You all see all the comments coming through. One Matthew F said, as an independent artist, what is an appropriate amount to invest in marketing versus, NPR for a single versus an EP project release? Would a budget of five to 10K be effective or should I have saved more? I want to open this up so I can see it too. I'm good, good, good. Yeah, I can see it. So as an independent, my bad brand, as an independent artist, what's the appropriate amount to invest in marketing PR for a single versus an EP? So usually, I'll answer that part of the question first. Usually, we're going to put double what we're spending into the EP on a single, I mean on a single, in an EP. So let's say, for example, if I'm spending $2,000 per single, when the EP comes, I'm going to spend 4,000. So usually, I'll double my single budget for the EP. Would a budget of five to 10K be effective? Yes, yes, any budget can be effective, but the thing about it is, and what I'm going to train you guys in this course, it's all about what the content is already doing. I don't spend money on things that aren't already working. Should I promo new singles, then drop the EP, yes, or drop the songs as singles? What's the best way to go about this? So I always drop the maximum amount of singles if possible, you know what I mean, when it comes to the EP. Seven-song EP, that means I can drop three singles because technically, the rules say you can't have more than 50% of the music out if you want to do a pre-order. You can't have more than 50% of the music out when you drop the pre-order. So that means I'm allowed three songs. So I'll drop three singles, pre-order EP. Like a lot of times people just drop stuff, right? The moment is, how do you make it memorable? What are the things that you do beyond just dropping, all right? So let's just say if I had a concert, all right, or a live virtual show or whatever, then I might add merch related to that show in that experience. Know what? Perfect example, Travis got the world. Good Lord, what's the name of the world he just did? Astro world, right? And he made it a moment. He could have just dropped the project named Astro world, all right, but he had all of these different pieces, right, under that theme. So think about moments as themes, all right? That's the easiest, simplest way, all right? And do multiple things under that umbrella related to it. And then of course you have to do the work to get that scene, but that's the easiest way without going to too much time. It sounds so crazy, but I'm talking about statistically, all right, this is why it's important. When I said earlier, stop looking for crazy unique things in all these crazy gyms because when I, from the back end, from the agency, when we talk about what works, sometimes it's not even something that just seems genius. It's like, yo, bro, this is just doing better. Doing covers still works, doing your own music, but acapella and letting people actually hear your voice, all right? Especially that verse is a lot of these produced, like, you know, people will be at the mic and then they'll produce it. Yes, that can work, but the best, best, best is literally like when people could just hear your voice, the numbers on those are crazy, especially on a platform like TikTok, especially if you put a mic or something that's signaling that it's live, a guitar. The stats are just there. If you haven't had one blow, then it's about maybe more timing or the right song, maybe the platform that you put it on, but I promise you, that's that simple. And then another good thing or another thing you can do that is a little bit more unique is taking popular songs and not just doing a cover, but doing an alternative perspective, like a guy did his song and then you do the girls' perspective, responding to what he said or vice versa. That's something that works very powerfully too, because now you're, you know, people know the regular thing and now you're responding. So it's more of a conversation in that. So that's another thing. Is there a distribution service like TuneCord, DistroKid for independent artists that you would recommend or prefer and why? So every distribution service is literally a preference. TuneCord versus DistroKid versus United Masters, they all provide the same service, but one of them pay style may be a little different. Like United Masters has where you can do a subscription versus where TuneCord you pay per release. So it's really about your preference and then also how they give you those analytics on the back ends. TuneCord dashboard looks different from DistroKid's dashboard. Which dashboard do you prefer? And so distribution at a self-service level is strictly based on preference. So, you know, I would advise you try them out, but I also would say to this, this to you is once you find one you like, I will move all of your music to there because you don't want three or four different distribution company paying you. You wanna have it all in one place for easy use. So definitely, you know, figure out which one you like the best and then put all of your music in that one home. So because we're in a streaming era, there's no such thing as re-release. Once you've distributed something and it's touched Spotify or Apple, there's a cold and that's always gonna live. Even if you take the song down, you know, wait three months, re-release it again, it's gonna show up the same, the streams it's still gonna be there. So there's no such thing as re-releasing in the streaming industry. But again, music that's already out, it's never old. It can be five years, you know, the song's been out. It can pop today because of the tools that we have at our disposal because of how we're marketing music. So do you think it's best for artists to stay in the penance once they build a fan base? What are the benefits of labels these days? So again, this is a preference thing. This is, you know, what do you wanna do? Like Money Man is an independent artist, you know? And he's streaming, I wanna say about 30 million streams a week, right? So he could go into a major label and maybe get to the point where he's streaming 100 million, but he just gave up 80% of that money. So now he's making actually less than he would have been making if he would have just stayed independent. And so that's, it could be a preference. It's really about how large do you wanna be? Because here we go, he's making less from streaming, but now because he's a larger artist, he can charge more for a show. So it's all a preference. It's all about how you wanna handle your business. Do you wanna bootstrap it and do it yourself? Or do you wanna partner in a label that's gonna pay for everything? You know, it's really about business and how do you wanna conduct your business? So there is no right or wrong. There is no better or worse. You know, a major label artist has just as much opportunity as an independent artist. So either way, it's totally fine. Wow, what's up? It's Brand Man, Sean. And if you got value from this video, we got a ton of value to offer you in brandmannetwork.com. It's completely free. The link is in the description. If you wanna talk with us directly or some of the people in our community in between videos, so you can ask questions specific to you or hop on one of the live sessions that you see on the channel. When we're speaking with other artists, brandmannetwork.com is the place to go hop into our app. It's really dope and you get access to free courses as well, but it might not be free forever. So hurry up and get in there before I change my mind.