 Sales are extremely important when it comes to music or not. What do you think? Before you can get into it, what do you think? Yes, the sales matter more than the music itself. That's a good question, man. No, I want to say no, my heart, my heart and the foresight into the comments wants me to say no. OK. All right. So here it is. Academics explains why album number sales are important data. Responding to Lil Yachty's comment saying that we shouldn't focus on the numbers. Let's play this clip. Stop complaining about them, right? The numbers are what they are. And yes, the numbers do like content, but the numbers are the numbers will prove if you're doing something that's really special. It's a reason why, for example, nobody likes nobody likes if the first week projection comes out and says you're not doing it, but no one likes it. But if you're projected to do fifty thousand after the first day and after the fourth day, you're projected to do sixty five thousand. They love to point out the growth. Why? It shows that there's the numbers are going to highlight the fact that there's a change in the culture based on the music. And that's what the numbers do. The numbers is signify. Is who's consuming it? Let me ask you this question, right? This is an airing question that goes outside the music. How are we going to stop it at that before you get into the abstract question? Tree falling, woods and stuff like that. I think there's one comment that's pretty clear. Dream Raheem says, artists love numbers and sales until they start falling. Yeah, it's like artists love numbers when the numbers are high for them or they're going up and they don't like it when they can't play the game. But that's why I say it's a weird line to walk. But I think if you are entry level mainstream and the game numbers matter, if you are not or not trying to play the game, then numbers don't matter. You know, so for me, I mean, I think there's a couple of things about what academics said that, of course, could be fishing. You could say, well, what are the numbers really mean? If somebody was using bots, what are the numbers really mean? If it's about catching the algorithm and you have all these additional like actors in the space. And I think that's where artists try to disconnect the judge of quality of music and numbers themselves, right, which is understandable. But something that academics mentioned later on in this clip. When we talk about the music business, money, numbers matter. It goes back to that same point. Hey, bro, keep it to yourself, keep it on your hard drive if you don't want to deal in the music business, right? Or just share it with your friends and all that stuff. Don't think about growing from a music business standpoint and navigating that and you don't want to think about the numbers. That's just one thing that comes with it. All right. It's why people think numbers because they matter. I'm not even talking about that person who's just trying to appear bigger than who they are. But literally when we talk about charts and all these other things, they matter in ways 100 percent, all right, because you at least get to say that you had these numbers. Let me take a quick second to say if you're an artist trying to blow your music up, or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up. I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply. It's completely free. But the thing is, we're not going to let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com. Check it out. Back to the video. I just saw a clip where 50 Cent in an interview was saying that who did he use as reference for Future, right? He said, yeah, I could perform my song today. And it doesn't really matter how the crowd reacts by these songs are number ones, right? I can get paid certain things because these songs are number ones. But somebody like Future, you might say, oh, yeah, the streets rock with me. Bored in a hole, right? And they're playing my music more than their whole music. It's great because it's true in that way today. But 20 years from now, without the number one attached to it, people aren't reacting the same. You don't get to say, well, at least this thing was a number one. You also can't flip it this thing, right? Because you can't say people like people hire based off of those type of numbers because they want to look. I want to I'm a company and I want to say, oh, I had some random artists that performed or whatever and look at how cool we are and say, hey, he's a number one artist, right? You get those type of accolades. It's not the future's never had any higher charting things. But 50 was referencing those specific songs. So numbers matter when we talk about real life period. Now, art itself and your judgment of it. No, you shouldn't want it to matter in that way when you're talking about your artist bag in the quality of work per se. You know, that's I think that's the thing that we go back and forth with. Yeah, I mean, there are lots of great music out there with, you know, less than 100 strings on it. You know, I've come across some every couple of weeks. But to me, the numbers say two things that typically tend to say two things to me. One, they say that people out there like the music, right? That your art, your art can can be enjoyed and consumed by others outside of yourself and your circle. And then two, it tells me that you know how to play the music industry music business game, right? Even if it is about it, even if it is inflated, even if these numbers only have because you barred 20 bands from your cousin, you were able to run a marketing campaign and that's boosted it. That still says those things, right? People like it enough for it to work and you understand how to do the things to move yourself to the next level. Is that two things that, like, while yes, they can't speak? Well, I guess the first one does kind of speak to the quality of the art, right? But they might not always speak to the quality of the art itself or still like very important if you are someone trying to play that game. So that's why I say, like, my biggest frustration with the numbers argument typically comes from artists who claim they want to be successful artists. It's like you can't want to be successful without looking at numbers. Even if album sales aren't the numbers that you're looking at, once you decide you want to be serious, you're looking at some type of number all the time, right? You're looking at maybe merch sale, streams, clicks on your ads. Like, it's always going to be numbers in this show and you have to learn to care about numbers to run a successful music business, right? It's a lot of math in this show, man, whether people people realize it or not. And so that's my grind, man. If you don't care to do that, like you someone listening, you just like making music for the fun of it and you just like putting it out and you think it's cool. Yeah, bro, like, don't worry about none of this shit, bro. Make your thing, make your music do your thing. But you are someone that is like, hey, I would like to live off of this. And you got to care about numbers, bro. You have to. Yeah, I mean, I think the more correct statement that people should think about if anything is the connecting with people is the thing that matters most. Numbers don't not matter. It's just that they shouldn't be the primary focus because they're a symptom, right? They're not the source. So you do what you're supposed to do. The right number should occur. And then you do a little, you know, hacking or whatever. You still is even that is something that the numbers reflect, but it's not the root of. So I focus on making the best music, the best product, right? Focus on connecting with people and then you'll get what what you, you know, you'll get what you want out of the situation. Because, of course, we do know if we want to talk about the way that numbers do not matter clearly outside of just whether art is good or not. If not, you could get numbers, make something say something. And then not have that reflect real life. Oh, I got a billion streams, but what does that really mean? If five people don't show it to my show, right? In that way, they don't matter for sure. So I don't know that I I feel like this numbers conversation is is going to stay a thing just because it's always on people. Be people who are in flux today. I'm happy with my numbers because I'm up, but then all of a sudden I'm unhappy and now I got to figure out this way to validate and not feel bad about where I am. If then I'm up again and I'm not even having this conversation. Yeah.