 It's the network. Oh, what's up everybody? Once again, it's Brain Man Sean and this video is brought to you by BrainManNetwork.com because I signed myself. Hey, I got a very special guest for y'all and I have a special insight that I want to get from her, right? Music versus product. The way you talked about it was interesting and I want to hear you like share it with my audience as well. Okay. So what's up everybody? It's LeJ. If you didn't know, now you know. First of all, music versus product. Okay. I think it's very important for independent artists to understand the difference in the two because a lot of you guys are using your music like it's a product, right? But music is not necessarily your product because people are not really buying music. You know what I mean? We can hear music free. We're not buying your music. Your music is actually your marketing tool. Like think of it as your content and what is content? Content is basically the communication that you put out, you know, that allows you to communicate with your fan base or with your followers or whatever you want to call it. So what you do is, you know, you use your music as the marketing tool to kind of like rule people in to get them coming in and being like, okay, I like this music. I'm starting to like you. And as you have those people come in, what you do is then offer them the product. Now product is something that you're selling so you get money like right now. You know what I mean? Because look, I'm all about money right now. I don't want to wait for royalties to come in like five, six, seven, eight months later. I want money now. Right? We need money now. So, so you gotta have a product, you know, which can be something physical like, you know, t-shirts, some type of merchandise. It can be a course. If you learn how to create courses, if you're somebody that's an artist but you have an expertise in something like you can record really good or you can make your own beats. You can actually turn that into a course and teach other artists or other producers how to do that. So that's another way to make money. Right? So it's like, you got to come up with these different things that we can use as a product to give our fan base or, you know, other people that may be following us. All right. So just remember, music is the marketing product is what's going to make you money like right now today. Right now. Okay. So you can have a transaction. Right. Right. With the product. Right. I think that's definitely a clear way for people to see it because I know I've talked about that topic before, but the transaction, like if I can't sell it and now it's theirs, they own it, then it's not necessarily a product. Now what music can be is an asset. Right? Music is an asset. It is an asset. If you treat it as such, because people don't buy that from you where, oh, it's a candy bar or a shirt and now it's theirs, but people can lease it from you, rent it from you. And when we think about the fact that you own these rights, it's an intellectual property. Right. That's how you can think about using it as a product when it's more of a be-to-be play business to business and you're leveraging it to be in a soundtrack, right? You're leveraging it to be in whatever else you want to be playing in an elevator, right? Right. That's more of a product perspective of it. But just usually from the way you actually use it in terms of putting it out there and trying to get people to buy it, for one, we're out of that age, right? People are not buying it. Right. Definitely not. At the time, it was a product, more traditional product, or it could have been treated as such. Right. It's always been an asset, but it was a time where you could treat it as such and get huge benefits from it. Now, today, it's not, like no matter what you want to think about it, right? It's still this thing that people consume and now it brings them closer to you and the rest of your brand, you have to be able to direct them to other experiences, other things to exchange for you to actually extract the value in terms of modernization, that money. And that's like the important thing, you know. I think when we, as artists, when we come out, we're not really thinking of the business side of, you know, getting our music out. But this is business, so you have to think in a strategic manner, you know what I mean? I'm going to strategically drop this music for free for everybody to listen to. And then once I get you in, I'm going to strategically offer you something more, you know what I mean? If your music is giving people value, if your brand is giving people value, they're going to want to buy into whatever you have. You feel me? So they're going to want that product. They're going to want that logo t-shirt. They're going to want to buy tickets to your shows. Like you have to, you have to like create a plan that takes you from music to product. Like takes your fan, you know, all the way to the product. You have to strategically plan to do that. All right. Here's another way that we can almost productize music. And I'm interested to hear what you got to say because I know you do the songwriting thing, right? Oh, OK, what? And you're talking about, you know, actual hooks and things like that. So the fact that people are selling hooks out there, how do you look at that? And how can artists actually do something like that themselves? Now, listen, a lot of your artists don't like to turn goose rider, you know what I mean? But look, it's money, a lot of y'all don't understand. It's so much money in being a songwriter. OK, now when we're talking about making the music a product, now that is a great way to do it. So a lot of you artists, if you do have the ability to write songs for other people, it could be hooks. It could be full songs. You can literally put this on a platform, such as like Beat Star. And you can actually sell those songs to people, sell hooks, sell full songs and everything, and then start turning that into income, right? Now, a great thing about doing it that way is that you can literally sell the same hook. Just like a producer sells the same beat multiple times until somebody actually buys the exclusive, like they're literally making hundreds of dollars off of one product off the same beat, right? So you guys, if you want to start writing hooks and putting it on something like a Beat Star, you can literally keep selling the same hooks to everybody until somebody actually purchases up something exclusive from you. Now, you can decide to take it down or not. It's up to you. But that's definitely a great way to be able to turn your music into money. ASAP. ASAP. See, I like that one right there, right? Because we do need both of those. Then you're still writing, right? And there's so many songwriters that are just trying to figure out, how do I get on? And how do I write for Chris Brown? How do I write for, insert whatever random artist's name? But how do I make money in the meantime doing what you want to do? And I think that's the key. How do we get money so we can live doing what we're trying to do? And once you're doing that full time, now the next step is, how can I do that on a bigger scale? How can I get, you know, and plus you're practicing, right? Right, you gotta get that practice. In the meantime. So I think that's a cool thing. And you don't even have to necessarily brand it as you the artist, right? Like you said, those are right, right? You can do either a whole or the name. Right, a whole different persona. Like if people do the same thing with beats, you can do the same thing with your writing and writing hooks. Now, like to close it off, what are your favorite products in terms of like the artist, right? Okay, we know how we're looking at music. Are there any particular types of merch or others forms of transactions that artists can make with their fan base that you kind of lean towards? I think of course, you know, selling a good t-shirt is always a great tool when it comes to product. That's something that you can do multiple ways. You can have a merch store and actually do drop shipping. That might be a whole number of video about drop shipping, but you can literally do drop shipping and you're not putting any money up front. You know what I mean? So you can have a store with a whole bunch of different merchandise that you didn't even buy it, right? And as people are buying it, it basically goes to the manufacturer and they ship your order out so you're not even putting no upfront money in. So that's always a great thing. And then if you do it on the other side where you're actually purchasing the merch ahead of time, you can literally take that everywhere, like take that to your shows, take that to schools, campuses. You can take that on the road, which you can just do so much. So having just a simple t-shirt is like clutch, okay? And then when it comes to other products, like I'm literally a fan of creating knowledgeable products for other people. So I'm like an advocate for artists and producers to really understand what they are an expert in when it comes to making music. Like you might learn how to like hit certain notes or you might learn how to warm up your voice before you start recording or you might know like six steps to having a good mix. Like you can literally take that information, that knowledge you know, and turn it into a product to sell to artists. Your fan base is not just people who listen to your music, right? So you can have a fan base of other artists and other people in the music industry. And then you can have a whole another fan base and product line for your actual fans that wanna listen to your music. So I think, you know, a lot of artists just have to sit down with themselves and think like, okay, what do I know? What can I turn into money? What can I make money off of? Like just create a list, man. You can just get creative. Like it doesn't have to be the standard stuff like a t-shirt, just get creative and start putting your brand out there, start putting your product out there. And I feel like people are gonna buy it up. You know, I like that. I appreciate that answer. And when you were talking about the merchant or job shipping, it randomly just dropped in my head, whatever. It happened, it happened. So the one thing that's huge for artists that's gonna make life in general for y'all so much easier when it comes to marketing and this business stuff is giving your permission to find what works. Now what I mean by that is people are always trying to figure out what works, right? And playing everything ahead of time but give your space to find what works because most of the stuff that you're figuring out you're not gonna know until it gets out there in the first place. And why I thought about that when you were talking about drop-sits shipping is artists ask me about should I drop ship or should I wholesale and all that type of stuff when it comes to merch in general. And the answer is your answer is not permanent. Your decisions do not have to be permanent especially in business, we're changing decisions all the time, right? So if you actually start out drop shipping and because you don't wanna take the risk, make sense, I get it. Now all of a sudden you start saying, whoa, people are buying at a higher level than I thought I was gonna buy and it actually makes sense to economically start doing a wholesale thing. Now you have a real number and a real like a set of data to make you say, okay, I think if I start doing this I could probably sell another 20 of these things, another 100 of these things, whatever that number is. So you know the risk that you're taking for your next decision, allow it to be levels to it. Your decisions do not have to be permanent at all. But one thing, you know, I feel like one thing that you guys have to start doing is having some type of like expectation. You know what I mean? Before you just go out and try to get merch and sell it like ask yourself how much money do I need to make from this product? You know what I mean? How much money do I need to make this month from this product or this year? Like you gotta start writing out your goals first because depending on how much money you need to make that will determine how many fans you need and how much you need to sell for you to be able to make that number. You know what I mean? So you have to start there. Oh, I think it's important to start there. And then that will let you know especially if you're that person that's buying your merchandise upfront like you're doing a wholesale thing. You know, you don't wanna buy like 200 shirts and you don't even got 10 fans right now. You know what I mean? So you wanna start out with something more practical. Think about like how much money do I need to make? How much money is it gonna cost me to purchase this product and manufacture it, you know? And then that will let you know how many you need to sell, how much you need to make from it and like so forth and so on. I get it. You're right, you spot on with that. So that's the information. I would love to know what you guys think about this topic but as always, right? This video is brought to you by bramannnetword.com because I signed myself. Make sure you follow Lady J Bookums on Instagram. Well, I'll try to get her on the channel a little bit more, you know? I know, I know. You know she got gems with her. If you like this video, go ahead and like button. If you like it, mind what you're sharing. If you're not subscribed, you know what to do, hit that subscribe button. It's the matwork. Ow.